What number and percent of CCEE workforce members have a special education credential and/or experience working with children with disabilities?

Answering this question can provide insight into the capacity of the CCEE system to address the early care and education needs of children with disabilities. This question can be answered by using practitioner level information. If CCEE program and setting information are of interest, further analysis can be conducted by linking practitioner information to site level information.

The Practitioner Level data elements Early Childhood Credential and Years of Experience Children with Disabilities can be used to identify CCEE workforce members with special education credentials and/or experience serving children with special needs. CCEE Workforce member data can be coded to assign practitioners a numeric value of “1” if the value for the field “CRED_SPECIAL ED” for the Early Childhood Credential data element is “Yes” or the value of Years of Experience Children with Disabilities is greater than “0”. Assign CCEE workforce members that do not meet either of these criteria a numeric value of “0”. Count the Practitioner ID for CCEE workforce members to get a total number of CCEE workforce members. Count the Practitioner ID for CCEE workforce members with a coded value of “1” to obtain the total number of CCEE workforce members with a special education credential or experience working with children with disabilities. Divide the number of workforce members with a coded value of “1” by the total number of workforce members and multiply by 100 to calculate a percent value.

2.3.1  Please report on total number of staff in licensed child care programs with the following qualification levels (CDA, Associate’s degree, Bachelor’s degree, State child care credential, State infant toddler credential, Unable to report).  To ascertain the number of practitioners that have a CDA or State/Territory Credential, total the number of practitioners (Practitioner ID) with a “Yes” for the data element Early Childhood Credential for each of the categories (Child Development Associate, State-Administration/Director Credential, State-Infant/toddler Credential, State-Preschool Credential, State-School-age Credential, State-Teacher Certification/Licensure, State-Special Education Credential). Add all State credentials for the total number of State/Territory credentials. Next, use the data element Degree or Certificate Type and sum the number of practitioners with a “Yes” response for the categories Associate’s Degree, Bachelor’s Degree, and Graduate/Advanced Degree.

2.3.2 Please report on the total number of staff in licensed CCDF child care programs with the following qualification levels (CDA, Associate’s degree, Bachelor’s degree, State child care credential, State infant toddler credential, Other). To answer this question, repeat the analysis described above for QPR question 2.3.1 The Site Level data element Type of Funding can be used to filter the dataset to only select those providers employed at program sites that receive CCDF funding. This can be accomplished by selecting only the program sites that have a “Yes” indicated in the option set for the “CCDF” field.