Out Today: Ensuring a Smooth Pathway – Using Articulation Agreements to Help Early Childhood Educators Pursue a BA

In 2015, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8, a report that explores the science of child development and its implications for professionals who work with young children. The most significant recommendation in the report was the call for a transition to a minimum bachelor’s degree qualification requirement for all lead teachers working with children from birth through age eight.

In order to unpack the complexities of this recommendation and its implications for teachers of three- and four-year-olds, New America and Bellwether Education Partners engaged the nation’s leading experts on early childhood teacher preparation in a discussion of what preparation for current and future early educators should look like and the potential of new, more accessible, and higher quality models for degree programs. In February, we released a paper synthesizing our findings and elevating issues that need to be addressed to ensure that all pre-K teachers have the core knowledge and competencies needed to effectively teach three and four-year-olds.

Our new brief, Ensuring a Smooth Pathway – Using Articulation Agreements to Help Early Childhood Educators Pursue a BA, is the first in a series that will explore strategies to help address some of those issues.

Many future early educators begin their studies at two-year community colleges because it is generally less expensive than doing so at a four-year university. Community colleges are also more likely to offer flexible options for students, such as part-time schedules, online courses, and classes on nights and weekends to accommodate those who attend school while simultaneously working or taking care of their children.

But for students who want to eventually receive a bachelor’s degree and become a lead early childhood teacher, the time and money they invest in their community college studies is only beneficial if they can smoothly transition into a four-year institution without loss of credit. Articulation agreements help ensure that smoother pathway, minimizing the waste of time and money that current and future early educators risk when they cannot transfer credits and need to take duplicative courses. These agreements, formed between two- and four-year institutions, enable students to earn their associate degree and then enter a four-year institution with junior standing and 52 to 60 credit hours to apply to required program credits in their field of study.

In this new brief, we explain the importance of articulation agreements for improving college access and completion for current and future early educators, discuss the most common types of agreements, explain why the agreements are difficult to establish and maintain, and give examples of two states that have recently established statewide agreements that are worthy of further study.

Find out more about the importance of articulation agreements for current and future early educators in our full brief.