As Apprenticeships Expand in Early Childhood, These States Are Training the Field’s Future Leaders

A typical career trajectory in early care and education might follow like this: start as an assistant teacher in a classroom, eventually gain the experience to move up to lead teacher, and if you’re ambitious and able, one day become the assistant director, director or even owner of a program.

On paper, it seems reasonable. Each role, over time, equips the educator to step into the next one, right?

Not necessarily. Because while the primary responsibilities of a classroom teacher involve educating and caring for young children, that work often shifts dramatically at the next level — the leadership level — to managing staff and operating a small business.

“You train to be an early childhood educator,” notes Anne Banks, apprenticeship programs manager for the Community College System of New Hampshire, which oversees three apprenticeship pathways in early childhood education. “Just because you know how to work with children doesn’t mean you know how to run a business to work with children.”

That creates an enormous gulf between the classroom-level roles in early childhood education and the leadership ones. It’s often so daunting that many educators don’t bother to move up. And for those who do, many find themselves ill-prepared; some will leave, creating “this churn, this constant turnover of directors,” explains Jen Legere, the owner and director of A Place to Grow, a franchise of early learning programs, and architect of the new director-level apprenticeship program for early childhood educators in New Hampshire.

In the last handful of years, registered apprenticeship programs have been booming in early care and education, as EdSurge reported last year, with most states now offering a version of this longstanding workforce development pathway. Those programs primarily cater to individuals who lack expertise and experience in working with young children and want to upskill quickly, qualifying them for more senior and better-paying classroom teaching roles.

Within that growing trend, though, is another, smaller movement catching on: Three states so far — Kentucky, Massachusetts and New Hampshire — now also offer apprenticeships tailor-made for emerging leaders in early care and education.

These director-level apprenticeship programs reflect a recognition that many aspiring early childhood leaders — and, frankly, a number of existing ones — do not feel prepared to manage the myriad responsibilities of the job and need additional skills and training to close the gap.

Binal Patel, chief program officer at Neighborhood Villages, a Boston-based nonprofit that operates two apprenticeship tracks for early childhood educators in Massachusetts, including one for entry-level educators and another for directors and other future leaders in the field, says that her own experience as an early childhood program director would have benefited from the kind of practical training that this new kind of apprenticeship provides.

“While you may take the course, while you may think you sort of have the book knowledge and theoretical knowledge, man, it is so different when you have that first staff meeting or that first difficult conversation with a staff member, or the first difficult conversation with a family, or you’re balancing budgets and your auditor comes and asks you very specific questions about finances,” Patel says. “So we really wanted to build a wealth of training to support directors or any administrator in that role.”

The Business Side of Early Education

Kentucky was the first state to launch a director-level apprenticeship program, back in spring 2022. Today it is one of four apprenticeship tiers available to early childhood educators there.

Back in 2019, Brenda Hagan, then a preschool program owner who had been hired as apprenticeship coordinator for the Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, sent around a survey to early childhood program leaders, gauging their interest in apprenticeships.

About 70 percent, Hagan recalls, expressed interest in an apprenticeship pathway for directors and other leaders in the field.

What currently exists in most states is a director-level certification that many feel is lacking. In Massachusetts, for example, eligibility for the director certification includes lead teacher certification, plus six additional months of work experience and completion of a child care administration course.

What those certifications typically overlook, state leaders say, and what early childhood educators want and need, is business training.

“If I just had a director’s credential, I wouldn’t know how to run a program,” admits Hagan, the chief architect of Kentucky’s apprenticeship programs for early childhood education. Over time, the stress of that skills gap leads many early childhood directors to burn out and quit, she adds, which destabilizes programs as they scramble to fill vacant leadership positions. “You don’t just have another director lying around.”

The director-level apprenticeship program in Kentucky sought to include what was missing from that credential, Hagan notes. This includes business training, but also compliance (such as licensing ratios for every age group), participation in state and federal government programs (such as the federal food program and the state subsidy program), employee engagement and family engagement. The program averages about two years to complete, with 288 hours of required “related technical instruction” and 4,000 hours of on-the-job learning.

The apprenticeship track in Massachusetts, which launched in early 2023 after leaders there were inspired by what Kentucky was creating, has a similar aim.

In addition to the child care administration course that is required for the state’s director credential, Neighborhood Villages added a leadership development training focused on, among other things, relationships with staff, an instructional leadership training focused on curriculum and instruction, business training that covers budgeting, forecasting and financial systems, and family engagement training. It tends to take apprentices about 15 to 18 months to graduate, Patel says, based on the 150 hours of technical training and the 2,000 hours of on-the-job learning required.

Since the apprenticeship first launched in Massachusetts, leaders at Neighborhood Villages have adapted the programming based on graduates’ feedback. Recently, there have been requests from apprentices for more training on human resources policies and supporting educators managing children’s mental and behavioral health needs, Patel shares. They are looking at whether and how to incorporate those topics into the apprenticeship experience.

In addition to the practical knowledge apprentices gain, many also highly value the mentorship that comes with participating in the program.

That was the most useful piece of the experience for Jess Jarvis, who graduated from the first cohort of the Early Childhood Emerging Leaders apprenticeship with Neighborhood Villages in February 2024. (That cohort, with 32 eventual graduates, was largely made up of current early childhood program directors, Patel notes, who felt they needed more training and mentorship to be successful in the roles they were already in.)

Jarvis entered the program as a lead teacher in a preschool classroom at a Boston-based early childhood center. During her apprenticeship, she was promoted to director of teaching and learning at her school, where she now spends most of her time supporting teachers and children.

The apprenticeship — and later, the promotion it led to — came with multiple wage increases for Jarvis, which was very attractive to her. She also appreciated getting to know other early childhood educators across her city and state; the apprentices in her cohort met regularly on Zoom and then gathered in person at graduation, she says. But her biggest takeaways came from her mentor, who helped her, for example, understand the role of trust in communicating effectively with staff.

“That piece,” she says of the mentorship, “helped keep the sanity and the momentum going.”

A New Pathway for Advancement

Kentucky and Massachusetts are both now several cohorts along in their director-level apprenticeship tracks. In New Hampshire, the work is just kicking off.

The first two states were able to get approval for their programs through state apprenticeship agencies. In New Hampshire, where apprenticeships are federally funded, they must be approved through the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Apprenticeship.

That created some additional hurdles for folks in New Hampshire who wanted to see this pathway materialize in the Granite State — particularly Legere, the program director and owner who spearheaded the effort.

Legere wanted to create opportunities for her own staff to grow and advance in their careers, eventually setting them up to own and operate their own early learning programs. She was keen on bringing a director-level apprenticeship program to New Hampshire.

Working alongside a team at Apprenticeship NH, a workforce training program of the Community College System of New Hampshire, she applied to have a new role — early childhood operations manager — approved by the U.S. Department of Labor as an apprenticeable occupation. Last summer, it was approved, paving the way for not only New Hampshire but every other state to create director-level early childhood apprenticeship programs.

It’s still early, but already, leaders in Massachusetts have seen the impact of offering this leadership pathway to early childhood educators.

Some graduates of the emerging leaders apprenticeship have gone on to become directors, while others have moved into other administrative roles or taken on more responsibilities in their teaching positions, Patel says.

“We’re really interested in not just what happens after they graduate, but what happens six months after that,” she says. “We’ve seen really, really high numbers of retention in the field, of continuing increases to their wages. … The feedback has just been so positive.”