Governor Tom Wolf recently announced a $1.4 million grant to increase the quality of Pennsylvania’s early childhood learning professional workforce. The Higher Education, Early Child Care, and Community-based Partnership Working to Implement Innovative and Sustained Pathways grant will enable greater access for early childhood education staff to participate in and complete a credit-bearing Child Development Associate (CDA), associate degree, bachelor degree, and/or Pennsylvania PreK-4 teacher certification.
The competitive grant, made available through Pennsylvania’s Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge grant, will support currently employed early childhood educators pursuing higher education. Drexel University, Carlow University, and Shippensburg University were successfully funded to build cross-systems partnership opportunities to identify and reduce barriers to access early childhood education degrees for currently employed early childhood educators. Read more.
This initiative is in part by Pennsylvania’s Race to the Top – Early Learning Challenge grant. For more information on other initiatives funded by this grant, visit the Pennsylvania Department of Education website.