Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System (TECPDS)
The Texas Early Learning Council will
develop and launch a new career development system for early care
and education professionals in Texas, the Texas Early Childhood
Professional Development System (TECPDS). Building on the
work of the Texas Early Care and Education Career Development
System, this new professional development system will include a
workforce registry, access to trainings, and new features to
support career advancement.
After three years of development, the
Council will launch TECPDS in 2013. Learn more about the
system and the many supplemental resources that the Council is
developing to support TECPDS in the working paper below.
The Council recently released a new
resource for early childhood professionals, new Core Competencies
for practitioners and administrators. The Core Competencies
are also a key component of TECPDS:
We also have several new resources that will be posted on our
website in the next few weeks. Learn more about each of these
documents below the graphics. Coming soon...
- Texas Core Competencies for Early Childhood Trainers
- Texas Early Childhood Workforce Compensation Study: Final
Report
- Texas Higher Education Articulation Agreement Toolkit
The Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System will
be a career development system and resource center for
professionals. The two main components will be the new Texas
Workforce Registry and the redesigned Texas
Trainer Registry. The Texas Workforce Registry will
enable professionals to create online profiles of their work,
education, and training experience. In addition,
professionals will have access to resources, including higher
education, trainings, and a job board.
In addition to the new professional development system, the
Council will develop several projects to support the new system,
and early childhood professionals in Texas. These projects
are a new career lattice, new core competencies for practitioners,
administrators, trainers, and coaches/mentors, a research study on
compensation of early childhood professionals in Texas, and a
research study on articulation agreements between higher education
institutions. Learn more about each of these projects in the
subsequent tabs.
The following is a graphic of the components of the new
professional development system, and the Council's other
initiatives that will support the development of the new
system.
The Texas Trainer Registry (TTR) approves early childhood
trainers to conduct trainings for early care and education
professionals in Texas. Trainers approved by and listed on
the TTR provide trainings that meet the requirements mandated by
Senate Bill 265, the recent state legislation that altered the
requirements for early childhood training hours for professionals
in Texas. The new TTR will feature an online application and
renewal process, as well as an online payment system for
application and renewal processing. The transition to an
online system will drastically reduce the time it takes to process
applications and renewals, meaning less processing time and quicker
turn-around to approve qualified trainers.
When the new TTR launches, many of the features will remain the
same; trainers will be able to submit new training proposals and
post announcements, and, early childhood professionals will be able
to search for specific trainers and trainings. Professionals
and the public will still be able to search for trainers and
trainings by the existing search filters, such as trainer name,
trainer county, and core competency area of the training; however,
we will also include new search filters that will help
professionals narrow their search even further, such as level of
the trainer, delivery method of the training (ex. face-to-face or
online), and the experience level of the audience.
In addition to the new online application and payment system,
features of the new TTR will be released when the full TECPDS is
launched in 2013. Learn more
about the exciting changes to the Texas Trainer Registry
here.
The Council is also developing the new Texas Workforce Registry
(TWR), an online tool for keeping track of the professional
development completed by early care and education professionals.
The Workforce Registry will allow practitioners and administrators
to catalog their training hours, college coursework, and employment
history in a online professional profile. Users will have
access to many resources to help them develop professionally,
including an online job board and information on financial aid,
scholarship opportunities, and higher education opportunities.
The TWR and the Texas Trainer Registry are designed to
complement each other, offering users both an avenue for listing
the professional development opportunities they offer, as well as a
way to keep track of the professional development they have
obtained. In addition, TWR account-holders will be able to add
trainings offered by registered trainers and evaluate the quality
of the trainer and training. This information will in turn be
visible on the trainer's end within their TTR account and can be
used for rating the trainers and their trainings.
The Council is also developing new Core Competencies for early
childhood professionals. New Core Competencies are being
developed for practitioners, administrators, trainers, and
mentors/coaches in the early childhood field. These Core
Competencies are divided into three categories, introductory,
intermediate, and advanced, based on the experiences and expertise
of the professionals. The Core Competencies are also divided
into several key areas of competencies that are needed to be
successful as an early childhood professional who works with
children.
Learn more about the new Core Competencies here.
The new Core Competencies are currently being developed and will
be disseminated in 2013. In summer 2012, the Council released
the Core
Competencies for Practitioners and Administrators for public comment.
The Council released the Core Competencies for Practitioners and
Administrators in January 2013, but later released a revised
version of the Core Competencies, with new resources, in March
2013. The Core Competencies for Trainers and Core
Competencies for Coaches and Mentors will be released later in
2013.
The Council will also fund the development of training modules
for early childhood professionals on the new Core
Competencies. The training modules will showcase the value of
the Core Competencies and their proper use among early care and
education professionals.
The Council is developing a career lattice for early childhood
professionals in Texas. Also known as a career ladder or
career pathway, the career lattice will relate a professional's
training hours, education, work experience, and other factors to a
position on the career lattice, from entry-level to expertise in
the early childhood field. Additionally, professionals can advance
levels on the career lattice by gaining more professional
experience, or obtaining additional education credentials, such as
a child development associate (CDA) degree, bachelor's degree, or
beyond. Ideally, professionals will use this information to
guide their professional development in the future and market
themselves to employers and parents.
Learn more about the new early childhood career lattice
here.
Another project to support TECPDS, the Council will conduct a compensation study of
early childhood professionals in Texas. The compensation
study will be statewide and cross-sector, collecting compensation
information on early childhood professionals in different
programs. This compensation study will be used to create a
voluntary salary range for early childhood professionals in
Texas. This compensation study will be completed in early
2013. The Council is working with the Child and Family Research Institute at the School
of Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin to conduct the
compensation study. Learn more
about the Texas Early Childhood Workforce Compensation
Study.
The research and data analysis for the compensation study is
currently being finalized! The final report of the
compensation study will be posted on our website in March 2013.
To further support the early childhood workforce in Texas, the
Council will assess higher education articulation agreements among
programs that offer early childhood degrees, and produce a toolkit
for other institutions to use. Model articulation agreements
provide a systematic, seamless student transition process from
community colleges to universities that maximizes the use of
resources and minimizes course duplication. After researching
model articulation agreements, the Council will release a toolkit
to assist higher education institutions to create articulation
agreements. Upon completion, this toolkit and research will
be available on the TECPDS website. The Council recently
released an RFP to hire a consultant for this project. Learn
more about the higher education articulation agreements
toolkit.
Our contractor for the higher education articulation agreements
toolkit, MCCM Associates, has completed their research and is
currently developing the toolkit. The toolkit will be posted
to our website later in 2013.
The first two deliverables were recently posted on our
website:
- Deliverable
1 - a review of current articulation agreements and stakeholder
survey data
- Deliverable
2 - an analysis of articulation agreements in Texas among early
childhood programs at institutions of higher education
Check back for updates on the progress of TECPDS. As
components of TECPDS are finalized, this webpage will feature new
content on these initiatives. TECPDS will be piloted and
launched in 2013.