State Policy Blueprint for an Integrated Professional Development System

This blueprint focuses on the policies that connect professional development activities and that support and make possible an effective implementation of a state system of professional development. It highlights policy principles and essential policy areas that build or sustain an integrated system—a system that ensures quality in all settings in which early childhood professionals work. These principles and highlighted policy areas look beyond the status quo; they are aimed at the development and retention of a competent and stable early childhood workforce—a skilled cadre of effective, diverse, and adequately compensated professionals.

• Principles define fundamental values. In this blueprint, the principles for policy-making are overarching value statements that are applied in each of the six highlighted policy areas.
  
  Integration; quality assurance; diversity, inclusion, and access; and compensation parity are four principles for policy-making that form the cornerstones of this state policy blueprint.
  
  
• Policy provides goals and procedures that guide decisions and actions. Governments, businesses, professions, and other entities may develop and employ policies. Public policies, the focus of this blueprint, can be in legislation—articulated in statute, in executive orders, or in department regulations. Policies can also be captured via operational documentation which may or may not be referenced in laws or rules.
  
  The six essential policy areas of the blueprint are: 1) professional standards; 2) career pathways; 3) articulation; 4) advisory structure; 5) data; and 6) financing.

This policy blueprint also includes a listing of sample state strategies in each of the six key policy areas. A database of state policies that match or are related to the essential policies and the policy principles of the blueprint is also being developed.

This policy blueprint was designed for—and with input from—state policymakers, early education advocates, and program administrators working to connect professional development activities and initiatives into an integrated system. The blueprint also was developed with input from other national organizations and experts working to strengthen professional development and career systems for the early childhood workforce.

Since state policies do not start and will not end up in the same place, this tool is intended to serve as a starting point for states to expand, change, and adapt for their own political and professional contexts and needs. The blueprint is the first in a series of related resources being developed by the Early Childhood Workforce Systems Initiative. The complete blueprint will be available on this site at the end of October 2008.