NAEYC's higher education accreditation system accredits early childhood degree programs preparing individuals for beginning career roles as early childhood educators. The Commission on the Accreditation of Early Childhood Higher Education Programs uses the 2025 Ensuring Quality in Early Childhood Education Professional Preparation Programs: NAEYC’s Early Childhood Higher Education Accreditation Standards as the basis for the accreditation of associate, baccalaureate and initial master's degree programs (the Commission does not accredit early childhood degree programs preparing individuals for advanced practitioner roles at this time). These standards define expectations for what early childhood education professional preparation programs must do in order to achieve accreditation—with a focus on how preparation programs will know that graduates are meeting the Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators, as well as the supports programs provide to aid candidate success. 

Each of the six accreditation standards (Standards A-F) addresses an important component of quality ECE professional preparation programs and contains a brief summary statement followed by a set of indicators for meeting it. Each standard must be met in order to achieve accreditation. To support programs’ understanding of accreditation expectations, each standard is accompanied by examples of evidence that programs are required or encouraged to submit in the Self-Study Report and/or during the site visit. Standards also include guidance designed to clarify the expectations of the standard and/or to acknowledge important contextual factors that may impact programs.

About the 2025 Higher Education Accreditation Standards

The 2025 Higher Education Accreditation standards reflect minor updates to the 2021 standards to support programs’ use of the standards. In 2021, the Commission significantly updated accreditation standards in response to feedback from the accreditation community, major developments in the ECE field including the release of the Unifying Framework for the Early Childhood Education and the Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators, and the higher education accreditation system’s attainment of recognition from the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. The standards went into full effect in 2023. Since then, the Commission has been gathering feedback from programs and peer reviewers as well as reflecting on learnings from its own ongoing review of programs to identify areas where 1) the standards need to be clarified, 2) there might be redundancy in the standards, and 3) additional guidance is needed. Programs can read more about the updates in the 2025 standards and the timeline for when they will go into effect in this memo.

If you have questions about the standards, please email us at [email protected] so we can learn how best to support your program.