Competency Frameworks for Infant and Toddler Teachers and Caregivers in California

• The California Early Childhood Educator Competencies framework describes what the competencies look like in different contexts within the early childhood education field. The state identified the following four contexts that focus on the knowledge, skills, and attributes needed for each role: (1) supporting early learning and development, (2) planning and guiding early learning and development, (3) creating and maintaining program policies and practices, and (4) advancing the early childhood profession.
• When the California Early Childhood Educator Competencies framework was introduced, the state required that Child Care and Development Block Grant-funded trainings identify which competencies the trainings covered. Although that requirement is no longer in place, many training and technical assistance providers still voluntarily assess the alignment of their trainings to the competencies.
• The Curriculum Alignment Project adopted the California Early Childhood Educator Competencies as part of its efforts to align coursework across colleges and universities. The project, comprising a group of early care and education 2- and 4-year college faculty, created a set of foundational early childhood course outlines to enhance consistency across colleges and simplify the transfer of these courses between colleges and universities.
• The framework is one component of the state’s early learning and development system, but it is not tied explicitly to licensing requirements or career lattices or pathways. The state’s consortium of quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS) used the competencies when developing the rating matrix to inform what programs should exhibit to reach certain quality tiers. However, local QRIS are not required to use the competencies to rate or assess programs.
• The California Early Childhood Educator competencies are not tied to any assessment. However to support use of the competencies, the state developed the Competencies-based Self-Assessment Toolkit (CompSAT) that educators could use to assess their professional development needs based on the competencies. CompSAT provided multimedia tools through its online website that helped users explore each competency. As of March 2022, the CompSAT website was no longer available.

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