Children need to spend their most critical years with dedicated, educated, trained, and well-compensated individuals in order to thrive. The New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute leads the work to establish and implement an early childhood workforce system to ensure funding, standards, competencies, and measures of accountability so that every young child in New York has equitable access to excellence.
New York Works for Children (NYWFC) is the State's integrated professional development system for the early childhood and school age workforce. It is also the home of The Aspire Registry: New York's Registry for Early Childhood Professionals
New York's Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS) is a statewide initiative that assists all types of early childhood programs in improving the quality of their services in order to achieve the best possible outcomes for children.
Our Career Development Centers across the state provide free, comprehensive career development services to all current and aspiring early childhood professionals. Our services include: Academic Planning and Advisement, Career and Vocational Assessment, Resume Preparation, Interview and Job Search Strategies and Teacher Certification, Scholarship and Tuition.
The Institute leads the Leadership Initiative, designed to support the professional development and success of current leaders and prospective leaders in the early childhood field across New York State.
The Informal Family Child Care Project offers a wide range of programs and services, including training, technical assistance, home visits and access to dynamic materials and resources that support best practices for children and families.
The Institute and our state partners have developed policy, infrastructure and communications to bring coaching to the fore as a critical component of professional development in New York State. Our own Institute Coaches provide individualized, reflective coaching to Early Childhood professionals in order to meet their self-identified, competency-based professional development goals.
The NYC Early Childhood Research Network (Network) was established to bring representatives from New York’s City agencies and researchers in the New York City metropolitan area together to consider key research questions to benefit programs and policies serving children from birth through age 8.