What We Do

The New York Early Childhood Professional Development Institute leads the work to establish and implement an early childhood workforce system to ensure funding, standards and competencies, career development resources, qualifications and credentials, professional development (training and strengths-based coaching), and program quality assurance and improvement for individuals who work with young children throughout New York.

The three elements of our work – System Building, Innovation and Implementation, and Public Policy and Communications – capture the dynamic process we use to move things forward to elevate the field of early childhood for New York. We believe a dynamic approach is required in order to make substantial, meaningful changes that influence young children and their families. Institute team members must co-exist with ambiguity, empathize with bureaucracy, and see beyond barriers in order to yield a space for creativity, tenacity, partnership, and calculated risk-taking. What emerges are well-conceived solutions that make and sustain change for the early childhood workforce and the children being served.

The Institute’s core leadership team analyzes challenges and opportunities facing the early childhood field. These challenges and opportunities include the need for data, research, and pathways to professional and career development. In addition, the Institute also focuses on new funding paradigms, innovative ways to build program excellence, and the need for strategic and timely policy decisions. The Institute’s staff conceive, study, experiment, implement and test until we arrive at models worthy of system change.

Overall, we are constantly balancing two forces in our work: the urgency to make positive change happen as quickly as possible for young children, and the patience to understand that the big changes needed in the early childhood field are incremental, requiring time, ongoing attention and tenacity.