Neighborhood Villages Releases Case Study on Early Education Apprenticeship Program During National Apprenticeship Week
Program offers a promising solution to child care workforce crisis
BOSTON, MA (November 21, 2024) – In recognition of National Apprenticeship Week, Neighborhood Villages released a case study on its early childhood education (ECE) Registered Apprenticeship Program that illustrates how apprenticeship programs help address the child care workforce crisis.
“If we want to address the early education workforce crisis in our state, we need to invest in recruitment, retention, and career advancement opportunities for educators,” said Binal Patel, Chief Program Officer at Neighborhood Villages. “This case study shows that our apprenticeship program is an effective and promising tool to grow the early education workforce and promote high-quality early education and care. Thanks to support from the City of Boston and the Executive Office of Workforce and Labor Development, we’ve been able to scale the program statewide and offer apprenticeship opportunities to educators across the Commonwealth.”
It’s well known that Massachusetts is facing an early educator workforce crisis. When last surveyed, 46 percent of all center-based providers in the Commonwealth had at least one educator vacancy, and 32 percent reported that they didn’t have enough staff to enroll children at their full licensed capacity.
To help address this shortage, Neighborhood Villages launched its Registered Apprenticeship Program in January 2023, with support from the City of Boston and the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, as well as philanthropic support from the Wellington Management Foundation, Lynch Foundation, and Highland Street Foundation. The program offers non-college, accessible pathways to those entering or looking to advance their careers in the field of early education and care.
The free pathways offer two tracks: one for teachers working towards their Child Development Associate (CDA) credential and another for current or aspiring child care administrators (Early Childhood Emerging Leaders). Both tracks combine on-the-job training with classroom instruction, instruction in English and Spanish, wage increases for hours accomplished, stipends and training for mentors, and industry-recognized credentials.
This program has become the largest early childhood Registered Apprenticeship program in Massachusetts and the first in the country to graduate educators seeking to become program directors upon completing their apprenticeship year.
In February 2024, Neighborhood Villages graduated 68 apprentices from its first cohort and the results have been encouraging.
Employers have been successful in retaining the educators who completed a Registered Apprenticeship, with more than 83 percent still at the same organization and same site as when they started.
The Registered Apprenticeship has also led participating educators to assume new roles (39 percent of respondents) or greater responsibilities within the same role (22 percent).
72 percent of participants have experienced an increase in their compensation, which is an important factor in stabilizing the workforce.
The success of the first cohort has encouraged others to participate and the second cohort, which began in February 2024, has nearly 100 new apprentices.
View the case study here and learn more about the Registered Apprenticeship program here.
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About Neighborhood Villages
Neighborhood Villages, founded in 2017 by Lauren Kennedy and Sarah Muncey, is a Boston-based systems-change non-profit that advocates for early education and care policy reform and implements scalable solutions that address the biggest challenges facing providers and the families who rely on them. For more information, visit https://www.neighborhoodvillages.org/our-work.
