In this episode of Spark EC Voices, we bring together faculty and leaders from California State University campuses to explore the launch of new PK–3 Early Childhood Education credential programs across the state. Panelists from CSU Dominguez Hills, CSU Long Beach, and Fresno State share candid insights into program design, candidate recruitment, clinical practice, and the realities of supporting a diverse, working early childhood workforce. The conversation also highlights key distinctions between the PK–3 credential and the Multiple Subject credential, emphasizing developmentally appropriate, play-based teaching and advocacy for young learners. Together, this episode offers a timely look at how CSU innovators are shaping the future of early learning in California and expanding equitable pathways into the profession.
Inside the PK-3 Credential: A CSU Innovators Panel
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Spark EC Voices podcast, the place where knowledge meets action and early childhood education. We're so glad you're here. This show is brought to you by the Spark EC Hub, and that's the California State University System wide partnership for advancing research and knowledge in Early childhood education. Today, we're excited to bring together a panel of educators and leaders from CSU campuses whose PK three early childhood education programs are just getting started here in California. These programs represent a major shift, one that centers developmentally informed, play based literacy and math rich learning from transitional kindergarten through third grade. And just as importantly, they open new pathways for diverse and experienced early childhood workforce, creating opportunities for professional growth, stronger preparation, and greater equity across the field. In today's conversation, we'll hear directly from our panelists about what it takes to launch a PK-3 program, who and how they are recruiting, and what it means in this moment for children, families and educators across the state, including the difference between the PK-3 credential and the multiple subjects credential. So, whether you're faculty, a teacher, a program leader, or simply curious about the future of early learning in California, we're glad you're here. Let's get started.
So, if you could each, give a program snapshot. So just like a really brief overview of a picture of your program, such as how many candidates you have enrolled. maybe some of their backgrounds, like who are your candidates? how many have received equivalencies and are there any unique features about how it's structured. For this question? We're going to begin with CSU Dominguez Hills with Doctor Jenny Chiappe. Then we'll move to CSU Long Beach to hear from Doctor Ruth Piker and Doctor Aura Perez Gonzalez. And then we'll hear from Fresno State folks, Doctor Peng Wu and Doctor Lindsay Meeker.
Our program is a three-semester sequence, and so the first semester is pre-service. There are no clinical hours attached to that semester. The reason why we did that was because it is across departments, and it's really hard to manage across departments. so, the students start their clinical practice until semester two and three, and it is a two hundred four hundred hour split, unless they have equivalency where they do two hundred hours minimum, and then they do the other two hundred plus whatever remaining they have. But we are letting candidates know that they it is most likely to be more than two hundred hours because of those additional requirements. We have a lot of candidates who come back, worked as preschool teachers for a long time. Some of them are fresh out of undergrad, and there are some who've been aides and things like that. What is special about our program that also has caused me a lot of headaches is that I try to support all of our candidates for our current preschool teachers because they have to leave their job, and take a leave of absence, which means that they have no health care, no insurance, no pay. Right. And so, and because of this economy, I don't want them to leave their job and not have anything to come back to. Right. So, we've worked it out with districts. I've met with a lot of districts and a lot of principals so that they can student teach in their place of work so that they don't have to leave that first semester. Everyone that we've met with has agreed to that, and all of their supervisors have agreed. As long as we have a current MOU with them. But it is hard when our candidates are outside of the twenty five mile radius of Dominguez Hills and we can't accommodate that. So we have somebody from Chino Valley who drives forty four miles a day just to come to Dominguez Hills. Right. And so, we try really hard, you know, to schedule our classes, like we said. But what becomes harder is that, you know, a lot of preschool teachers don't get out of school until five. And so, we try to make it so that it's only one day a week where they have to leave early. So we stack their classes. But again, it becomes, you know, it's really hard because you're trying to manage so many different needs. And at some point, it becomes unsustainable. Right. And so this is where now I'm reevaluating our program and saying, you know, the long run when our funding runs out, how are we going to sustain this department.
Hi, I am Ruth Piker, and I coordinate the credential and our teacher education department. So, our program is a three semester program. The first two semesters are courses. We actually embed a lot of clinical practice hours. We have one hundred and eighty. They're actually embedded and they have like either ten or twenty hours in the class. So it's very specific to what that class is. So we provide that in terms of flexibility because that way they can actually figure out how they want to address those. Some of our hours can actually be modules. So, we try to include modules on that because that actually does count towards their clinical practice hours. For the third semester that's when they would do that's full time. Third semester they would do student teaching. And that's actually where we're starting to find some challenges. And because ours is actually split into two. So, the first ten weeks of the semester is PK3 placement. And then the last six weeks is meant to be in either preschool or TK class. And that's about two hundred hours. So our students that have equivalency, they don't have to take that last six weeks. They can actually then have to worry about taking that particular teacher. They just need to do the first ten weeks, which is great. And then when we come, when it comes to supervisors and actually getting our college to be able to support that, then there's a lot of questions in terms of then having to leave their jobs for like ten weeks and then also where to place them. And then, you know, so that's a whole other issue. So we're trying to figure that out in terms of what's the best approach. So we're going to be looking at residencies and internships and see what works best. We have two cohorts right now. So we actually accepted thirty into a full time which is three semesters and thirty into the part time. And so they're taking like three classes three to four classes this semester. So, our demographics we have a nice range. Actually, a lot of our students, like a third of our students, are actually over the age of forty and above. We only have maybe I think it's like it's like twenty or fifteen percent that are like twenty to twenty five and then twenty six to thirty is like another like ten percent twenty. So we actually have a lot we have a really nice range in terms of the ages. We also have, the demographics in terms of the ethnic and racial background. Well actually it's like seventy percent Latin A, only three percent identified as white Caucasian. We have seven percent identified as Black African American. And we have I think it's like thirteen percent identify as Asian. Sorry we are just literally writing this paper right now, which is why I have these numbers memorized with them. So we have a pretty diverse group. We also, did a survey when we did our new student orientation and asked where they're all coming or if they're working, and they all work with children in some way. At least ninety-five percent of them work with either their preschool teachers. They're working with infants and toddlers, they're assistant teachers, or they're like assistant, teachers and like a TP class. So. I think it's really nice that we have this nice diversity. And I think what I'm also enjoying is that in the classes they actually learn from each other. So, the new teachers are really having an opportunity to learn from those that have experienced teaching, especially those that have been teaching for like ten, twenty years. It's really nice to see how they're learning from each other and they can get experience. And so that's really liked.
We originally admitted twenty nine candidates and five dropped. And we survey them to learn about, the barriers. Some barriers are about child caring they can manage the children's care schedule and also to the clinical practice and others are related to the location like they live too far away and they can't come to, the sites. Twenty-two of them hold BA in child and family science or related field. Among twenty four and which reflects strong preparation in child development and family studies. Others when Liberal studies major or other majors into the program, so shows that they have some interdisciplinary foundations or early elementary foundations, and they look similar to what Jenny and Ruth share. Many of them have, preschool experience. Three are seasoned preschool teacher with six or more years in the field, and the majority of the remaining candidates have worked in EC roles like paraprofessionals, intervention program staff, daycare educators, or volunteers. And our cohort also reflects rich cultural and linguistic diversity. Of twenty-four, we have seven, about seventy nine percent who speak a language other than English. And then, Regarding the clinical practice equivalency, we have twelve candidates who receive and approve receive approved, clinical practice equivalency hours in this cohort. And three candidates qualify for option one only, which is, their experience as a teacher in preschool. We have eight candidates who qualify for option two only, which reflects practicum coursework hours verified by the instructor or department chair from community college or Chan Family Science department. And we only have one candidate who qualify for both. So, she had sufficient, evidence in both categories. So when we count candidates by each option they met, regardless of whether they qualify for both options. Basically, we have four candidates met criteria for one, option one and nine candidates met the criteria for option two. So one challenge worth noting is that the review and tracking of clinical practice equivalency has been extremely tedious and time consuming because each candidate is approved for a different number of hours, which means that during phase one, where we require one hundred and seventy six clinical practice hours, we must individually calculate how many additional hours each candidate needs to complete for phase one, and we need to monitor their progress, determine when they have officially met the phase one criteria. And this individualized tracking just adds significant administrative burden. But it's also essential to make sure accurate and equitable equivalency being implemented.
I think we think about that clinical practice piece. And then when students come in with equivalencies, something that we didn't expect, so many of them are working, like Jenny said, multiple jobs. And so thinking about how we structure our assignments, so that they aren't all having big assignments at the same time for every class and also being in clinical. So we just, we've learned a lot about that. And we're now having like more often phase of like meetings to say, okay, coaches, what are you seeing in the field? Where are the stress points or pain points. Okay, instructors, what do you have coming up and how can we help streamline some of that for the students?
All right. Thank you. I think we're going to back up a little bit now and think about recruitment. And so how do you get the students, the candidates in your programs? And I'm going to combine a couple of the questions in this question here as well. So how are you intentionally recruiting and supporting a diverse pool of candidates to reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity of California's early learners? And how many of those students come from community colleges and the workforce? For this question, let's have CSU Long Beach begin with Aura Doctor Perez Gonzalez and Doctor Ruth Piker. Then we'll move over to CSU Dominguez Hills for Doctor Chiappe, and then we'll move down to Fresno with Doctor Wu and Doctor Meeker.
I just joined CSU Long Beach, so I should kind of contextualize that, but from what I've seen is that a lot of the students that we have in the program are coming from a master's program. So that's kind of like a nice gateway into the program. and also, I think there's been a lot of intentionality in terms out workshops that were, proposed when applications were due in order to help the candidates with their applications and how to write their narratives in order to get into the program. So I think, Ruth and Christina have worked, a lot behind the scenes to do that kind of, work in order to really assure that candidates are even prepared to submit their application. And so that's what I've seen so far, but I am sure Ruth can add more.
So, yeah, so what we did is we ended up having submitted a successful application clinic. And so, what we decided to do is, on a Saturday, we ended up having someone from the writing center come in and talk about writing another personal statement. And we had someone come in from financial aid who actually shared a video in terms of talking to students about financial aid and what are the resources on campus? We had someone else talk about how to actually like the logistics of submitting an application, and a lot of the students there haven't been in school for a long time. So we had these offered. We also had them, someone who supports our students’ organizations. So then we had another it was like fifteen-minute blocks. And so there was someone who was talking to them about what are the different student organizations within our college that could support you, that they can become part of to help them throughout? And then the other thing I think that was really important is that we actually had a new student orientation before the semester started, so we had told them when they were admitted that they had to attend. And so I think it was like fifty-nine of them actually attended. And it was this opportunity. We actually mixed them like the part time and the full time. We had them at tables, groups of six. We talked about what the expectations were, what it was going to look like, clinical practice. But then we had them create this vision board in terms of what their goals are. And so it was so they were able to like create a vision board. And we had like all kinds of materials for them to decorate it. And they got to share it with each other. And then we did like a gallery walk. So we just walked around and people could put post it notes on it. And so it was really this way for them to meet each other, get to know each other, think about what they wanted from the program so that when they actually attended their first class, they already knew who they already recognized people. so, I think that's really helpful. And like I said, we only lost two, which is like really incredible. because the fact that the population is, is definitely very diverse. We have a lot of parents. we also have scholarship, as I mentioned. So, everybody got something. And so we forced them to meet with the financial aid advisor. and so she was able to go through what were their options, what is the cost of living and then how much money they were able to get. So, there was a lot of advising and a lot of ways for them to build those relationships before they even got to the first class
At Dominguez Hills were also a recipient of the Ballmer gift. And so we received twenty one million dollars. Seventeen million of those are going to scholarships. So, each candidate automatically gets five thousand dollars when they start a program every semester for three semesters. we had you know, our interest is also going beforehand. So we did, you know, right before we launched the program, we had a large interest list. we also have a district partners collective where our dean partners with all of our all of the districts in our local area. And so we've been talking about the development of the Pk3. A lot of them were involved. And so they have been a great recruitment partner, because we also target a lot of the preschools, because encouraging a lot of preschool teachers and assistants who work there to earn their credential. There is a different pay scale for those who earn their credentials depending on the district. So we have a lot of people returning from from their work experience into back to school. And we also intentionally recruit our undergrads. So we host undergrad fairs, we go into classrooms. And then we also we have a lot of like PK-3 events on our campus. Again, this is due to the extra funding that we have.
So we have a team of navigators who provide online informational session. And then once attendees complete the interest survey. Then we'll reach out to them for one on one advising session. And we also reach out to our community college partners to provide information session on their campus. So with Fresno City, we try to do that once a semester. And also for Clovis Community College. We also do that like once per semester. And lately we have been hosting tours for ROP high school students. this year we had almost eighty students who are in the teaching academy or pathway. So they came to visit us and then we just share information about different majors. And then also this credential program. And then my colleague and I, have been presenting at a conference, and we also got support from the dean's office to reserve a booth, to introduce different programs last fall and then this spring. But with the new budget situation, we no longer have the privilege to do that. But, I can say those opportunities actually, allow us to reach to diverse population.
Great. Thank you. We're getting down to the end here. But I do have a couple of questions. I'm going to we'll start with this one. We'll see where it goes. And maybe we have time for one more. Or else I have another thought. So how does your program differ from a multiple subject credential program, and why are students selecting your program over multiple subjects? for this question. Let's begin with the Fresno State team. Then we'll move to the Long Beach team. And then we'll finish with CSU Dominguez Hills Thank you.
When we're talking to our candidates, we've we have had some candidates really weigh that right. Like, do I want that multiple subject piece so that I'm more marketable or do I want to stick with my passion and really follow that pk3 credential pathway. And so when we're having those conversations with them, one piece I really have to think about is if you are placed in a fourth, fifth, sixth grade classroom. Are you going to love that job? And if they say no, I never want to teach past third grade or I only want to teach kindergarten and first grade. Then I'm like, well, then in that case, right? The Pk3 is a protection for you in a way. So even though you might be harder to hire, the chances of you working in the age group that you want to be in is a better match. Because, you know, principals are saying to us, we don't want that, narrowing component of pk3. But we're also talking to our candidates about what do you really love to do and then what can get you there and what can protect you from needing to teach in spaces where maybe you don't think you want to land yet? one thing we're noticing is that we have multiple subject candidates that went through our program, you know, a couple years ago or five years ago and they have their units for TK. They are our mentor teachers now and then we have our Pk3 students going into their classrooms. And so we're noticing that if they took their twenty four units with us, they have like this play based lens, and they're really able to kind of counter like really collaborate with our pk3 candidates if they might have went somewhere else for their multiple subject, or maybe they didn't get their twenty four units recently, then we're seeing where, oh, there's like a professional, big professional difference between what does Pk3 do for children and families and, where does the multiple subjects sit. So we're, we're playing with that as we think about who our mentor teachers are, who our candidates and, and how do we ensure that that play based, developmentally appropriate lens comes through?
Okay. yeah. We were just having this conversation in class. Actually, we're talking about worksheets and how they're not developmentally appropriate. and so sometimes students see that when they're in their clinical practice sites and then they're like, well, what if we see this? I'm like, well, you're pointing out exactly why we need this credential, right? So it's very different from multiple subjects, which is maybe what your mentor teacher has. And so talking to them about how we're really preparing them to be advocates for the profession, because we're really grounded in developmentally appropriate practices, play based practices. And so how can we actually talk to our administrators, our principals, and our mentor teachers about what we know and how they're so, they're experts in this, right? And so, I think that's really where the distinction is between PK three and multiple subjects.
So the thing about our students is that they're all preschool teachers. The most of them are preschool teachers. So they want to stay and they want to continue to teach preschool. They're really, they don't want to teach older grades. I hear that over and over again. They really want to stay with the younger group. So most of our candidates are already teaching younger children, and they just want to stay working with them. They don't want to go with the older grades. They don't want to teach fourth grade or fifth grade. They really just want to stay with the younger group. And so I think that's, something that they really appreciate. They also appreciate the fact that it is play based, that is constructivist. And that's kind of what the emphasis is. another distinction between MCP and our program right now is that we're I'm trying to be more intentional in terms of what we're trying to be more intentional of having the same instructors versus the multiple subject because it's so much larger. There's a lot most of those instructors are actually part time instructors. Most of them have been, you know, continue to think about how they're going to, teach. Really, it's still very didactic, not really play based, and they don't have that particular lens. And so we've been really intentional about who we're hiring and who's actually teaching our classes or as we're trying to. So I think that's another distinction between the programs.
Everything they said but I won't repeat it. So, I think one thing that we've been really intentional about is also making sure that we don't work in silos. Right? And so a lot of our classes are really integrated and really teaching students that, like, we're not just teaching math, right? You're not teaching social studies, whatever it is. I think the other on the other end of it is also, you know, working with districts and teaching them about what the PK-3 really right, is. So like meeting with HR, meeting with their superintendents and the people who place them and, and really, you know talking to them about what PK three is and what the difference is in those core values. Right. And they still come up with a, oh, the multiple subject is more marketable, right? So I think a lot of it is like on us and on our candidates to be able to teach those outside what PK three is.
We have another guest in the room who I think might have a different or maybe the same perspective. So I'm going to let Sarah introduce herself and maybe give your response or your thoughts or reflections based on the conversation we just had.
Great. Hi everyone. I'm Sarah from Alameda County Office of Education and I came from HR. So this question about is HR considering the PK-3 credential, it actually lit my fire because we serve CDC sites and our teachers in those programs, long time preschool teachers, CDC teachers could not get an administrative job because the child development permit matrix wasn't eligible for the administrative Services credential. So I just want to add to the mix that a person can love PK and never access leadership opportunities. And so that also may be a recruitment strategy. here. That's what I wanted to add from the HR lens.
Thank you. All right. So we have so many more questions. I mean I've tried to categorize them. I'll just tell you I have multiple subject /PK, school district and partnerships and developing those, basically program structures. But about TPES/TPAs equivalencies and innovations. joys, challenges. And then the student perspective or how we support students. And then I too had more questions, of how we can kind of keep these questions alive and going, because I think a lot of people have these questions and more, and it's part of our responsibility, our advocacy of being early childhood education professionals to help others understand this important work we're all doing. So, I really want to thank all of our panelists. Doctor Chiappe. Doctor Ruth Piker, Doctor Aura Perez. Doctor Lindsay Meeker and Doctor Pei-Ying Wu.
Well, that wraps up today's conversation. We heard from our panelists about what it really takes to launch a PK three program. They also helped clarify the difference between the PK three Early Childhood Education credential and the multiple subject credential. An important distinction as the California TC for all initiative grows statewide. If you'd like to learn more, be sure to check out our video preparing PK three educators for tomorrow and our ECE PK three playbook. Both are available on our website and join the movement to transform early learning through collaboration and innovation.
Because every idea starts with a spark!