Council Letter

July 23, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

Early childhood professionals, like you, play a key role in helping young learners meet developmental milestones from birth to age five. You help children advance their growth in five major domains: gross motor, fine motor, language and cognitive, along with social-emotional and behavioral skills. They’re all areas covered in Essentials for Teaching Young Children, the textbook for the Child Development Associate® (CDA) Credential™. And for 50 years, the CDA® has played an essential role in guiding our educators to be their best.

We honor the CDA’s golden anniversary in this edition of CounciLINK, and that’s not our only cause for celebration. This is also the 40th anniversary of the Council, and we, too, have met milestones that define a company’s success. We’ve expanded the reach of the CDA, leading to over a million CDAs worldwide. We’ve used technology to scale up the CDA credentialing process, so it’s more convenient for the educators we serve. We’ve provided thought leadership on topics ranging from pre-K for all to how we can bring more men into our profession. And we’re always providing more ways for early childhood teachers to excel in their work, including our new Birth to Five CDA® Credential, as you’ll read in a special message from Council CEO Dr. Calvin Moore.

Learn more about what’s ahead for the CDA when Andrew Davis, Council COO, kicks off our 2025 Early Educators Leadership Conference (EELC) in Orlando. He and Dr. Moore will be on hand at our opening general session on “Next generation Leadership,” an exploration of vision and innovation in the early learning field. You’re also invited to join Dr. Moore at “The Legacy Table: 50 Years of Vision, Voice and Vanguard Leaders,” where he’ll guide you through the history of the CDA and spotlight the past CEOs who have steered the credential ahead.

We should also honor the many folks who’ve supported the CDA, and you can read about them in our CDA® Golden Moments. Our legacy profiles range from Edward Zigler, father of the CDA, to Jada Vargas, our millionth CDA. And they include Evelyn Moore, who taught for the Perry Preschool Project, a famous program that showed the impact of quality early learning on low-testing young learners. Moore was also part of the discussions that led to the design of the CDA when the credential was in its infant stages. So was Leah Shapiro, who wrote a popular CDA assessment instrument and trained many Head Start teachers. The CDA opened doors for the teachers, as it did for Kay Hamlin, who earned her CDA in 1982. The credential helped her go from a single mom without a high school diploma to a college professor. And many others have found success through the CDA, thanks to Vilma Williams, who’s been at the Council since its start in 1985. In her many years with us, Vilma has never lost her drive because she knows she’s changing the lives of teachers and children.

That’s also the mission of Ant Toombs, growth and expansion strategist at the Life is Good Playmaker Project, which provides trauma-informed, optimism-infused training and resources to early childhood teachers. And Ant will be at the EELC to show you how to harness the power of play to help children engage, explore and connect with the world. That begins by showing educators how to practice self-care, so they can cope with the stress of their work and feel good. “You can’t spread to others what you don’t feel yourself,” Ant points out in the sessions he provides with support from Life is Good, a company that promotes optimism through its products.

Doing good is good for business, as Dr. Moore tells us in his latest blog. He makes his case by pointing to the long-term success of companies that have made social goals an integral part of their business model: Ben & Jerry’s, Apple, LEGO and the Council. We have thrived for four decades because we measure our bottom line by how well we serve educators, communities and young learners. We know that only the best is good enough when it comes to early care and education for our children.

In celebration of you,

The Council for Professional Recognition

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