The step from assistant director to director runs on three things: proof that you can carry the duties you have been sharing, the qualifications your state's route expects of a director, and a seat that opens — either at your center or at the next one.
This page is the promotion playbook: what to learn first, which credentials finish fastest, how to weigh an internal move against applying out, and what sets the pace.
What do you need to learn before becoming director?
The duties you are taking over have a canonical list.
BLS's occupational profile for preschool and childcare center directors names them: supervising teachers and childcare workers, hiring and training staff, providing professional development, setting and communicating policies, developing educational programs, meeting with parents and staff about progress, preparing budgets, and keeping facilities clean according to state regulations.
However your center divides the work today, the promotion is the moment each of those lines lands on one desk — and the audit below is how you find out which ones are already yours.
If you are still mapping where the second chair ends and the director's begins, the assistant director overview covers the seat itself.
Start with an honest audit against that list, because the chair you hold already covers part of it.
BLS notes that in large facilities, directors and assistant directors may stagger their schedules so someone is always on site.
If you are the one holding the building on those shifts, you already know which decisions you made alone and which you saved for the director — the difference between the two is your study list.
Three areas are worth taking ownership of before the title changes:
- Budget. Ask to sit with the owner or bookkeeper through one full budget cycle — watching the revenue and expense lines get built, not just approved.
- Licensing. Read your state child care licensing agency's current director qualification route and mark where you stand on it. And the record your state's agency holds on the center's license is the file you would inherit as director.
- Enrollment. Walk the roster against licensed capacity and sit in on family tours. Enrollment feeds the budget, and tours feed enrollment.
BLS names the qualities behind the director's work as business, communication, interpersonal, leadership and organizational skills.
To structure the audit, there is a tool built for this layer: the Program Administration Scale (PAS-3), which the McCormick Center describes as 25 items in 9 subscales measuring the leadership and administrative practices of center-based programs.
Mark yourself honestly against a list like that, and the gaps are your curriculum for the year ahead.
Which credentials to finish first
Before shopping for credentials, find out what your state counts.
Each state's child care licensing agency sets the qualifications for whoever directs a licensed center, and the accepted routes are not uniform — the state-by-state detail is collected in our director requirements by state guide, and how the credentials themselves work is in the director credential guide.
The routes are not always degree routes.
Texas, for example, sets one of its seven education-plus-experience combinations for directors of centers licensed for 13 or more children at a CDA or Certified Child-Care Professional credential plus 6 college credit hours in management and at least two years of licensed-center experience (26 TAC §746.1015, option 5) — and an assistant director already working in a licensed center is accruing experience of the kind that option names — whether a particular role's time counts is the agency's call to confirm.
Read your own state's list first, because it decides what the rest of this section is worth to you; the full Texas detail is in our Texas director credential guide, and the degree question has its own guide on whether you need a degree to be a daycare director.
Credentials built for this step exist at the national level, too: Aim4Excellence, from the McCormick Institute, is an online National Director Credential of nine self-paced modules built on the Whole Leadership Framework, accepted by 28 state professional development systems.
The National Administrator Credential (NAC), offered by NECPA, is a 45-hour course for center directors organized into 10 competency sections, delivered on-site in 4-5 days or online — the National Administrator Credential guide covers it in depth.
Aim4Excellence's nine modules read like a syllabus for the promotion itself:
- Leading the Way
- Recruiting, Selecting, and Orienting Staff
- Promoting Peak Performance
- Managing Program Operations
- Building a Sound Business Strategy
- Designing Indoor and Outdoor Environments
- Supporting Children's Development and Learning
- Facilitating Responsive Family Engagement
- Evaluating Program Quality
Hold that list against the audit from the section above — the modules that sound unfamiliar are the duties you have not owned yet.
Whichever credential you consider, the test is acceptance: a credential your state's child care licensing agency or professional development system recognizes toward the director qualification counts, and one it does not recognize is a course you paid for out of pocket.
If your program is a Head Start or Early Head Start program, the qualification line is federal rather than state: current rules require a director hired after November 7, 2016 to hold at least a baccalaureate degree plus experience in supervising staff, in fiscal management and in administration (45 CFR 1302.91(b)).
A proposed rule published on August 7, 2026 would remove that non-statutory qualification requirement, but it was not final when this page was researched.
The two rulebooks do not transfer to each other — a Head Start standard is not a private center's rule, and a state's route does not govern a Head Start program.
Confirm what your state accepts
Internal promotion vs applying elsewhere
The internal route is the easier case to make, because the evidence is already on site.
Your owner or director has watched you hold the building, so asking for the promotion is asking to formalize what they have seen.
The constraint is the chair itself: at a single-site center there is one director's seat, and it opens when the person in it moves on — and at an independently owned center that seat is sometimes the owner's own, since BLS notes the director can be the owner.
The external route trades familiarity for choice.
BLS projects employment of preschool and childcare center directors to decline 3% from 2025 to 2035, with about 5,200 openings a year — all of them from replacement needs.
For an assistant director that reads plainly: director seats keep opening even in a contracting occupation, and they open because another director left, so a ready file beats a fast one.
Money is part of the comparison, so anchor it in the right series.
BLS OEWS May 2025 puts the national median for education and childcare administrators, preschool and daycare (SOC 11-9031) at $59,300 a year, and $58,090 a year within child care services.
BLS has no assistant-director code; a proxy series, first-line supervisors of personal service workers (SOC 39-1022), had a national median of $48,590 a year and $44,490 a year within child care services — a proxy, because some assistant directors are counted under the director code instead.
Keep the two series separate when you weigh an offer, and the fuller mechanics are in our guide to how directors are paid.
- Has your director signaled a timeline — retirement, another site, leaving the field — and does it match yours?
- Does the owner promote from within, or is the director's chair the owner's own seat?
- What does your state's qualification route still require of you, and how long will it take you to finish?
- Would a nearby center's offer clear the difference once commute, hours and setting are counted?
Whichever way the decision lands, the job changes the day after the title does — your first 90 days as director are their own playbook, from the file audit to the first budget read.
The strongest position is to have both tracks live: the internal case building on the record you keep, and one eye on postings elsewhere so the market, not the org chart, sets your deadline.
How long it usually takes
The honest answer comes first: our research found no measured average for the move from assistant director to director, so any specific figure you have read is one person's story rather than data.
What can be timed are the three clocks the move actually runs on.
The credential clock is the one you control.
NECPA's NAC is a 45-hour course delivered on-site in 4-5 days or online; Aim4Excellence is nine self-paced modules, so its length is the pace you set.
The state clock runs alongside it: whatever coursework, credit hours or experience your state's route names takes exactly as long as earning it takes, and your state child care licensing agency holds the current version of that requirement.
The seat clock is the one you do not control, and it is replacement-driven — the projected 5,200 openings a year exist because sitting directors leave.
Internally, your timeline belongs partly to your director's plans; externally, it means postings are worth watching even when you are not actively job-hunting.
The sequencing writes itself from there.
Start the credential and the state-route paperwork first, because they move at your pace.
Take over one ownership area at a time — a budget cycle, the licensing file, a tour season — because each one builds the proof.
Keep the record current the whole way, because it is the same file an internal decision and an outside application will both be read from.
Career information, not licensing or legal advice. Director qualifications and credential acceptance are set and administered by your state child care licensing agency; Head Start requirements are federal, administered by the Office of Head Start. Confirm the current rules that apply to your program before you act on them.