The CDA's four core eligibility criteria are a high school diploma or GED (or enrollment as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education), 120 hours of formal early childhood education training with at least 10 hours in each of eight subject areas, 480 hours of work experience in the credential's setting and age group within the past 3 years, and a professional portfolio prepared within 6 months of applying.
What do you need before applying for a CDA?
The Council for Professional Recognition awards the CDA, and initial assessment applications are made online through the Council's YourCouncil system.
The CDA credential requirements below are the Council's, not a state licensing agency's — a state's staff qualification rules for lead teachers and caregivers are written separately, so meeting the CDA's criteria and meeting your state's requirements are two different checks.
Before you apply, four core criteria must be met.
They are the same four this page walks through in detail:
- You hold a high school diploma or GED — or you are enrolled as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education.
- You have completed 120 hours of formal early childhood education training, with at least 10 hours in each of eight subject areas.
- You have 480 hours of professional work experience in the credential's setting and age group, earned within the 3 years before you apply.
- Your CDA Professional Portfolio is prepared, within the 6 months before you submit the application.
This page stays on eligibility: the education, training, experience, CPR, timing and age questions.
Once the four criteria are met, the Council's application and assessment process takes over.
Still deciding whether the credential belongs in your plan?
Start with the CDA credential overview, which covers what it is, the settings it comes in and where it is required.
Education requirement
The education gate is a high school one.
The Council asks for a high school diploma or a GED, and those are the two options on its published eligibility list for graduates.
There is a second door.
The Council also admits candidates who are currently enrolled as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education — a route that matters mainly for students, and one the last section of this page covers.
One age note while we are here: the Council's published requirements list no minimum age to apply.
Nothing on the eligibility list asks whether you are 18.
120 training hours and the eight subject areas
The training requirement is 120 hours of formal early childhood education training, completed with no fewer than 10 hours in each of eight CDA subject areas.
The Council's candidate pages put no deadline on these hours — the timing section below has the detail.
For center-based and Family Child Care candidates, the eight subject areas are:
- Planning a safe and healthy learning environment
- Advancing children's physical and intellectual development
- Supporting social and emotional development
- Building productive relationships with families
- Managing an effective program operation
- Maintaining a commitment to professionalism
- Observing and recording children's behavior
- Understanding the principles of child development and learning
Two rules shape what counts.
First, the Council does not provide training or endorse any training program: the 120 hours must be formal early childhood education training from an organization with early childhood teacher-preparation expertise, and the Council does not accept training from individual consultants or conferences.
Second, other formats convert.
For CDA purposes the Council counts 1 CEU as 10 clock hours, 1 semester credit as 15 clock hours and 1 quarter credit as 10 clock hours — so the full 120 clock hours works out to 12 CEUs or 8 semester credits.
Whatever the format, the hours still have to cover all eight subject areas, with no fewer than 10 in each.
480 hours of work experience
The experience requirement is 480 hours of professional work experience in the credential's setting and age group, earned within the 3 years before you submit the application.
The setting matters: the hours have to match the setting and age group you apply under.
Two center-based settings add a sub-age breakdown to those 480 hours.
Infant-Toddler candidates need 480 hours of center-based experience with children from birth to 36 months, and that experience must include all three sub-age groups: young infants (birth to 8 months), mobile infants (9 to 17 months) and toddlers (18 to 36 months).
Birth to Five candidates — educators working with children from birth to 5 years old in a center — spread the 480 hours further: their experience must include at least 160 hours in each of three sub-age groups, infants (birth to 17 months), toddlers (18 to 36 months) and preschoolers (3 to 5 years).
The practical takeaway: choose the setting that matches the classroom you actually work in, then track your hours against your setting's requirements as you go, so the distribution is there when you apply.
CPR and pediatric first aid
CPR is the one eligibility question this page cannot answer cleanly, because the Council's own web pages conflict.
Its PD Specialist FAQ lists "Current First Aid and CPR Certification" among the portfolio items, while the Council's main candidate FAQ and its setting pages do not list CPR among the initial eligibility criteria.
Because those Council sources disagree, the pages we read do not confirm a CPR requirement for the initial CDA.
The practical move is to check the current CDA Competency Standards book for your setting — the authority on what the portfolio contains — and to keep a current pediatric first aid and CPR certificate anyway — CPR requirements for a particular job come from outside the CDA, so the employer and the state child care licensing agency are the bodies to ask.
The renewal side is clearer: the Council does not require first aid or CPR certification to renew a CDA, so where the question exists at all, it exists at the initial application.
Check the Competency Standards book before you rely on a CPR rule
Time limits on hours
Three timing rules apply to the CDA's eligibility criteria:
- Training hours — no deadline. The 120 hours of formal training can be completed any time before you apply; the Council's candidate pages place no expiration on them.
- Experience hours — the previous 3 years. The 480 hours must fall within the 3 years before you submit the application, so classroom years older than that do not count toward the total.
- Portfolio — the previous 6 months. The CDA Professional Portfolio must be prepared within the 6 months before the application goes in.
The asymmetry is worth planning around.
Training hours keep, so coursework can be spread across several years; experience hours do not, so someone returning to early childhood education after a break may need to build recent hours back up before applying.
Can high school students qualify?
Yes — through the career and technical route.
The Council's education criterion accepts a candidate who is currently enrolled as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education, no diploma finished yet.
The published requirements list no minimum age to apply — eligibility runs on education, training and experience.
Enrollment stands in for the diploma line only.
The rest of the eligibility list — the 120 training hours, the 480 experience hours and the portfolio — applies as described above, so a student aiming at the credential should build those totals into their CTE program and first work experience.
The credential is also only one layer.
What a state's child care licensing agency requires of lead teachers and caregivers is set separately, state by state, and whether a CDA counts toward those rules is the state agency's call — worth checking alongside the Council's list.
Once the requirements are met, childcare teacher jobs are the place to put the credential to work.
This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. The CDA requirements come from the Council for Professional Recognition, and state staff qualification rules come from each state's child care licensing agency — confirm current requirements with the body that administers them before you apply or hire.