To get a CDA credential, you complete 120 hours of early childhood training, log 480 hours of work experience in your setting within the last 3 years, build a professional portfolio, apply online through the Council for Professional Recognition's YourCouncil system, and pass the CDA exam — with a verification visit for candidates whose exam score does not show qualifying competence.
Here is each step, what it costs, and how long it takes.
Step 1: Complete 120 training hours
The Council for Professional Recognition describes earning the CDA as a three-step process: Prepare, Apply, Demonstrate.
This guide breaks the same road into five practical steps, from your first training hour to the award.
One body runs the whole thing — the Council awards the credential and takes initial applications online through its YourCouncil system — so every requirement below is the Council's, not a state's.
Step one is the training floor: 120 clock hours of formal early childhood education, with no fewer than 10 hours in each of eight subject areas.
There is no countdown on these hours — the Council's current pages allow them to be completed any time prior to applying, so training you finished years ago still counts.
The eight subject areas for the center-based and family child care settings 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
Where the hours come from matters as much as how many.
The Council does not provide CDA training and does not endorse any training program.
The training must come from an organization with early childhood teacher-preparation expertise; training from individual consultants or conferences is not accepted.
If your hours arrive as credits or CEUs, the Council's conversion is fixed: one CEU equals 10 clock hours, one semester credit equals 15 clock hours, one quarter credit equals 10 — so 120 clock hours is the same as 12 CEUs or 8 semester credits.
Two more requirements sit alongside the training.
The education gate is a high school diploma or GED, or current enrollment as a junior or senior in a high school career and technical program in early childhood education.
And you need 480 hours of professional work experience in the credential's setting and age group, within the 3 years before you apply.
Those hours are earned on the job — professional work experience in your setting and age group, in roles like the ones listed under childcare teacher jobs — so that clock starts once you are working in a program.
If your state runs an early childhood workforce registry, use it: the Council accepts registry transcripts from every U.S. state and territory workforce registry for the CDA.
And when you are ready to choose where to take the hours, our guide to CDA training courses compares the routes.
Step 2: Build the professional portfolio
The CDA Professional Portfolio is your evidence file, and the Council lists what goes in it: your education documentation, Family Questionnaires, six Reflective Statements of Competence, ten Resources, and a Professional Philosophy Statement.
The portfolio also carries the requirement with a date attached.
It must be prepared within the 6 months before you submit your application — so this is the piece you build last, not a scrapbook you have been adding to for years.
One piece is not yours alone.
The Family Questionnaires go out to the families you serve, and the questionnaires come back into the portfolio as part of it.
How the portfolio is submitted changed recently too.
Applications submitted on or after February 2, 2026 must include an uploaded professional portfolio under the Council's enhanced decision process.
Home Visitor candidates are the exception — their portfolio is still reviewed onsite rather than uploaded, and their subject areas differ from the center settings.
Work from the Competency Standards book
Step 3: Find a PD Specialist and apply
The PD Specialist — Professional Development Specialist — is the Council-credentialed educator who reviews and observes candidates with a visit.
PD Specialists qualify through a CDA or a degree in early childhood education or child development — a related major with enough early childhood coursework also works — plus experience, including a year facilitating another adult's professional growth.
The Council pays them a $100 honorarium per candidate and does not allow them to charge candidates any fees — so if someone quotes you a price for a verification visit, that is not the Council's system.
Before you apply, settle which credential you are applying for.
The Council offers five settings — center-based Infant-Toddler, center-based Preschool, center-based Birth to Five, Family Child Care, and Home Visitor — and your 480 experience hours and your portfolio both attach to the one you choose.
Our guide to the CDA credential explains what each setting covers.
The application itself is online, through the Council's YourCouncil system.
The initial assessment fee is $525, paid online at application; the Council lists it as non-refundable and non-transferable.
Payment starts two clocks.
You have a 6-month window to complete the credentialing process, beginning on the date your application payment is successfully submitted.
And once the Council approves your application, you receive a first "Ready to Schedule" notice — for the exam.
Only after you have taken the exam can you schedule the verification visit, through a second notice.
The exam always comes first; the visit, for candidates who need one, follows it.
Step 4 covers that conditional visit and Step 5 the exam itself.
- Setting chosen — Infant-Toddler, Preschool, Birth to Five, Family Child Care or Home Visitor
- 120 training hours documented, with at least 10 hours in each of the eight subject areas
- 480 hours of work experience in your setting and age group, within the 3 years before you apply
- Professional portfolio finished within the 6 months before you apply — and ready to upload
- Family Questionnaires collected from the families you serve and included
The fee does not come back
Step 4: The verification visit (after the exam)
The verification visit is no longer automatic.
Since February 2, 2026, the Council does not require it for candidates who demonstrate a qualifying level of competence on the CDA exam — the change the Council calls the Credentialing Decision Enhancement.
Candidates whose exam performance does not reach that level still complete a visit, and our research found no published definition of the qualifying level.
For candidates with a visit, it is scheduled through the second "Ready to Schedule" notice — only after the exam is done.
The visit follows the Council's R.O.R. model: the PD Specialist Reviews your portfolio and Family Questionnaires, Observes you working with children, and Reflects with you.
Where it happens is fixed: the observation takes place at the center or home where you work or volunteer with children, and the review and reflection can move to a quiet place outside the classroom.
The setting also has to be operating at scale for the observation — a center-based program needs at least 10 children enrolled (not necessarily in your group) and at least two caregivers working with the children on a regular basis; the Preschool observation requires a group of at least six children ages 3 to 5, and Infant-Toddler at least three children under 36 months.
Directors and operators: you are part of this step.
A staff member's observation happens inside your program, so the program has to meet those enrollment and staffing minimums, and the visit needs a day when the candidate's group meets the observation minimum for its setting — worth knowing before a candidate on your staff applies.
Step 5: The CDA exam
The CDA exam is 65 multiple-choice questions — 60 standard questions plus 5 scenario items, each with a short narrative and a photo — and you have up to 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The Council does not publish a passing score, so there is no public number to aim at beyond preparation.
English and Spanish exams are taken at Pearson VUE test centers, and you schedule through Pearson VUE rather than through the Council.
Candidates approved to test in another language take a computer-based exam via remote proctoring instead — and they complete both the exam and the verification visit.
A failed attempt is not the end of the road, but it has a price and a limit: each retake costs $125, with up to two additional attempts — three in total.
After three unsuccessful attempts, the way back is a new application, which can be submitted after a six-month waiting period.
One planning note if you retake: the 6-month credentialing window keeps running from your payment date, so schedule a retake early in whatever time remains.
How long the whole process takes
The Council sets windows, not a calendar.
The front of the process — the training and the experience hours — runs on your schedule inside the rules below; the clock the Council itself starts is the one at payment.
| Stage | The Council's window |
|---|---|
| 120 training hours | Any time before you apply — no time limit on the hours |
| 480 work experience hours | Within the 3 years before you apply |
| Professional portfolio | Prepared within the 6 months before you apply |
| Exam and verification visit | Inside the 6-month window that starts when your payment is submitted |
| Scores reach the Council | 24 to 48 hours after your exam and visit |
| Credentialing decision | 1 to 3 business days if nothing is missing; at least 4 to 6 weeks if something is |
The award is quick once the scores are in.
Exam and visit scores reach the Council within 24 to 48 hours, and if there are no errors and nothing is missing, the credentialing decision may take 1 to 3 business days.
Errors or missing items push it to at least 4 to 6 weeks.
The awarded credential arrives as a digital certificate and badge through Credly; a printed certificate costs $30.
The CDA is valid for 3 years from the award date — a credential you keep current, not one that lasts a career on a single application.
Plan the back half before you pay
Can your employer help pay?
The funding route the Council itself publishes runs through state scholarship organizations: income-eligible candidates may have their state pay for all or part of CDA training and possibly the assessment fee, and the Council lists funding organizations by state on its CDA Scholarships page.
Check that page before you pay the $525 yourself.
Employer help is a direct ask, and there is a real case for it.
BLS writes that some states and employers require childcare workers to hold a nationally recognized credential — most often the CDA — and that it must be renewed every 3 years.
If you already work in a program, the credential is a qualification your employer may be hiring against, which is the practical case to put to your director or owner: sponsorship of the $525 application, and schedule flexibility on observation day.
If you run the center, the same two touchpoints come to you.
Sponsoring the application fee is the simple part; the other is hosting the visit, because the observation happens inside your program, which has to meet the Council's center-based enrollment and staffing minimums.
This page is career information, not licensing or legal advice. The CDA's process, fees and requirements are set by the Council for Professional Recognition and have changed recently — the current decision process took effect February 2, 2026 — so confirm details with the Council before you apply, and confirm state training and funding rules with your state child care licensing agency.