Develop is Minnesota's workforce registry for early childhood staff: one statewide record of your education, your completed training and your credentials.
Parent Aware, Minnesota's quality rating system, directs licensed programs to sign their staff up for an Individual Membership in Develop when a program seeks a rating, and recipients of Minnesota's T.E.A.C.H. scholarship must hold a membership too.
Here is who registers, how a profile works and what the record unlocks.
What is Develop?
Develop is Minnesota's workforce registry for early childhood staff — the statewide database that tracks your education, your completed training and your credentials in one professional record.
The name comes straight from Parent Aware, Minnesota's quality rating system: its materials tell licensed child care programs to make sure staff have signed up for an Individual Membership in Develop.
The organization side of the registry carries a second name.
The Registry, Inc. — which runs the Wisconsin Registry, established in 1991 — describes itself as the operational hub for three state registries: the Wisconsin Registry, Achieve (the Minnesota Center for Professional Development, established 2014) and Michigan's MiRegistry (established 2017).
So Minnesota's registry appears under two names in the sources: Achieve, the registry organization The Registry, Inc. lists for this state, and Develop, the name Parent Aware uses for the registry staff join.
The federal frame comes from the Child Care and Development Fund rules: each state must describe a training and professional development framework that addresses workforce information, and the federal rule itself does not require any individual staff member to join a registry — whether membership is required is decided state by state.
One caution before you go looking: our research could not confirm Develop's own web address, because the registry's pages were blocked or moved when we read them.
Treat Parent Aware's site, parentaware.org, and your director as the reliable signposts to the current sign-up.
How registries work everywhere — what they record and where joining is mandatory — is in our guide to workforce registries.
Who has to register for Develop in Minnesota?
Start with what the federal rule does not do: the CCDF rule does not require an individual childcare teacher to join a registry.
In Minnesota, the requirement our research recorded is attached to Parent Aware.
Staff at licensed programs seeking a Parent Aware Two- to Four-Star rating need an Individual Membership in Develop.
Parent Aware rates programs One to Four Stars, and since July 1, 2026 every licensed program in good standing automatically receives a One-Star Rating unless it opts out.
Develop enters the picture above that automatic One Star: the membership requirement our research recorded attaches to programs working toward a Two-, Three- or Four-Star Rating.
That is a statement about what our research recorded — a requirement documented in Parent Aware's rating materials — not a survey of every situation where Minnesota does or does not ask for membership.
Treat your own program's instructions as the operative answer, and confirm with the state when something is unclear.
The full stack of what Minnesota asks of center teachers, from qualifications to background studies, is on our Minnesota teacher requirements page.
Confirm the current requirement
How to create a Develop profile
Our research could not verify Develop's current sign-up steps, screens or whether a fee applies, so this page will not invent them.
Parent Aware's site and your director are the practical routes in: a program working toward a Parent Aware rating has to make sure its staff sign up for Develop, so whoever coordinates that work knows the current process.
Whatever the current sign-up asks for, these documents are worth having at hand:
- College transcripts for any early childhood or child development coursework
- Certificates from completed training courses
- Documentation for credentials you already hold, such as a CDA
- Your employment history in early care and education
If a director asks you to register as part of Parent Aware paperwork or onboarding, ask which name and contact details they want on the account, so the record your employer documents matches the one you use.
Develop career levels and what membership unlocks
What a Develop membership documents is education, training and credentials.
Where that record places you on the registry's own career scale is set by the registry, and the level criteria were not something our research documented — so treat Develop's own materials, or the people at Parent Aware and Achieve, as the source for placement questions rather than any chart on this page.
The documented unlocks are concrete.
For a licensed program, staff Individual Memberships in Develop are part of what seeking a Parent Aware Two- to Four-Star Rating requires.
What a rating unlocks for the program is its own story — our Minnesota Parent Aware rating system page covers that side.
For you as an individual, the clearest documented unlock is Minnesota's T.E.A.C.H. scholarship.
The conditions our research records for scholarship recipients: work at least 20 hours a week in a licensed or certified program, hold a Develop membership, and commit to staying with your employer for one year after the scholarship ends.
Sponsoring employers pay 5% of tuition and books and give a 2% raise or a $250 bonus when the scholarship contract completes.
How Develop records your training hours
Recording professional development is what a registry is for: your education, your completed training and your credentials sit on one transcript.
Minnesota's in-service training minimums sit in statute (Section 142B.65 of the Minnesota Statutes, which is scheduled to be replaced effective July 1, 2027): center directors and staff working more than 20 hours a week must complete 24 hours of in-service training each calendar year, and staff working 20 hours or less must complete 12 hours.
The hour totals themselves are on our training hours guide.
How a specific workshop or college course gets entered into a Develop record was not documented in the pages our research read, so confirm with your program or the registry before you count on a course appearing there.
What is documented is the transcript's reach beyond Minnesota: the Council for Professional Recognition, the body that awards the CDA, accepts workforce registry transcripts from all U.S. state and territory registries as part of the CDA process.
Know the boundary on the credential side: registry membership does not satisfy the CDA renewal membership requirement.
Renewal calls for current membership in an early childhood professional organization, and a state registry is not one.
Using your Develop ID when job hunting
A Minnesota director has a paperwork reason to care about this system: a program pursuing a Parent Aware rating above the automatic One Star has to make sure its staff hold Individual Memberships, and recipients of Minnesota's T.E.A.C.H. scholarship must hold a membership too.
A question about your Develop ID in a Minnesota hiring conversation can be logistics — the director completing that paperwork — rather than a test of your qualifications.
Practically: once your profile is live, keep it current as you finish courses, and be ready to give your registry ID when a director asks for it.
If your training history includes work in another state, the transcript you built there still documents it for the CDA, since the Council accepts transcripts from every U.S. state and territory registry.
Current openings are on our childcare teacher jobs page.
Career and employer information, not licensing or legal advice — registry, rating and licensing details change, so confirm the current rules with Minnesota's Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) and Parent Aware.