What Are the Requirements to Be a Daycare Teacher in Oregon?

The Child Care Licensing Division (CCLD) of the Oregon Department of Early Learning and Care (DELC) licenses Oregon child care.

Centers follow OAR 414-305, the Rules for Certified Child Care Centers, which took effect January 1, 2024, with updates effective September 1, 2026, plus the general rules in OAR 414-075.

The staff rules summarized on this page come from the September 2026 edition of that rulebook.

When this page and CCLD's current rulebook disagree, the rulebook governs.

A certified center teacher must be at least 18 and meet one of the options in Table 2 of the center rules: 750 hours of qualifying teaching experience in a certified child care center; 1,500 hours in registered or certified family child care; Oregon Registry Step 6, or 9 quarter credits in two core knowledge categories; an associate degree in early childhood education or a related field; or a credential such as the Child Development Associate (CDA), which the Council for Professional Recognition awards.

The CDA is one route, not the only one — Oregon writes experience hours, registry steps and college credits into the same table.

Oregon's center rules write aide roles as two tiers, Aide I and Aide II.

An Aide I may be 14 or older, and an aide under 18 is never left alone with children and stays within sight and sound of a teacher.

An Aide II must be at least 18 with at least 240 hours of aide experience, at least 80 of them at the current center.

An Aide II can also act as a teacher while enrolled in a teacher training program: 50 clock hours of core-knowledge training with at least 12 hours completed per month, plus twice-monthly feedback sessions over 4 months.

New center staff receive an orientation within the first 10 days of hire and before they have unsupervised access to children.

Within 30 days of hire, staff must also complete CCLD's Introduction to Child Care Health and Safety and 2 hours of Oregon-specific child abuse reporting training.

Staff who handle food, serve meals or prepare infant bottles add an Oregon food handler's certification, also within 30 days of hire.

Directors, teachers and Aide IIs each need at least 15 clock hours of training a year.

At least 8 of those hours must be in child development and at least 1 in health, safety and nutrition.

Training must be approved through Oregon Registry Online; the registry section below covers the account every certified center staffer needs.

Center staff and substitutes — cooks excepted — must hold current certification in first aid and pediatric CPR within the first 90 days of hire, and at least one certified person must be present at all times.

On health screening beyond that: our reading of the September 2026 center rulebook did not surface a tuberculosis test requirement for center staff, and the pages we read do not settle the question, so ask CCLD what health documentation a new hire needs.

Oregon runs its screening as enrollment in the Central Background Registry (CBR), which CCLD administers.

The operator, all staff and anyone 18 or older with possible unsupervised access to children must be enrolled.

Staff conditionally enrolled in the CBR may work in their position but do not have unsupervised access to children until enrollment is confirmed.

Ask the hiring director when enrollment is submitted for you, and confirm the current process with CCLD.

Yes — all staff employed by a certified child care center must have an active Oregon Registry Online (ORO) account, and the training they complete must be ORO-approved.

ORO is the statewide database of early educators' training and education, and the Registry Steps are written directly into Oregon's licensing rules: Step 6 is one of the teacher qualification routes in Table 2 (and a route for family child care providers), while Step 9 appears in the director rules.

Because Step 6 can qualify you on its own, the training and education recorded in your ORO account matter most for that route.