You become a preschool teacher by meeting the staff requirements your state's child care licensing agency sets — to qualify for licensure, BLS notes, staff often must pass a background check, have a complete record of immunizations and meet a minimum training requirement — then building the credential and classroom experience your target role calls for.
This guide lays out the five steps in order, from your state's rules to your first job application.
What do you need to become a preschool teacher?
The requirements come from three places, and it pays to have them straight before you apply.
Your state's child care licensing agency writes the legal floor for staff in licensed centers.
Your target employer can set expectations above that floor in its postings.
And if you aim at a public-school preschool job, a state teaching license in early childhood education sits on top of all of it.
Start with the state's list.
BLS notes that to qualify for licensure, childcare staff often must pass a background check, have a complete record of immunizations and meet a minimum training requirement — and that some states require staff to hold CPR and first aid certification.
Those items are the backbone of every step below, so confirm each one for your state before you spend money on anything else.
The education item varies the most.
BLS reports that for childcare workers, some states require a high school diploma or equivalent for entry-level positions, while others have no education requirement for entry-level positions.
The occupation-wide figure you will see quoted — that preschool teachers typically need at least an associate's degree — is BLS's statistical description of the workforce: its page ties the figure to settings and state regulations, and in many states lead teachers in licensed centers can qualify with less than that.
One definition before the steps: preschool teachers, as BLS defines the occupation, educate and care for children younger than age 5 who have not yet entered kindergarten.
For the role itself — the duties, the settings, the pay and how job titles map to federal occupations — see the preschool teacher career guide.
This page stays on the entry path.
Step 1: Meet the minimum age, education and health/background requirements
Minimum age is the requirement to check first, because it reaches you from two directions at once.
Federal child labor law sets no hour limits for 16- and 17-year-olds in non-hazardous work, while 14- and 15-year-olds are limited to no more than 3 hours on a school day and 18 hours in a school week.
State child labor laws can be stricter, and the licensing agency's minimum ages for classroom staff are a separate rule from wage-hour law — so confirm both with the agencies involved.
The education bar is a state question too: for childcare workers, BLS reports that some states require a high school diploma or equivalent for entry-level positions, and others have no education requirement for entry-level positions.
Ask the licensing agency what it requires for the specific role you want, because lead teacher, assistant and aide requirements can differ.
The health and background half of this step is the list from the section above — a background check, a complete record of immunizations and a minimum training requirement are the conditions BLS says staff often must meet to qualify for licensure, and some states add CPR and first aid certification.
Which of them applies to you, and when, is your state's agency's call.
Then get the list from the agency itself.
Requirements get revised, secondhand summaries go stale, and the version that counts is the one your state's child care licensing agency publishes now.
Check it before you enroll in coursework or accept an offer.
Confirm the rules with your licensing agency
Step 2: Get the credential or coursework your state and employer expect
When a state requires a nationally recognized credential for childcare staff, BLS reports that the credential is most often the Child Development Associate (CDA), which must be renewed every 3 years.
The CDA is issued by the Council for Professional Recognition, and the version that matches a preschool classroom is the center-based Preschool CDA, which covers children ages 3 to 5.
Its Infant-Toddler counterpart covers ages birth to 36 months, so pick the setting you actually work — or plan to work — in.
The Council's entry requirements for the credential are concrete:
- Hold a high school diploma or GED — or be enrolled as a junior or senior in a high school early childhood education career and technical program
- Complete 120 hours of formal early childhood education training, with at least 10 hours in each of the eight CDA subject areas
- Log 480 hours of professional work experience with the setting's age group, earned within the 3 years before you apply
- Prepare a Professional Portfolio within 6 months of applying, and complete a Verification Visit where a CDA Professional Development Specialist observes you working with children
- Pay the $525 online assessment fee (non-refundable)
Two fine-print rules are worth knowing before you spend anything.
The Council does not accept training from individual consultants or from a conference toward the 120 hours, so verify that a course counts before you buy it.
And plan for the long term: the credential is valid for 3 years from the award date, renewal costs $250 and can be submitted up to 6 months before expiration, and it renews only in the original setting.
If your target employers look for coursework beyond the CDA, the plan changes shape.
BLS describes preschool teachers as typically entering the occupation with at least an associate's degree, and public-school preschool teachers generally need at least a bachelor's degree plus a state license to teach early childhood education.
Read the postings for the jobs you actually want, and let them — together with your state's licensing rules — set the coursework list.
Step 3: Complete required pre-service training
Credential hours and licensing hours are two different ledgers.
The 120 training hours are the Council's credential requirement, counted under its own rules about which training qualifies.
Pre-service training is a separate track: BLS lists a minimum training requirement among the conditions staff often must meet to qualify for licensure, and your state's child care licensing agency defines what that means for your role.
The hour totals are set in state licensing rules, and our research carries no single national figure for this track — the agency's pages are the source for the current figure, and for whether CPR and first aid certification is one of your state's requirements.
If you are working toward the CDA in the same stretch, do not assume one course satisfies both.
The Council's accepted-training rule and the state's training rule are separate tests, so confirm with the licensing agency — and check the Council's rules — before you pay for a course.
Step 4: Gain classroom experience (aide, assistant, sub, practicum)
Experience is the step the credential system is built around: the CDA counts professional work experience by the hour — 480 of them with the setting's age group, earned within the 3 years before you apply.
Assistant, aide, floater and substitute work all put you in a classroom with an age group, and the hours you log there with the credential's age group are the raw material the Council counts.
A practicum placement from an early childhood education program can add structured classroom time; ask the Council whether a specific placement qualifies before you count it.
Point the hours at the credential you actually want.
For the center-based Preschool CDA, the experience is with children ages 3 to 5; hours logged in an infant or toddler room build the ledger for the Infant-Toddler CDA instead, which covers birth to 36 months.
One naming trap from the school side: the federal Title I rules set paraprofessional requirements — a high school diploma or equivalent, and for those hired after January 8, 2002, two years of college, an associate degree or a passing state or local academic assessment.
Those rules govern Title I school programs, not aides and assistants in licensed childcare centers, whose qualifications come from state licensing rules.
Translate any "paraprofessional" checklist you see before you assume it applies to a center job.
Step 5: Apply for preschool teacher jobs
The backdrop is measurable: BLS counted 583,200 preschool teacher jobs in 2025, projects 4% employment growth from 2025 to 2035, and projects about 66,700 openings per year, on average, over the decade.
Apply across settings, not just to one kind of program.
In 2025, 65% of preschool teachers worked in child daycare services, 16% in educational services (state, local and private), 13% in religious, grantmaking, civic and similar organizations, and 2% in individual and family services.
Requirements, schedules and expectations move with the setting — BLS describes public-school preschool teachers as generally working school hours, often on a 10-month year, while daycare-setting teachers may work year-round with longer hours — so read postings from several kinds of employer before you narrow down.
Make the application easy to verify: list your training hours and their provider, your credential status and setting, your experience hours by age group, and any CPR or first aid certification you hold.
Then browse preschool teacher jobs to see what centers near you are asking for — postings are the employer-side version of everything in this guide.
How long does it take?
There is no fixed timeline, because the path runs on accumulated hours rather than a program length.
The CDA's big block is experience: 480 hours with your age group, which the Council gives you up to 3 years to earn before you apply.
An assistant or aide already working in a preschool room earns them on the job; someone starting from zero builds them through the roles in Step 4.
The rest has its own clocks: the 120 training hours, then the Professional Portfolio within 6 months of applying and the Verification Visit that follows.
Degree routes run on the college calendar instead, which is why two people in the same classroom can reach the same job on very different schedules.
Plan backwards from the posting you want: the state list first, then the credential, then the hours.
Career information, not licensing or legal advice — staff qualification, training and background-check rules are set by each state's child care licensing agency, so confirm the current requirements there before you make a decision that depends on them.