How to verify a candidate's CDA, degree and state registry record

Start with the credential you will be asked to verify most.

BLS notes that some states and employers require childcare workers to hold a nationally recognized credential, most often the CDA, which must be renewed every 3 years.

The CDA is awarded by the Council for Professional Recognition, not by a college or a state agency — so the Council's own records, not the candidate's paperwork, are the authority on whether one is current.

The check itself takes minutes.

Ask the candidate for their CDA certificate number and enter it in the Council's online CDA Certificate Search.

The search returns one of three statuses: Active, Expired or Revoked.

Awarded CDAs are delivered as a digital certificate and badge through Credly — a printed certificate costs $30 from the Council — so expect the candidate's copy to be a digital file and verify against the source rather than the PDF.

Read the status against the calendar.

A CDA is valid for 3 years from the award date.

If the search says Expired, the holder must reapply for a new credential — the Council allows no exceptions or extensions to the renewal deadline outside its amnesty program.

That amnesty matters right now: the CDA Renewal Amnesty Program runs from July 6, 2026 to April 26, 2027 (11:59 PM EST) and lets anyone whose CDA expired as far back as January 1, 2016 renew by meeting all current renewal requirements and paying the $250 renewal fee online.

An Expired result is not automatically a dead candidate — it is a date to check against the amnesty window.

Then check the setting on the credential, because a CDA is setting-specific.

As of October 2026 the Council offers it in five settings: center-based Infant-Toddler (birth to 36 months), center-based Preschool (ages 3 to 5), center-based Birth to Five, Family Child Care (birth to 5 in a home) and Home Visitor.

Match the setting and age band on the credential against the classroom and age group you are staffing — a center-based Preschool CDA is not a center-based Infant-Toddler CDA — and ask the candidate which setting their credential is in.

For a candidate whose CDA is newly earned, expect the file to look different than it did before 2026.

Since February 2, 2026, the Council no longer requires a verification visit for candidates who show a qualifying level of competence on the CDA exam, and applications submitted on or after that date must include an uploaded professional portfolio.

If a candidate says the credential is still in process, the Council's own timing applies: once exam and visit scores reach the Council — generally within 24-48 hours — a credentialing decision may take 1-3 business days if nothing is missing, while errors or missing items can push it to at least 4-6 weeks.

What this check cannot tell you: whether a CDA satisfies your state's qualification rule for the role you are hiring.

That determination belongs to your state child care licensing agency, and the CDA is only one of the credentials states accept — confirm the current requirement for the title before you write the offer.

A state workforce registry is the state's database of its early childhood workforce — the education, training and credentials its staff hold.

The federal floor is light: under the CCDF rules at 45 CFR 98.44, each state must describe a training and professional development framework that addresses "workforce information" among other elements, workforce registries are how most states track it, but the federal rule does not require any individual staff member to join one.

Whether membership matters for licensing in your state is set by your state's licensing rules — confirm with your state child care licensing agency rather than assuming either way.

Most states run one under a name you can search for.

The Council's list of NWRA-approved state workforce registries (as of October 2026) includes Colorado PDIS, IdahoSTARS, Illinois Gateways, Iowa i-PoWeR, Maine Roads to Quality, MiRegistry, Missouri MOPDS, Montana Early Childhood Project, The Nevada Registry, the New Jersey Workforce Registry, the ND Early Childhood Workforce Registry, the Ohio Professional Registry, the Oklahoma PD Registry, the Pennsylvania PD Registry, Texas TECPDS, Utah URPD and Wyoming STARS.

A few of those registries, by name and address: Ohio's registry is the Ohio Professional Registry, run by OCCRRA at registry.occrra.org; Pennsylvania's PD Registry is reached through PA Keys at pakeys.org; Texas runs TECPDS at public.tecpds.org; Illinois Gateways sits at registry.ilgateways.com; Colorado's is the Colorado Shines PDIS at coloradoshinespdis.com; Missouri's is MOPDS at earlyconnections.mo.gov/MOPD; The Nevada Registry is at nevadaregistry.org; and Oklahoma's OPDR runs through CECPD at cecpd.org.

Washington, DC's OSSE runs its own PDIS for early childhood staff.

For several other states — the registries' own pages for Oregon, Washington state, Georgia, Kentucky, Arizona and New Mexico could not be confirmed in our research — we will not guess a name or address.

Ask your state child care licensing agency where your state's registry lives and how an employer reads a record.

Use the record as the candidate's consolidated file, then verify the details that matter for the role against the underlying documents.

Ask the candidate for their registry ID or record printout, and read what the state shows for education, training and credentials.

One cross-check works in your favor: the Council accepts workforce registry transcripts from all U.S. state and territory workforce registries for CDA purposes, under its partnership with the National Workforce Registry Alliance — so training documented in a registry transcript is accepted CDA documentation.

A registry record is not a CDA. State registry membership does not satisfy the membership requirement for renewing a CDA — the Council is explicit about that — so a candidate who lists both a registry record and a credential needs both checked.

The registry tells you what the state has on file for their training and education; the Certificate Search tells you whether the credential itself is Active, Expired or Revoked.

For degrees and ECE coursework, the verifiable document is the official transcript issued by the college or university's registrar.

Ask the candidate to have the registrar send it directly to you rather than accepting a photocopy or a screenshot, and keep it in the personnel file with the rest of the verification records.

A transcript shows the institution, the courses, the credits and the date — the raw material every other check on this page draws on.

When you compare a transcript against the training in a candidate's CDA file, use the Council's own conversion table for CDA purposes: 1 CEU equals 10 clock hours, 1 semester credit equals 15 clock hours and 1 quarter credit equals 10 clock hours, and 120 clock hours equals 12 CEUs or 8 semester credits.

The conversion keeps a credit-listed transcript and a clock-hour training record describing the same education from reading as two different figures.

The registry can shorten this step where your state has one: registry transcripts are accepted CDA documentation, as above, so a candidate whose training is already filed with the state registry may not need to chase down every training provider separately.

What a transcript cannot tell you: whether the degree or the coursework satisfies your state's qualification rule for the role — lead teacher, assistant, director or anything else.

States set those rules and accept different combinations of degrees, credits, credentials and experience, and a transcript is only the underlying evidence.

Confirm with your state child care licensing agency how the coursework on the transcript counts before you rely on it, and if a candidate's degree is still in progress, ask the agency whether and until when the person may work in the role while it completes — that answer belongs to the state's rule, not to the offer letter.

When a candidate's degree or training was earned outside the United States, the document alone will not let you compare it against a U.S. qualification rule — the coursework, credit system and degree titles differ.

The route runs through an independent credential evaluation: the National Association of Credential Evaluation Services (NACES) does not evaluate credentials itself; its member agencies do, including Educational Credential Evaluators, World Education Services and Josef Silny & Associates.

A member agency reviews the foreign transcript and issues a report describing the education in U.S. terms, and that report is the document you file with the rest of the verification records.

Decide before you post whether you will accept an evaluated foreign credential for the role, and say so in the posting — candidates educated abroad plan around requirements that are stated up front, and an evaluation requested at offer stage lands after the candidate's search has moved on.

What we could not confirm: which evaluation agencies each state registry accepts, and what an evaluation costs, were not verified in our research — ask the agencies you are considering for current fees and turnaround.

Whether an evaluated degree satisfies your state's qualification rule for the role is a separate question, and it belongs to your state child care licensing agency; ask before you require an evaluation, and before you count one.

Credential checks are one gate in the hiring sequence; the other is the comprehensive background check, a separate process under the CCDF rules.

Under those rules, a staff member's checks must be requested before the person becomes a staff member and repeated at least once every 5 years, and federal rules require states to complete a background check request as quickly as possible and within 45 days of the provider submitting it.

A new hire may begin work on a qualifying result from either the FBI or the in-state fingerprint check, supervised at all times by someone with a qualifying background check — for CCDF-covered providers, and states may be stricter.

The staff-member definition also covers contract employees and self-employed individuals, so staffing-agency temps and contracted subs need the same checks as your directly hired teachers.

We walk through that process step by step in our guide to background checks.

This page is employer information, not licensing or legal advice. Confirm the qualification rules that apply to each role, and where credentials and registry records count toward them, with your state child care licensing agency before you hire.