Success By 6 Ensuring High Quality Child Care
Celebrates Child Development Associates Students

United Way’s Success By 6 is constantly working hard to provide higher quality child care options in the New Orleans community. On April 9th, SB6 held a Celebration for its Child Development Associate (CDA) students, who each completed 120 hours of course work to achieve CDA credentials.

To fulfill the need of trained and educated teachers, a crucial component to Success By 6’s High Quality Project, Child Development Associate (CDA) classes began as a pilot program in October 2007 to certify child care workers.  The initial plan was to move a group of 75 child care workers/ (25 each semester) through a 15-Week Fast Track CDA program that consist of two courses.

A CDA is an individual who has successfully completed the CDA assessment process and has been awarded the CDA Credential. CDAs are able to meet the specific needs of children and work with parents and other adults to nurture children's physical, social, emotional, and intellectual growth in a child development framework.

The first 25 students (child care workers) were selected from the pilot centers Happy Kids, Royal Castle Child Development Center, Gilda’s Academy and Kingsley House Preschool/ Early Childhood Program, Jewish Community Center and Beary Cherry.

Upon completion of the program, the students must write their Competency goals to complete the practicum/evaluation in field work in order to apply for their certification.  The state board then issues their certification as full-fledged certified Child Development Associates.

Success By 6 was fortunate to collaborate with other organizations to make this program possible. Each student was provided a $1200.00 stipend (600.00 after successful completion of each course) to defray cost and other expenses (funded by Edwards Foundation).  Delgado’s Workforce Development Program planned, coordinated and organized the classroom meeting times and the space on campus. Louisiana Pathways provided scholarships that paid 85% of the tuition for the courses. 

The first class of students to complete the 120 CDA hours are: Aubrue Martin, Valerie Hyver, Felicia Wilson, Sylvia Levy, Linda Romano, Daphne Hollingsworth, Kristy Reynolds, Debra Seibert, Sharon Harris, Marciann Marks, Desiree Williams, Tami Luke, Tiffany Allison, Beverly Banks, Mary Cage, Wanda Wiltz, Nyra Humphrey, Sandy Barra, Schlonda Roberts, Druzella M. Lewis, Schwann Herbert, Shawana P. Johnson and Latasha Atkins.

To date, there are more than 200,000 CDAs in all 50 United States, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. territories of Guam and the Virgin Islands.

For more information about obtaining CDA credentials, please visit http://www.cdacouncil.org/cda.htm.