A new apprenticeship program aimed at addressing a shortage in Michigan’s early childhood education workforce launched last month, after a yearlong pilot resulted in success, enrolling around 200 participants across Wayne, Montcalm and Marquette-Alger counties in 2025.
Trouble finding and retaining qualified early educators, from those working in infant and toddler classrooms to those teaching pre-K, is a consistent reason Michigan families lack access to childcare and early education programs.
MiEarly Apprentice helps teachers earn advanced teaching credentials at no cost, while keeping their jobs so they can continue bringing in income as they go to school, often online through multiple university partnerships the program has formed.
The program officially launched at the end of February, adding seven counties: Mecosta-Osceola, Crawford, Ogemaw, Oscoda, Roscommon, Saginaw and Oakland counties. If funding allows, it eventually could scale statewide.
It comes at a moment of added urgency in Michigan, given Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s expansion of free, state-funded pre-K to all families, regardless of income in 2024 — a move that opened up a statewide need for around 4,000 more credentialed early educators, said Jack Elsey, founder and CEO of the nonprofit that started the apprenticeship program, the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative, which focuses on recruiting and developing educators across the state that started the program.
Nationally, the “learn while you earn” apprenticeship model has gained popularity as a solution to addressing staff shortages in education within the last few years, Elsey said.
And Michigan has been at the forefront, he said. But when it comes to credentialing early educators, MiEarly Apprentice is among just a few programs in the state that focus on this specific population and is the only program with a bachelor’s level apprenticeship program to certify lead teachers, the highest level of credential, Elsey said.
Early educators often don’t have time or money to go to school to advance their degrees and earning potential, which experts say reinforces a cycle of undervalued work, low wages and high turnover. In Michigan, apprenticeships like this program will be essential not only for attracting and retaining workers, but in incentivizing professional development in a historically low credentialed field, said Elsey.
The application process for the newest program cohort is open for early educators in the expanded list of counties and will close May 1. All early educators in any kind of childcare or early education setting may apply. There is not a set number of slots available in each cohort, and Elsey said it serves as many candidates as financially possible in each county, though demand did exceed capacity during the pilot.
Those interested can apply for the apprenticeship program on Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative’s website: www.miedworkforce.org/mi-early-apprentice.
How the apprenticeship program works
Applicants must apply and be recommended by their employer. Once accepted, they get connected to one-on-one support through program navigators, who assess which of the program’s four, free teacher certification pathways make most sense for them depending on their educational background:
Program participants are considered pre-apprentices until the final year of their bachelor’s degree, which is the year they complete the actual apprenticeship. Before then, participants get the benefit of free tuition, flexible online classes that allow them to stay employed, and a path where every course they take counts toward the next degree level. That’s a major benefit given that credits earned at one school in Michigan often don’t transfer to another, which makes getting credentialed prohibitively confusing, said Elsey.
MiEarly Apprentice aims to cut through this, making earning an advanced degree efficient with no “wasted time, effort, or money,” Elsey said.
Though participants can stop anywhere along the path from earning their CDA to their bachelor’s degree and lead teacher certification, Elsey said the hope is that the program makes it free and easy enough to progress and that the majority of participants get their bachelor’s degree. Currently, 75% of program participants indicate their long-term goal is to earn a bachelor’s degree, and 40 of the 190 pilot participants have already reached that phase.
Teachers credentialed with a bachelor’s degree and teaching certification will be essential to building the workforce to staff GSRP classrooms, where the degree is required to be a lead teacher.
The program is particularly useful for longtime teachers who have a wealth of experience but don’t have the resources to leave their job for school midcareer, said Caitlin Opfermann, program coordinator for early childhood education at Plymouth-Canton Community Schools. The Wayne County school district has placed 14 teachers so far in the MiEarly Apprentice program.
‘A win-win’ for everyone
After working as a stay-at-home mom, Alexandra Masy-Alhin started working in a pre-K classroom at Gallimore Elementary School in Canton.
Quickly, Masy-Alhin said, she came to love the work and saw a career in it, but worried about whether she could ever progress in the field.
“I’m almost 40, I’m a mom, I can’t go back to school for four years,” she said.
Then she heard from a colleague about the apprenticeship program. After applying to the pilot in Wayne County, she was set up on one of multiple pathways to higher credentials in June 2025.
Instead of going back to school for four years, Masy-Alhin — who already had a bachelor’s degree in English — has been taking self-paced online university classes while earning a salary as an apprentice teacher in her third year in one of Gallimore’s pre-K classrooms, where she used to support teachers as a paraprofessional. Through the free 13-month program, she’s getting paid while earning credentials to become a lead teacher.
“It’s a win-win situation,” Masy-Alhin said. “Plymouth-Canton Community Schools gets a new teacher and I’m going to school for free.”
Opfermann acknowledged concerns that early educators who earn higher credentials might leave the field for K-12, which pays better, but she’s not worried.
“They actually don’t fly away, they want to be here, and I just want what’s best for them,” she said.
Elsey said the program’s retention rate is evidence of this. For all the four program pathways, the retention rate is 84%.
“It shows us that our early childhood educators are deeply committed to serving kids and families and it’s that financial barrier that holds them back from taking the next step. But when you remove it, they pursue that lead teacher role,” he said.
‘Our only limitation is funding’
The vast majority of the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative’s funding, around 90% Elsey said, comes from the state’s school aid budget. In last year’s budget cycle, the Michigan Legislature made organizations like Elsey’s apply for teacher development funds (as opposed to automatically allocating them), so the organization recently applied for $12.5 million in state funding to continue its work.
The program’s “Last Dollar In” approach also leverages other state public funds, like the Michigan Association for the Education of Young Children’s early childhood scholarship, to make sure program participants get every dollar they’re eligible for. In addition to public funds, the organization relies on money from philanthropic funders including the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
As for the future expansion of the MiEarly Apprentice program, “our only limitation is funding,” said Elsey. Funding will be key to ensuring the apprenticeship program can “take a bigger bite out of the 4000” pre-K teachers needed to staff new GSRP classrooms cropping up across the state, but also to fill gaps across all early education sites serving kids birth through 4 years old.
Elsey said the organization is asking for $18 million in the upcoming 2027 state budget, “a significant portion of which would be allocated to MiEarly Apprentice,” he wrote in an email. Over the next five years, to be able to serve educators in most counties in the state, Elsey estimated the program would cost around $30 million.
“Though the path for such an investment remains unclear, we hope to build momentum behind that vision in the years ahead,” Elsey wrote.
Beki San Martin is a fellow at the Detroit Free Press who covers childcare, early childhood education and other issues that affect the lives of children ages 5 and under and their families in metro Detroit and across Michigan. Contact her at rsanmartin@freepress.com.
This fellowship is supported by the Bainum Family Foundation. The Free Press retains editorial control of this work.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan apprenticeship helps early educators earn degrees, stay paid
Reporting by Beki San Martin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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