A new report from Californians Together and the English Learners Workforce Investment Initiative (EL-WIN) finds that California’s universal pre-K (UPK) initiative is a historic step toward equity—but to succeed, the state must ensure its early learning workforce is ready to serve the state’s 1.69 million multilingual learners under age five.
This report, “Ensuring a Multilingual-Ready UPK Workforce,” offers a comprehensive set of policy recommendations, research insights, and practical strategies to help local and state leaders
strengthen the educator pipeline and meet the needs of California’s diverse early learners.
Included in the report are:
- A clear definition of what it means to be a multilingual-ready educator;
- A landscape analysis of current UPK systems, workforce challenges, and preparation pathways;
- Lessons from five California Central Valley counties implementing EL-WIN’s community-centered approach;
- Seven statewide policy recommendations to address educator preparation, compensation, and collaboration;
- Case studies of promising practices from across California and other states.
For educators, the report supports calls for culturally and linguistically responsive professional development, expanded career pathways, and recognition of multilingual experience.
For district and county leaders, it provides actionable strategies for building and retaining a diverse early childhood workforce, integrating EL-focused training, and creating aligned credentialing systems across UPK programs.
For policymakers, this resource is a guide to smart investments and systemwide reforms to expand access, close gaps, and ensure that UPK expansion truly delivers for multilingual learners.
The report recommends seven high-impact strategies to build a multilingual-ready UPK workforce:
- State agency collaboration: Convene and fund an interagency, statewide early childhood education/UPK multilingual education workgroup.
- Local agency collaboration: Support and fund local interagency collaborations focused on a multilingual-prepared UPK workforce.
- Workforce preparation: Fund, expand, and build the capacity of workforce preparation efforts in developing an ML-ready UPK workforce.
- Educator, administrator, and faculty capacity: Provide funding to expand professional learning opportunities on and integration of the English Learner Roadmap and Policy to UPK teachers and administrators, community college and four-year university faculty, resource and referral agencies, and other professional development organizations.
- Recognition of experience and education: Establish standards to recognize prior multilingual education, experience, and equivalency within child development permit and
credentialing programs. - UPK funding and wage stabilization: Establish a statewide stabilization fund to ensure minimum funding and guaranteed wages for mixed-delivery UPK providers, with emphasis
on multilingual-prepared educators. - UPK workforce and enrollment data: Utilize and expand monolingual and multilingual UPK workforce and enrollment data for informed decision-making.
The full report is available for download at https://californianstogether.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/EL-WIN-Ensuring-a-Multilingual-Ready-UPK-Workforce-FINAL-WEB.pdf.