Arkansas Early Childhood Frameworks: CDELS, Standards, and Ratios

Arkansas’s early childhood learning standards are set out in a single document: the Child Development and Early Learning Standards, or CDELS, which covers children from birth through 60 months and defines what they should know and be able to do before kindergarten.¹ The standards apply across licensed child care centers, licensed family child care homes, the state-funded Arkansas Better Chance (ABC) pre-K program, and the Better Beginnings quality rating system. They shape curriculum, guide observation-based assessment, and set the developmental targets that programs work toward every day.

The Nine Domains of the CDELS

The CDELS organizes child development into nine domains. Each domain contains goals, progress indicators, and examples of how skills emerge, laid out as a continuum rather than a rigid checklist.

Physical Development and Health: gross and fine motor skills, healthy habits, and self-care like handwashing and dressing.
Social and Emotional Development: forming secure relationships, managing emotions, and interacting with peers and adults.
Cognitive Development: problem-solving, memory, reasoning, and general thinking skills.
Language Development: understanding spoken language, building vocabulary, and communicating needs and ideas.
Emergent Literacy: awareness of print, letter recognition, and early writing attempts.
Mathematical Thinking: number sense, patterns, measurement, and basic geometry.
Science and Technology: exploration, observation, and understanding of the natural and physical world.
Social Studies: concepts of self, family, community, and how people relate to one another.
Creativity and Aesthetics: self-expression through art, music, movement, and dramatic play.

Language Development and Emergent Literacy are two separate domains. Speaking and listening develop on a different track than print awareness and early writing, and the standards keep them distinct so a child who is strong in one but behind in the other doesn’t get overlooked.

Which Programs Have to Follow the Standards

The CDELS covers children from birth through age five, with companion assessment tools split into two overlapping age bands: birth through 36 months, and 19 through 60 months.² The overlap in the 19-to-36-month range lets educators pick the scale that fits an individual toddler rather than forcing a hard cutoff.

Licensed child care centers and licensed family child care homes have to meet the minimum requirements under the Child Care Facility Licensing Act.³ Two settings go further. The Arkansas Better Chance program, the state’s pre-K investment for children ages three through five, ties funding to specific curriculum alignment with the CDELS and to a set of six quality components: low student-to-teacher ratios, well-qualified and fairly compensated staff, ongoing professional development, developmental screening and child assessment, parent and community engagement, and proven curricula.⁴ The Better Beginnings quality rating system uses the CDELS as a bar to reach higher rating levels.

How Programs Use the Standards

The CDELS is not itself a curriculum. It is the framework any chosen curriculum has to line up with. Programs build written curriculum plans that integrate goals across all nine domains, then design daily activities that move children along the developmental continuum in the standards.

Assessment relies on observation rather than testing. The primary tool is the CDELS Developmental Rating Scale (DRS), completed by teachers based on daily observation over extended periods.² For each skill, the scale uses three categories: “Not Yet” (rarely or never seen), “Emerging” (some evidence observed), and “Consistently” (mastered and regularly demonstrated). The data helps educators adjust instruction and communicate with families about a child’s progress.

For children approaching kindergarten, the state publishes a Kindergarten Readiness Indicator Checklist (KRIC) that maps readiness indicators directly to the CDELS domains, with a separate family version that shows parents which skills prepare a child to start school and how to support them at home.¹

Staff Qualifications That Go With the Standards

The standards mean different things depending on where you work, because the staffing rules attached to them differ sharply between minimum licensing and ABC.

Minimum Licensing

Every staff member at a licensed child care center who works with children must complete at least 15 hours of continuing early childhood education each year.⁵ New staff and volunteers counted in ratios must finish an eight-hour orientation within three months of hire covering supervision, behavioral guidance, safe sleep practices, shaken baby syndrome prevention, emergency procedures, mandated reporter training, medication administration, and caring for children with special needs. Staff can’t be left alone with children until the orientation is done. Directors and assistant directors also have to complete 15 hours annually.

Arkansas Better Chance

ABC lead teachers must hold either an Arkansas educator license in early childhood pre-K, or a bachelor’s degree with at least 12 college credit hours in early childhood or child development.⁶ A second-classroom teacher needs at minimum an associate degree in early childhood education. Paraprofessionals must hold either an associate degree or a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential, and staff in infant or toddler rooms need a CDA specific to that age group.

Programs that hire staff who don’t meet those minimums have to file a Staff Qualification Plan within 15 days of the hire, submit progress reports twice a year, and show adequate progress. Hiring unqualified staff without an approved plan can end the program’s participation in ABC entirely.

ABC teachers face a 30-hour annual professional development requirement, double the licensing floor. ABC paraprofessionals must complete at least 15 hours annually on approved topics. Arkansas maintains a Professional Development Registry where individuals sign up for approved training and track their progress.

Staff-to-Child Ratios

Arkansas caps how many children one staff member can supervise, and the limits tighten for younger children:

Birth to 18 months: 1 to 5
18 months to 36 months: 1 to 8
2½ to 3 years: 1 to 12
4 years: 1 to 15
5 years to kindergarten: 1 to 18

When a group contains mixed ages, the ratio matches the youngest child in the group.⁵ Maximum group size is capped at twice the number of children allowed per staff member. Small sites caring for eight or fewer children total can mix age groups under adjusted ratios, but the number of children under age two is strictly limited even in these mixed settings.

Where the Standards Become a Quality Rating Requirement

Better Beginnings is Arkansas’s Quality Rating and Improvement System, covering center-based care, family child care, and school-age programs.⁷ Programs must meet every requirement at one level before advancing, with minimum licensing as the foundation.

The connection to the CDELS becomes explicit at Level 2. At that level, at least 50 percent of teaching staff and all directors have to complete Early Learning Standards Basics Training, and daily plans for each group must address all areas of development defined in the CDELS. Level 2 also requires an average score of 3.00 or higher on an Environment Rating Scale review, annual developmental screening for every child from birth to kindergarten, and child nutrition self-assessments. Level 3 raises the Environment Rating Scale score to 4.00 or higher, increases administration expectations, and requires a Strengthening Families action plan.

Children With Disabilities

The CDELS is designed to be inclusive, and it works alongside federal disability law rather than replacing it. For infants and toddlers from birth through age two, Arkansas’s First Connections program provides early intervention services under Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including developmental assessments, individualized service planning, and services such as physical, speech, and occupational therapy.⁸

For children ages three through five, IDEA Part B (Section 619) requires a free appropriate public education for all preschool-aged children with disabilities, and Arkansas school districts are responsible for delivering those services. Federal IDEA funds can cover tuition when a district places a child in a preschool program to provide services identified in the child’s Individualized Education Program, but only for the portion of time needed to deliver them.⁹ The minimum licensing orientation for all child care staff includes training on caring for children with special needs or individualized care plans.

Where to Get the Official Documents

The full CDELS, the companion Developmental Rating Scales, the Kindergarten Readiness Indicator Checklists, and strategies-and-activities guides for infant/toddler and preschool classrooms are published by the Office of Early Childhood within the Arkansas Department of Education’s Division of Elementary and Secondary Education, which also administers the ABC program.¹ Licensing rules, Better Beginnings quality rating information, and the First Connections early intervention program are handled by the Department of Human Services through its Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education.¹⁰

1
Arkansas Department of Education. Education Resources
2
Arkansas Department of Education. Arkansas CDELS Developmental Rating Scale Birth through 36 Months
3
Arkansas Department of Human Services. Child Care Facility Licensing Act
4
Legal Information Institute. Arkansas Code R 005-24-06-001 – Rules Governing the Arkansas Better Chance Program
5
Administration for Children and Families. Minimum Licensing Requirements for Child Care Centers – Arkansas
6
Code of Arkansas Rules. 6 CAR 100-208 – Staff Qualifications and Training Requirements
7
Arkansas Department of Human Services. Better Beginnings Quality Rating Improvement System
8
Arkansas.gov. AR Early Childhood Intervention First Connection
9
Arkansas Department of Education. Allowable Costs for IDEA Grants Guide
10
Arkansas.gov. Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education