RN, OT, RT, ST, PT and Early Childhood Courses?

[sanantone]

You need to focus on one thing. Almost all of these degrees will require internships/clinicals. Most of them require a master's or doctorate, so you'll need to earn a bachelor's and graduate degree. None of these programs are fast because you can't test out of them.

Nurses are trained to provide physical healthcare and have a little training in mental health issues. They cannot practice independently unless they earn an MSN with a practitioner concentration. This is not a good path for someone who wants to run a daycare.

Physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech language pathology are overkill for someone who wants to run a daycare. You'll be so busy monitoring kids that you won't be providing therapy. You can't provide physical therapy to one kid and have the other kids be unsupervised. 

Physical therapists are trained to work with physical disabilities. They wouldn't be trained to help someone with IDD. Speech-language pathologists are trained to provide speech therapy, not how to deal with other learning issues or behavioral issues. I wouldn't advise having an in-home daycare for children with special needs. There's a legal limit to how many kids you can have in your home. With special needs children, you can't watch too many by yourself. You would need employees. In my state, people who care for those with disabilities aren't regulated by Daycare Licensing; they're regulated by Adult Protective Services, even if they're caring for children. People who care for those with disabilities have to meet more stringent requirements. 

I used to babysit a kid with an intellectual disability and his little sister from hell. They always needed something and required close supervision. I couldn't imagine having to watch multiple children with special needs by myself. When I worked in a special education classroom, there were usually one or two teachers, a teaching assistant, and a couple of high school students providing tutoring with a class of less than 10 students.

[PrettyFlyforaChiGuy]

I am confused about your career goal, but if you want to run a day care, maybe my own experience can help you out.

I completed Walden's MS in ECS program, focusing on managing and administrating an educational facility from the ground up. Some of the work involved designing family program handbooks, sketching mock-up blueprints for an entire facility, and creating curricular resources that could be differentiated for multiple learning needs, all while ensuring legal compliance with 278 pages of state regulations. Despite all this, I have to admit that I still would not really know how to effectively, truly meet the needs of children with IDD; your experience is likely greater than my own, but you'd probably need additional training in order to legally work with these individuals. In terms of regulatory compliance, you'd want to be careful.

Even in my very lax home state of Mississippi, to be qualified as a director of a child care center, you need either (1) a relevant BA (or MA), (2) an AA with around 500 hours of relevant work in a child care facility, or (3) two years' experience working in a facility + a CDA/24 semester-hour credits in ECS. The requirements for teachers and assistants are lower, but if you hope to run any kind of center, look into requirements in your area.

Basically, I'd say that if your primary goal is to open a center or serve as the director of one, maybe focus on building up toward that specific goal first, picking up other skills along the way. A CDA or AA wouldn't be a bad start, if you don't already work in a center. If you want to go down a more medical path, look into those requirements, but be prepared to do much of your work offline.

[Leedeedee]

Rasmussen College accept a lot of alternative credit like Straighterline and CLEP, they also offer their own internal challenge tests ($99 last time I looked) for their GE courses. You can pretty much take all the GE courses for an RN ADN via alternative credit and just take the Nursing courses with them. Of course their nursing courses are pretty expensive so it would still be much more expensive than your local community college, but no wait lists and faster graduation. I considered it myself at one point.

[gams007]

I want to know what is the price for the flex CBE degree at Rasmussen college.

[Jonathan Whatley]

I'm late to this thread, but for the record, there is a Big Three with programs specifically in Early Childhood Education. Charter Oak has an Associate in Science major, Bachelor of Science major, Connecticut Directors Credential (for child care center directors), and Certificate in Infant-Toddler Care.

Charter Oak also has its own very small in-house credit-by-exam program, the Pathways Exams, whose course equivalencies are all in the area: Intro to ECE, Early Language and Literacy Development, Child Developmental Psychology (offered in English or Spanish), Infant-Toddler Growth & Development, and Infant-Toddler Evaluation & Assessment. They're "mostly" offered at Charter Oak's office in Newington, as their market is principally early childhood educators in Connecticut, but it could be possible to arrange an alternate testing site.

[bluebooger]

wgu has some special education teacher programs
https://www.wgu.edu/online-teaching-degrees.html

[indigoshuffle]

Those are degrees where the schools tend to be very serious about how and where they'll take credit. I just counseled someone for nursing school and after 4 months and lots of hard work they were able to transfer nearly all prerequisites in the nursing program; her credits consisted of 90% ACE and a few CLEP. She only has 2 more sciences to do and has saved thousands of dollars, and shaved about 2-3 years off her time to RN. This forum has been very instrumental in getting that done.

What I would say is to work backward. Find out what program you would like to do first and go backward from there. Some places, even some medical schools, will take CLEP credits. You'd just have to make a decision on what path is best for you.