Dr. Calvin Moore, Jr., an accomplished and experienced early childhood education leader, was appointed interim CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition in May 2020; he’s the first CEO of the Council to also hold its early education credential, the Child Development Associate® (CDA). He previously served on the Council’s governing board. Moore earned his CDA nearly three decades ago. His connection to Head Start began when he participated in the program as a child; he also has vast professional Head Start experience, having served in large and small, urban and rural, and center-based and family childcare-based programs, as well as programs focused predominantly on Hispanic families.
Throughout his career, Moore has held senior roles directing complex public departments at both the federal and state level, focused on improving outcomes for underserved children and families. Most recently, Moore was the regional program manager in Atlanta for the Office of Head Start within the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His responsibilities included leading the largest region in the country, providing oversight, monitoring, training and technical assistance to over 350 Head Start and Early Head Start grantees with a portfolio of over $1.6 billion. Prior to joining ACF, he was a senior technical analyst for ICF International, a federal contractor for the Office of Child Care within ACF.
He previously served as the child care administrator for the Alabama Department of Human Resources (DHR), where he was responsible for implementing strategic goals and objectives. This included oversight of child care licensing, child care subsidy program, Early Head Start–Child Care Partnership, quality initiatives, training and technical assistance projects. The annual budget was over $100 million and DHR served over 30,000 children. Moore expanded the child care services division by securing public funding for the DHR Early Head Start–Child Care Partnership program and private funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to establish Alabama Quality STARS, a quality rating and improvement system.
At an earlier point, Moore served at the federal level as the deputy director of the Office of Child Care (OCC) in the ACF. OCC supports low-income working families by providing access to affordable, highquality early care and afterschool programs. OCC administers the Child Care and Development Fund and works with state, territory and tribal governments to provide support for children and their families juggling work schedules and struggling to find child care programs that will fit their needs and that will prepare children to succeed in school. As the OCC deputy director, Moore was responsible for supervising the regional program managers in the 10 ACF regional offices.
Moore holds a bachelor of science degree in early childhood education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a master’s degree in education and a Ph.D. in early childhood education, both from Walden University. He’s the author of an early childhood curriculum supplement, “The Thinking Book Curriculum: For Early Childhood Professionals,” as well as “Men Do Stay: Recruiting and Retaining Qualified Male Early Childhood Teachers” and many other books. In 2016, Moore received a literary award from AIM and New Light Ministries for his book, “Agape Declarations” and the Maria Otto Award for Leadership from the National Family Child Care Association (NAFCC), a national membership organization devoted to making sure that the profession of family child care is recognized, visible and firmly part of the larger early care and education field; he was the first African American elected NAFCC president. In 2011, Moore received the Billy McCain, Sr., Memorial Award from the Alabama Head Start Association for his work as an advocate for family child care programs.