Research tells us that specialized training and education of teachers is one of the strongest predictors of child care quality. In the late 1960s, however, most states did not require preservice training or higher education for teachers in early childhood programs or family child care homes. At that time, Missouri wanted to develop a project that would better prepare its early childhood practitioners to work with young children. The vision for the program grew out of planning in the Missouri Department of Health, Bureau of Child Care, and the findings from an extensive training needs assessment. Since the mid 1990s, Missouri had been working on a statewide career development system for child care teachers, focused on the training and professional development infrastructure. This article describes how Missouri developed an entry-level early childhood training program. The scope of Missouri's work included three phases: program design, pilot implementation and evaluation, and reflection and refinement.