WGU Early Education Degree

[Eduteach]

Your Location: Idaho
Your Age:50
What kind of degree do you want?: BS Early Education 

Current Regional Accredited Credits:AS Early Childhood Education from the mid-90s in California. I've noticed on my transcript that I can only use 57 of my credits in the CSU system and 29 in the UC system these days. My Eng 101 and Algebra apparently count as zero credit now but were fine for my AS degree back then.

Current ACE, CLEP, or NCCRS Credits:None
Any certifications or military experience?:No, but tons of preschool teaching experience.
Budget: $5,000 is ideal but can go higher 
Commitments: 20 hour work week, spouse, children are grown
Dedicated time to study: Roughly 30 hours 
Timeline: Any, but prefer the sooner the better 
Tuition assistance/reimbursement: None
Other information: Idaho is a state where people with a bachelor's degree in any subject can gain teacher certification through American Board. 
I've often wondered if I should start all over again, honestly. I have no idea how many of my credits will transfer to WGU (or any of the Big 3 for that matter).

[bjcheung77]

@Eduteach, Welcome to the board, great intro post with the addendum and template, you may want to review the partners.wgu.edu webpage and use Sophia.org, Study.com, etc to try and reach up to 90 credits or 75% transfer into the degree of choice. Another option is, you may want to do the UMPI BLS with Educational Studies minor cheaply, easily, and quickly, then go for a Walden or WGU Masters in Early Education instead...

[nykorn]

Other information: Idaho is a state where people with a bachelor's degree in any subject can gain teacher certification through American Board. 
I've often wondered if I should start all over again, honestly. I have no idea how many of my credits will transfer to WGU (or any of the Big 3 for that matter).

I'm getting my MA in Elementary Education at WGU. WA is also a state where anyone can get teacher certification if you just have a bachelor's degree - and I already have one - but what I found is that it's not so simple as it sounds. Schools don't actually want to help you get the license. There are companies out there that will help you get the license based on having a prior Bachelor's but it is actually cheaper to go through WGU than to use a company (one quoted me at $20,000!). In my case I applied for jobs at schools and heard nothing back, despite that I have public school teaching experience, and I only heard back after I came in as an ENROLLED WGU student. Then I was conditionally granted a substitute teacher license and they said they might grant me the emergency license after I prove myself doing a few years of substitute teaching... but I will have already finished WGU and gotten my real license by then.

If your credits are more than 5 years old they won't transfer. In any case people seem to knock them out pretty quickly with Sophia & study.com. You might not actually want them to transfer - to be a teacher & to graduate from WGU you need to pass several state exams (here in WA, it is 5 exams - NES Reading-Writing & Math + WEST-B or PRAXIS for Reading, Writing & Math). I found that I was never taught a bunch of the math concepts which are required to pass the tests, but the WGU Math course is structured as if it's a refresher. Now I have to play catch-up by trying to speed through Khan Academy because the WGU course wasn't very helpful.