The inclusion of daycare and preschools in the county school systems and the increasing of children’s enrollment at this level of education brought up the discussion about early childhood education quality and, consequently, about the formation of the professionals who are involved in it. Law number 9394/96 in Brazil, moved forward when it established that early childhood teachers should be graduated. Moreover, it is important to mention that the principles established by the law have been effective within the cities. In this context, the objective of this research is to investigate if the county governments give value to the graduation of early childhood education professionals and if they make this graduation possible. The empirical material that incites this analysis was based on questionnaires answered by county administrations of 16 cities in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, on data about the scholarity of the professionals who work in these cities and on interviews with managers who are responsible for early childhood education in 24 cities within the state of Rio de Janeiro. It was possible to see that the presence of graduated professionals in these educational systems is not considerable, what goes against the discourse of the managers. As otherwise, these contradictions may be explained when we take into consideration some facts, such as the differences between the formation of main teachers and auxiliary teachers, the level of education demands when teachers start their career, and the vulnerability of labor relations. In most of the researched cities, there is a lack of consistent policies that could improve professionals’ scholarity.