Updated April 4 to correct demographic information of students and teachers in California.
I started my professional life as a server at the Marriott. I was looking forward to a career in the hospitality industry, but I also wanted to use my degree in biology and my love of science, so I decided to substitute teach.
During my first week in the classroom, one of my students said, “Mr. Z, we have learned more from you in the last three days than in the previous two weeks.”
That’s when I knew I wanted to become an educator.
My research into teacher preparation programs left me discouraged. Their cost was a major barrier for me, as it is for many other aspiring teachers of color. Then I found out about the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program, which provides teachers of color with the opportunity to pursue a career in education tuition-free. I would never have been able to afford my master’s degree and teaching credential had it not been for this program.
With this grant, I was able to receive my master’s and credential within one year, allowing me to step into the classroom and diversify the space that much faster. This is important because 20% of California’s students identified as white, while 61% of teachers identified as white. (The comparison is as of 2018-19, the last year that the California Department of Education published statewide teacher demographic data). Research shows that teachers of color have a positive effect on the pupils we serve. I have seen this in my own teaching. My high school chemistry classes are 85% students of color. One of my students, Nayleya, wrote to me, “I hated coming to school and I just felt like there was no point to it. I felt like the other teachers were just trying to control us and, in a way, treat us like robots, but you don’t. You listen to what we are having problems with and try your hardest to help.”
The Golden State Teacher Grant came with a comprehensive level of support, ensuring my success in the program and in the classroom. When I was working on my final project, a chemistry unit plan, my professors provided ongoing mentorship. I was able to resubmit my assignments until I reached mastery in my content area. This informed my teaching practice; I now give my students multiple opportunities to resubmit their assignments until they too reach mastery of the learning target. This has motivated students like Nayleya to work harder, even if she found the lesson challenging, because she knows I am backing her up every step of the way, in the same way my professors supported me.
I know that the Golden State grant worked for me as it has for many of my colleagues. However, to really know how many teachers of color are entering the profession, the programs they graduate from, the districts and schools they are teaching at, we need much more information than just personal experience. This is even more pressing now as the Legislature is considering addressing current budget shortfalls by clawing back funds from some of the teacher training programs, like the Golden State Pathways Program, teacher and counselor residency grants and national board certification grants, without understanding their impact. We need comprehensive data on the effectiveness of programs like the Golden State Teacher Grant to ensure that our investments in them are working, and policymakers have the information they need to make informed budget decisions.
Our Legislature is now debating a bill that will do just that. Senate Bill 1391, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, would require the state to develop a dashboard with information on teacher training pipelines, credentialing, hiring and retention. Having a comprehensive data dashboard would also help us anticipate any challenges that arise from recruiting to preparing and retaining a diverse workforce. Imagine the improvements we could make to how we prepare and support teachers if we knew what programs were effective, and what worked and what didn’t.
I love teaching and I love my students. I want other people of color to pursue a career in education and find the passion and rewards that come with mentoring young scholars. Let’s make sure we have the data to help sustain and diversify our workforce, for the benefit of all our students.
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Omar Zamarripa is a ninth and 10th grade science teacher at Port of Los Angeles High School in San Pedro. He is a 2023-24 Teach Plus California Policy Fellow.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Participants in the Diversity in Leadership Institute’s Aspiring Principals of Color program.
Courtesy: Adela Montes / Diversity in Leadership Institute
Representation matters, especially in the classroom.Students can do better when they are instructed by a person who looks like them. As California is challenged by fiscal uncertainties, school districts are bracing themselves to establish their own budget priorities. Now more than ever, it is time for school districts to protect and realize their promises of establishing and maintaining teacher diversity that is reflective of the students and communities they serve.
Two years ago, the Los Angeles Unified School Board demonstrated its commitment to Black students, educators and families by passing a resolution on Black student excellence through educator civersity, preparation and retention. The resolution demonstrates the district’s commitment to foster a more inclusive and equitable educational landscape.
But resolutions are only as good as their implementation. Los Angeles Unified has taken some initial steps that can be built upon and expanded to serve as a model for other districts.
In addition to prioritizing workforce diversity in the district’sReady for the World strategic plan, one of the district’s key initiatives has been to create affinity spaces for Black male and female educators. These spaces provide a supportive environment for Black educators to connect, share experiences, and receive mentorship and support throughout their careers. This effort is a crucial step toward increasing the representation of Black educators in the teaching profession and fostering inclusivity.
Another significant initiative has been the district’s targeted recruitment efforts at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to diversify the teaching pipeline. Bypartnering with institutions like Cal State Dominguez Hills, the district has secured funding for programs that support Black students pursuing careers in education. This effort is a vital step toward addressing the longstanding inequities faced by Black students and educators.
Additionally, the district has established mentorship and support programs to incentivize students to pursue careers in education and facilitate a seamless transition into the profession. The Educators of Tomorrow program, for example, offers financial incentives to students pursuing teaching credentials and provides resources and support to facilitate their career transitions. Moreover, the district’s collaboration with nonprofits to expand the Black educator pipeline and the emphasis on mentorship opportunities within the district demonstrate a concerted effort to nurture talent and foster growth.
These efforts are not limited to Los Angeles Unified. In the Bay Area, Emery Unified School District is seeing progress through targeted approaches to improving outcomes for Black students by shifting to equity-based grading, paying teachers to tutor outside of school hours and continuing its focus on recruiting Black educators, among other strategic approaches.
And recognizing the need to invest more in school leadership, in July 2023, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California State Legislature approved theDiverse Education Leaders Pipeline Initiative, a $10 million dollar grant program, to address the need for a more diverse and culturally responsive education leadership workforce.
Administered by the California Commission on Teaching Credentialing, this initiative seeks to credential and train over 300 new administrators across the state over the next four years. To recruit, support and retain educators, particularly those of color, we must have a pipeline of culturally responsive school leaders.
These local and state initiatives must be celebrated, supported and replicated. But while we celebrate Los Angeles Unified’s efforts to date, we know more transparency and engagement with community stakeholders is vital for realizing the promise of the district’s 2021 resolution. We also know others cannot follow what they can’t see. Los Angeles Unified and districts across California must share their data and learning so that others can join in taking action too.
Fiscal uncertainties can undermine progress and change if our leaders don’t uphold their commitments and maintain their courage. Districts have shown progress toward ensuring our schools reflect the students and communities they serve. Our state and district leaders can’t stop investing and prioritizing teacher diversity now.
We can’t build a better tomorrow for California’s students and families of color without keeping and making the necessary investments of today.
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Laura McGowan-Robinson, Ed.D., is CEO of the Diversity in Leadership Institute, a nonprofit working to build a movement of racially diverse and culturally competent public education leaders.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee unanimously Wednesday with little opposition.
Senate Bill 1263, sponsored by the California Teachers Association, will now move to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If ultimately approved by the Legislature, it will do away with the California Teaching Performance Assessment, known as the CalTPA.
The assessment requires that teachers demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice.
Eliminating the assessment would encourage more people to enter the teaching profession, said Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, author of the bill and chairman of the Senate Education Committee at Wednesday’s hearing.
“Despite its well-intentioned purpose, the demands associated with preparing for the TPA have actually had the perverse impact of reducing the overall quality of teacher preparation by undermining the capacity of teacher candidates to focus on what’s most important, which is their clinical practice,” Newman said.
He said the performance assessments duplicate other requirements teachers must fulfill to earn a credential, including proving subject-matter competency, taking teacher preparation courses, being assessed for reading instruction proficiency and completing 600 hours of clinical experience.
Brian Rivas, senior director at The Education Trust‒West, a nonprofit education research and advocacy organization, spoke in opposition to the legislation.
“We concluded when we reviewed the research that teaching performance assessments are the best available measure of teacher preparedness and whether or not a candidate is prepared to enter a classroom,” Rivas said.
The test offers a common standard to measure how well credentialing programs are preparing teacher candidates and could mean fewer prepared teachers in schools serving low-income students, which are already disproportionately taught by novice teachers, he said.
California moved away from standardized testing for teacher candidates in recent years as the teacher shortage worsened.
In July 2021, legislation gave teacher candidates the option to take approved coursework instead of the California Basic Education Skills Test, or CBEST, or the California Subject Examinations for Teachers, or CSET. In January’s tentative budget, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed eliminating the CBEST and allowing the completion of a bachelor’s degree to satisfy the state’s basic skills requirement.
Around the same time, the state also has joined a national effort to change how reading is taught in schools, focusing on a method that teaches students to decode words by sounding them out, a process known as phonics.
Last summer, Senate Bill 488 passed the state Legislature. The bill replaced the unpopular Reading Instruction Competence Assessment, also known as RICA, with a literacy performance assessment based on a new set of literacy standards and Teaching Performance Expectations centered on phonics and other foundational reading skills. The assessment was scheduled to be piloted in the next few months. The CTA supported the bill.
Union leaders later said that a survey of its membership persuaded them to change course and to sponsor SB 1263, which would repeal the performance assessment.
Senate Bill 1263 doesn’t remove the requirement that candidates for a preliminary, multiple-subject or education specialist credential pass a test that evaluates their ability to teach reading, meaning the passage of SB 1263 could result in the RICA remaining beyond the 2025 date when it was scheduled to be abandoned.
The RICA has been a major hurdle for teacher candidates for years. About a third of all the teacher candidates who take the test fail the first time, according to state data collected between 2012 and 2017. Critics also have said that the test is outdated, racially biased and has added to the state’s teacher shortage.
The California Teachers Association also opposed Assembly Bill 2222, which would have required California teachers to use “science of reading” instruction in their classrooms. Last week the bill died without a hearing.
CTA representative Mandy Redfern spoke in support of Senate Bill 1263 Wednesday, calling the performance assessment a barrier to a diverse teacher workforce.
“Over the past 20 years, the TPA, or the teacher performance assessment, has evolved into a high-stakes, time-consuming costly barrier for aspiring teachers,” Redfern said.
“The current iteration of the TPA has been proven to be ineffective at preparing educators for the realities of the classroom,” she said. “The CTC’s data shows that TPAs disproportionately harm aspiring BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and other people of color) educators.”
The most recent passing rates on the assessment for people of color are not significantly different from others who took the test, said Mary Vixie Sandy, Commission on Teacher Credentialing executive director, at the hearing. For example, Black teacher candidates had a 75% first-time pass rate and a 95% ultimate pass rate, which is right within the norm, on average with the whole population of teachers who took the assessment, Sandy said.
The bill would also do away with oversight of literacy instruction in teacher preparation programs mandated by Senate Bill 488, authored by Sen. Susan Rubio, D-West Covina, in 2021.
A student at the afterschool program at Stege Elementary School in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.
Credit: Sam Cleare
West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) officials responded to complaints filed over ongoing teacher vacancies earlier this month. However, complainants say the district lacks a sufficient plan to fix the problem, and the next steps could include litigation if vacancies are not addressed.
“As teachers, our work is being harmed, our ability to do our job is being harmed,” said Sam Cleare, a West Contra Costa teacher. “But what truly hurts me the most is knowing that these students — I care about them so much — aren’t receiving an education.”
Three teachers in the district, including Cleare, filed complaints on Jan. 31 alleging that the district failed to provide students with qualified teachers, resulting in teachers taking on more classes and sacrificing prep time.
The district’s response acknowledged that the allegations are true — the district was out of compliance with the law because teacher vacancies have not been filled and are being covered by long-term or day-to-day substitutes. According to the response, vacancies weren’t filled because of teacher transfers and late notices from teachers who left the district in the 2022-23 school year.
The district also blames statewide systemic issues for contributing to the problem. Beginning in 2021, California schools had significant increases in teacher vacancies and declines in the number of new teachers, the response said, as the pandemic caused many educators to leave the profession.
“Any vacancy was not purposefully caused by the District,” Camille Johnson, interim assistant superintendent of human resources, said in the response. “The District has provided support and supervision for its students to the best of its ability within these limitations and has not purposefully caused any noncompliance.”
To address teacher shortages, the district is continuing to revise its strategies to increase retention and recruitment and has implemented “recruiting, development, and hiring measures.” Additionally, since August, the district has had officials at 25 job fairs and has posted job announcements on at least six job boards.
A coordinator has also been hired to develop and promote pathways for substitutes and employees to become permanent teachers, and the district is partnering with various universities and nonprofits for recruitment, the district’s response said.
Karissa Provenza, an attorney with civil rights law firm Public Advocates who is representing the three teachers said the district’s response is insufficient.
“They offer no solution or even a plan to discontinue these illegal practices.The response they’re supposed to provide is supposed to show how they’re actually solving the issue or attempting to solve it. Unfortunately, the district is illustrating a complacent status quo attitude towards fulfilling its legal obligations.”
Karissa Provenza
On April 19, nine days after the district responded to the complaints, Provenza sent the school board an appeal on behalf of her clients. The district has until Monday to provide a plan that explains how each vacancy will be filled and have a meeting with Provenza and her clients to address the vacancies.
“Should the district’s response continue to prove inadequate, we and our clients reserve all rights to pursue additional legal measures, including by filing suit in a California Superior Court to compel lawful compliance,” Provenza wrote in the appeal.
The appeal acknowledged the effect teacher shortages have had on schools but said that doesn’t relieve WCCUSD from filling each class with a qualified and credentialed teacher. If substitutes covering some of the vacancies are qualified to be permanently assigned to classes, that could be a short-term solution, the appeal said. Other short-term solutions suggested were placing credentialed administrators into vacancies for the remainder of the school year, employing individuals who hold a short-term staff permit or a provisional internship permit, and employing retired credentialed teachers, which the district has done before.
Distict officials did not respond to requests for comment on the appeal.
The vacancies
The three educators who filed complaints teach at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle and Kennedy High schools. Each school currently has four vacancies that have been open since the beginning of the school year or sometime in the fall.
At a school like Stege Elementary that has four out of 12 teaching positions vacant, about one-third of students “aren’t receiving an education,” Cleare said. “I’ve seen students blame themselves, or they become less interested in school.”
For the past seven years Cleare has taught at Stege, she said, the school year has either started out with vacancies or someone has left in the middle of the year. Teachers sometimes had extra students in their class for many weeks, Cleare said. She now has a class with fourth and fifth graders because of the vacancies.
“I can’t believe this problem has been going on for so long and so little is being done,” Cleare said. “It almost feels like they don’t care about the students.”
Cleare said she never has enough time to prepare lessons, and it’s common for extra students to be in classes because of substitute and teacher shortages. At one point, she had ages spanning from first to fifth grade in one class.
“We’re not going to stop taking action until we receive a full staff. This is a systemic issue. I know my students going to … Kennedy will also not have a teacher, so this issue follows them.”
Sam Cleare
West Contra Costa has fewer fully credentialed educators teaching in their field compared with the state average. According to data from the state Department of Education, the district had 78% credentialed teachers in the 2021-22 school year — the most recent data available. The state average was nearly 86%.
Excluding charter schools, WCCUSD also has the lowest rates of fully credentialed teachers compared with other districts in Contra Costa County, data shows. All other districts in the county are at 80% or higher.
Chronic absenteeism has been rising because of vacancies, according to the complaints, especially for students who need more support. There have been instances where groups of students were placed in the cafeteria because there weren’t enough teachers. Substitutes have covered some classes since the beginning of the school year to the extent that parents don’t know who is teaching their children day-to-day.
“We are starting to hear from parents who are really upset about what’s going on,” Provenza said. “We are continuing to hear that substitutes are not getting the support they need to support their students — it’s that turbulence that comes along with high number of vacancies.”
Substitutes can be authorized to cover classes for longer periods — usually 30 to 60 days, Provenza said, but at Stege, Helms and Kennedy, substitutes have taught classes longer. At Helms Middle, there’s a large portion of eighth graders who don’t have permanent teachers in math, science and English, the complaints said.
Teacher vacancies are disproportionately affecting students of color, according to the complaints. Stege Elementary has about 38% Black or African American students and 34% Hispanic or Latino students in the 2022-23 school year, according to data from the state Department of Education.
Nearly 83% of students at Helms Middle are Hispanic or Latino and about 7% are Black or African American, data shows. About 73% of students at Kennedy High are Hispanic or Latino and nearly 18% are Black or African American.
Cristina Huerta, the Kennedy High teacher who submitted a complaint, said vacancies have been “severely” affecting students’ ability to take Spanish courses. There are 143 students who are enrolled in Spanish but haven’t had a Spanish-credentialed teacher.
“For the first quarter of the school year, the students had a couple of long-term subs, but that did not last more than a couple of weeks, and then they bounced around as Kennedy teachers covered a different period without access to any curriculum,” Huerta said in an email.
Students have gaps in their Spanish education because some of the teachers covering the class aren’t credentialed to teach Spanish, Huerta said. Students will likely struggle in higher-level Spanish classes in the coming years.
“All in all, the vacancies have been disheartening, and I worry about the future of the Spanish program at Kennedy since the vacancy has been cut for next year, and we are no longer hiring a third Spanish teacher,” Huerta said. “ I’m not sure how our small department will be able to serve the Kennedy student population as they attempt to complete graduation requirements and enroll in higher-level classes for college preparation.”
Legislation that calls for providing all state teachers and aides with math and reading training passed its first legislative hurdle despite the uncertainty of funding and the skepticism of advocates for English learners who dislike the bill’s nod to instruction in the “science of reading,” including phonics.
Senate Bill 1115 has no secure source of money heading into a tight fiscal year, with Gov. Gavin Newsom all but ruling out money for new programs. His January budget includes $20 million for a designated county office to train coaches who would then train their own teachers in what they learned.
Neither the bill’s author, Sen. Monique Limon, D-Santa Barbara, nor its sponsor, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, offered a cost estimate at a hearing of the Senate Education Committee last Wednesday, though it would cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars to train 300,000 teachers. They said they were willing to phase in and focus funding, such as concentrating on early literacy and numeracy skills, and to look for federal and dedicated sources of money.
Thurmond said training teachers to enable all students to read effectively “is an issue of moral clarity.” Neither he nor Limon offered a cost estimate that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
“In an age when we have access to substantial brain science about how students learn, it should be unacceptable to train only some educators in the best strategies to teach essential skills,” he said.
School districts have received billions of dollars between federal and state Covid relief funding, including money to address learning loss — money that could be used for teacher training — but none of that has been earmarked for that purpose.
State budgets have set aside $50 million to hire and train reading teachers in the most impoverished 5% of schools. But Thurmond said training of trainers, however, does not substitute for providing sufficient funding to ensure training for all teachers and support staff in “high-quality” programs in math and literacy.
The bill calls for the Department of Education to identify and recommend those high-quality programs by Jan. 1, 2026. For transitional kindergarten through sixth grade, those should align with “the science of reading” by focusing on results-driven methods of teaching, which may include, but is not limited to, offerings such as Lexia LETRS and CORE Learning.”
Singling out those specific trainings in the bill were red flags for two nonprofits that advocate for English learners: Californians Together and California Association of Bilingual Educators (CABE). The science of reading refers to research from multiple fields of science that confirm or discount theories on how children learn to read. LETRS and CORE Learning are intensive programs that explain a systematic approach to teaching phonics and other elements of reading consistent with the science of reading.
Californians Together and CABE, however, complain that those programs overemphasize phonics and “structured literacy” at the expense of English learners’ need for more attention to oral language and vocabulary development.
Calling Californians Together’s position on the bill a “tweener,” legislative advocate Cristina Salazar testified at a hearing last week, “We agree that we need more professional learning for educators, but we do have concerns with the bill. Specifically, it mentioned the science of reading, and it also names commercial programs.”
CABE legislative advocate Jennifer Bakers said her organization shares the same concerns and “hopes to have a collaborative conversation about a path to move forward.”
Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Boch, R-Yucaipa, asked Thurmond whether the intent is to train existing teachers in the new standards that new teachers will be trained on.
“Yes, that is correct,” Thurmond said.
Opposition from Californians Together and CABE this month factored into the quashing of a bill that would have required school districts and charter schools to train all TK to fifth-grade teachers and literacy coaches in instruction based on the science of reading and to buy textbooks from a list endorsed by the State Board of Education. Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, D-Salinas, ordered Assembly Bill 2222 shelved without a hearing to give time for negotiations with opponents, including the California Teachers Association.
At the hearing, Thurmond acknowledged similarities between the two bills, although AB 2222 would have been a mandate, while AB 1115 would recommend the selection of trainings.
Along with mandating the science of reading approach to instruction, AB 2222 would have required that all TK to fifth-grade teachers, literacy coaches and specialists take a 30-hour minimum course in reading instruction by 2028. School districts and charter schools would purchase textbooks from an approved list endorsed by the State Board of Education.
Thurmond said the language of AB 1115 is well balanced in that it refers to both the science of reading and the state’s English Language Arts/English Language Development framework, which includes multiple strategies necessary for all students, including English learners, to learn how to read.
New math framework
July will mark a year since the State Board of Education adopted a revised California Mathematics Framework, which took four years and three revisions to pass. The drafters and supporters agree that the framework, with emphasis on tangible applications of math, as well as a deeper conceptual understanding of it, will require a shift in teaching and extensive training. But no significant money has been allocated yet, and the process of reviewing textbooks and materials has yet to begin.
In an interview, Limon said it is important to raise the issue of teacher training now, even if legislation is tied to a future appropriation.
Part of the public debate in committing public dollars should be, What would the program look like, and how will it serve diverse students? she said. “There is value to that discussion,” she said. Before her election to the Legislature, Limon served for six years on the Santa Barbara Unified school board.
In 2022-23, only 46.7% of California students met grade standards on the state’s English language arts test; the percentages were 36.6% for Hispanic, 29.9% for Black, and 35.3% for economically disadvantaged students. The scores were worse in math: 34.5% of students overall, with 22.7% of Latino, 16.9% of Black, and 22.9% of economically disadvantaged students meeting standards.
Plenty of conversations in California have focused on recruiting teachers into the profession as a way to grapple with the state’s teacher shortage. This is important, and as a transitional kindergarten teacher, I am acutely aware of how quality teachers can impact our students and communities.
I pursued teaching largely because I want to be the representation I didn’t see growing up. I participated in a teacher residency program that built my confidence in the classroom and taught me to connect with my students by highlighting my own identity. It’s not only the way I was recruited to the profession, it’s also played a role in my retention.
To continue to tackle the teacher shortage, I believe California needs more strong teacher residency programs. Nearly 37% of U.S. public schools experienced at least one teacher vacancy, contributing to nearly half of public school students entering the 2023-24 school year behind grade level in at least one subject. Amid these shortages, California is still reeling from the repercussions of surpassing 10,000 vacancies during the 2021-22 school year. The effects are felt even more so in under-resourced, Latino or Black communities.
At Aspire Richmond Technology Academy, where I teach, I can see how we must prepare educators and then provide the tools for teachers to sustain themselves. It’s how we can prevent shortages and retain teachers down the road.
It was a winding road for me to realize that teaching was my calling. I never envisioned myself becoming an educator, largely because I rarely saw teachers who looked like me or who connected with me on a cultural level. While studies point to the importance of a demographic match between teachers and students, I experienced a real lack of Asian representation in education.
This changed when I went to college. With more exposure to Asian professors, I finally felt seen and represented. I felt empowered that education was a field I could pursue. And I put the puzzle pieces together — that all of my volunteer work and extracurricular activities centered around helping students. By the time I switched majors, I had some catching up to do.
When I learned about teacher residency programs in California, I jumped at the opportunity. I received a master’s degree and a California teaching credential in a single year. Even in my first year of teaching, I felt more prepared than other teacher friends.
While we can’t solve the teacher shortage overnight, here’s how we can ensure we’re training more young people to become highly effective educators and stay in the profession.
First, we need an intensive teacher residency program that builds confidence. ThroughAspire’s teacher residency program at Alder Graduate School of Education, I apprenticed four days a week and had a personal mentor in the classroom with me who provided me with critical one-on-one support. Toward the end of my time as an apprentice, one of the students in our classroom asked my mentor, “So, what’s your job?” This gave me the confidence to teach the following year on my own. I learn best through a hands-on approach, so four days a week in the classroom with one day for intensive seminars and subject-matter courses helped me gain more real life experience.
Second, this wouldn’t be possible without strategic financial supports. We know that systemic inequities, including the high cost of college, hold too many back from pursuing a career in education. Ensuring teacher residents receive a stipend while earning their degree and credential(s) can help. Through a partnership, the program I participated in is helping to support staff members in earning and paying for an undergraduate degree with teaching credentials. Given the importance of representation in the classroom, the partnership prioritizes aspiring teachers of color and those from the local communities.
Finally, we should expand teacher residency programs that are accessible for individuals of all backgrounds. While California has made big investments in teacher residency programs, we also need to focus on effective teacher training initiatives that reflect our school’s communities. When I participated, my teacher residency program focused on “head, heart and hands.” This meant that we integrated theory and research (head), with a culturally responsive equity lens (heart), and our coursework mirrored our field work (hands). Highlighting representation, multiculturalism and identity continues to be stressed throughout the program — and it’s something I hold dear to my heart.
Last week, I proudly watched a kindergarten promotion, which included many of my previous TK students from my student teaching year. Seeing their growth academically, and how much confidence they have gained in themselves and their identities, is another reason why I continue to pursue education. In many ways, their growth reflects my own. And knowing that I contributed a small part to my former and current scholars’ successes, as they flourish in their own ways, brings me a surge of pride.
The programs at Aspire are happening at scale, with more than 36 schools serving more than 15,400 students across California. Not only did my residency program get me into the classroom, it’s played a role in keeping me there. We need more effective residency programs, and this can serve as a model for retaining teachers in California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
A group of educators, staff and parents are suing the West Contra Costa Unified School District (WCCUSD) for failing to address poor building conditions, teacher vacancies and violating the rights of students, particularly Black, low-income and multilingual learners.
The lawsuit, filed late Friday by civil rights law firm Public Advocates and pro bono counsel Munger, Tolles & Olson, comes months after 48 Williams complaints were submitted to the district. It’s the first time a school district has been sued under the landmark Williams v. California settlement in 2004, which established the complaint process, the right to textbooks, clean, safe schools, and qualified teachers for all California public school students, said Karissa Provenza, Public Advocates attorney.
“The petitioners in the case are seeking a court order to compel WCCUSD to immediately remedy these violations, respond to complainants, and finally provide students with the safe and healthy school environment to which they are entitled,” a statement from Public Advocates said.
In June 2023, 45 complaints were submitted to address facility issues at Stege Elementary School, including moldy walls, broken floor tiles and inoperable windows, according to the statement. Six months later, three complaints were filed to address teacher vacancies at Stege Elementary, Helms Middle and Kennedy High School.
Under the Williams complaint process, school districts have 30 days to remedy the issues and 45 days to respond in court. West Contra Costa officials have not resolved the problems within the legally allowed time, according to Public Advocates.
Instead of trying to fill open teaching positions legally, Provenza said, the district has relied on substitutes who aren’t authorized for long periods, which is illegal.
District officials could not immediately be reached for comment. But in response to the teacher vacancy complaints, West Contra Costa officials acknowledged their practice of relying on substitutes isn’t lawful.
District officials said vacancies weren’t filled because of teacher transfers and late notices from teachers who left the district in the 2022-23 school year. The district also blames statewide systemic issues for contributing to the problem. Beginning in 2021, California schools had significant increases in teacher vacancies and declines in the number of new teachers, the response said, as the pandemic caused many educators to leave the profession.
When substitutes aren’t available, other teachers in the buildings have to take on more work and sacrifice prep times to cover classes, Provenza said.
West Contra Costa’s failure to address poor conditions at schools and teacher vacancies “creates a vicious cycle,” said co-counsel Dane Shikman from Munger, Tolles, & Olson.
“Teachers leave or don’t apply for a position, in part, because of poor facilities at the school,” Shikman said in a statement. “And resulting teacher vacancies drive down student performance and attendance, causing stakeholders — including District administrators — to lose confidence and reduce investment in the school and its facilities. This suit is intended to break that cycle, so that WCCUSD students have a fighting chance to succeed in school.”
A parent at Stege Elementary, Darrell Washington, who is not a complainant, said his son hasn’t been set up for success.
“Last year he had two or three different teachers,” Washington said in a statement. “It felt like a chaotic game of musical chairs. This system is not supportive for my child or any child at Stege. As a community activist, I want to raise awareness about what is happening at the school, not just for my son, but because it is a disservice to all of our children.”
Students without a permanent teacher become less engaged and curious about learning, said Raka Ray, a biology teacher at Kennedy High. Ray has also observed that students are more likely to skip class, get in fights and be “addicted to their phones.”
Teacher vacancies are also disproportionately affecting students of color. Stege Elementary has about 38% Black or African American students and 34% Hispanic or Latino students in the 2022-23 school year, according to data from the state Department of Education.
Nearly 83% of students at Helms Middle are Hispanic or Latino and about 7% are Black or African American, data show. About 73% of students at Kennedy High are Hispanic or Latino and nearly 18% are Black or African American.
“For marginalized students who come from high-trauma backgrounds, having a sense of stability is extremely important for their academic success,” Ray said in a statement. “What I’ve seen with the vacancies is that my students have lost hope in the educational system to provide them with a better future.”
Addressing teacher vacancies
Superintendent Chris Hurst addressed teacher vacancies at Wednesday’s board meeting, saying the human resources team is “working hard” to fill positions before school resumes.
As of this week, Hurst said, there are 76 open elementary teacher positions, 23 vacancies for secondary teachers, and 13 openings for special education teachers. There are also 247 open classified positions in the district, most being paraprofessionals.
Elementary schools with three or more vacancies include Stege, Bayview, Coronado, Harding, Verde, and West County Mandarin. Secondary schools with three or more vacancies are Korematsu, Pinole Valley, Richmond, and Kennedy.
The district has been to 37 job fairs in the last year and relies on partnerships to hire and recruit teachers, Hurst said. West Contra Costa has partnerships with 35 universities, Teach for America, teacher residency programs, and retired teachers. The district also utilizes various job boards and has three upcoming job fairs this summer.
The district has already hired 10 teachers in the last two weeks, Camille Johnson, associate superintendent of human resources, said at the meeting. However, if not every teacher vacancy is filled this summer, Johnson said the district will fall back on substitutes. There are day-to-day, 30-day and 60-day substitutes, she added.
This story was updated to correct that Raka Ray teaches biology, not English.
Bullard High School senior Isabell Coronado works with Gibson Elementary first grader Mayson Lydon on March 15, 2024, as part of Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program.
Credit: Lasherica Thornton / EdSource
In mid-March, Bullard High School students Merrick Crowley and Craig Coleman taught an interactive science lesson for a fifth-grade class at Gibson Elementary in Fresno.
At the front of the classroom, Coleman held an egg above one of three containers filled with liquids, such as saltwater. He and Crowley asked students to predict what would happen to each egg: Will it sink or float? The fifth graders, wide-eyed and smiling, raised their hands to share their predictions.
“You said if we took a field trip (to the Red Sea), we would float,” said one fifth grader to explain why she thought the egg would float in the saltwater.
Once Coleman dropped the egg in the water, the students expressed joy or disappointment, depending on whether their predictions were accurate or not. “Can anyone tell me why it’s floating?” Crowley asked as Coleman hinted that the answer was related to density.
The high schoolers were in Fresno Unified’s Career Technical Education (CTE) Pathway course, one of the district’s three Teacher Academy programs that has the potential to increase the number of educators entering the K-12 system.
According to educators and leaders in the school district and across the state, introducing and preparing students for the teaching field, starting at the high-school level, will be key to addressing the teacher shortage — a problem affecting schools across the nation.
Teachers are retiring in greater numbers than in years past, and many, burned out or stressed by student behavior, have quit. Fewer teacher candidates are enrolling in preparation programs, worsening the shortage.
Since 2016, California has invested $1.2 billion to address the state’s enduring teacher shortage.
Despite the efforts, school districts continue to struggle to recruit teachers, especially for hard-to-fill jobs in special education, science, math and bilingual education.
As a result, districts and county education offices have been creating and expanding high school educator pathway programs under “grow-our-own” models intended to strengthen and diversify the teacher pipeline and workforce. High school educator programs expose students to the career early on by “tapping into (students’) love of helping others” and “keeping them engaged,” creating a more diverse teacher workforce and putting well-trained teachers in the classroom, said Girlie Hale, president of the Teachers College of San Joaquin, which partners with a grade 9-12 educator pathway program.
“The high school educator pipeline is one of the long-term solutions that we can incorporate,” Hale said. “Through the early exposure and interest of these (high school) educator pathways, it’s going to have a positive effect on increasing enrollment into teaching preparation programs.”
Growing their own
Fueled by the expansion of programs, increased participation and positive outcomes, “education-based CTE programs over the past decade have increased in high schools,” said James F. Lane, a former assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Education and CEO of PDK International, a professional nonprofit that supports aspiring educators through programs such as Educators Rising.
Educators Rising, a community-based organization with chapters in high schools in each state, teaches students the skills needed to become educators. Lane said the organization has seen 20% growth in the last two years, including the creation of a California chapter.
“District leaders are seeing the benefits of supporting future teachers in their own community due to the fact that 60% of teachers end up teaching within 20 miles of where they went to high school,” he said.
That isn’t the only benefit districts see.
Fresno Unified, the state’s third-largest school district, enrolls higher percentages of Hispanic, African American, Asian, Pacific Islander and American Indian students than other districts across Fresno County and California, according to California Department of Education data from 2022-23. The district’s current high schoolers resemble the demographics of the elementary students and the next generation of learners.
Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program can feed those high schoolers into one of the district’s teacher pipeline programs and back into schools, said Maiv Thao, manager of the district’s teacher development department.
“We know how important that is, to have someone that understands them, someone that looks like them and is able to be that model of, ‘If they can do it, then I can do it as well,’” Thao said. “We know that teachers of color make a huge impact on our students; they’re the ones who can make that connection with our students.”
In San Joaquin County, there are at least a dozen teacher preparation academies across five school districts, including a program launched in 2021 through a partnership with the county education office, a charter school, higher education institutions and nonprofit grant funding.
Students interested in pursuing a career in education can enter Teacher Education and Early College High (TEACH), an educator pathway program offered at the charter school Venture Academy to support students from freshman year of high school to the classroom as a teacher.
Through the early college high school model, students simultaneously take their high school classes and college courses and will graduate with both a high school diploma and an associate degree in elementary education from San Joaquin Delta College. Further, a relationship with Humphreys University allows students, who’d be entering as college juniors, to graduate debt free with their bachelor’s degrees. Then, students can complete the teacher credential program at the Teachers College of San Joaquin.
“The idea was to grow students within our community to become teachers and, then, have them return and serve as teachers in the communities that grew them,” said Joni Hellstrom, division director of Venture Academy.
But first, schools must get students enthusiastic about teaching.
Split model of learning: Time in the class as students
Students in TEACH in Stockton and the Teacher Academy in Fresno experience a cohort learning model and fieldwork opportunities. The teacher preparation is done over four years of high school in TEACH.
Because the entire program is meant to prepare them to be classroom teachers, core subject areas are taught so that students can evaluate the effectiveness of teaching styles on their own learning, Hellstrom said. For example, as students learn math, the teacher points out the strategies he or she is using in the lessons, preparing those students to “become teachers of math, not just learners of math,” she said.
Students also take classes each year to learn different teaching approaches, and they’re encouraged to incorporate the methods into class projects and lessons they’ll develop for elementary classes.
As freshmen, students visit elementary classes as a group to be reading buddies to the kids. Sophomores partner with the elementary teachers to design activities, such as a science experiment.
Three Teacher Academy options in Fresno Unified
Fresno Unified has expanded its program to offer various opportunities at its high schools, including the Teacher Academy Saturday Program, Summer Program and CTE course.
The Saturday program, requiring a commitment of four Saturdays in a semester,is a paid opportunity for high school sophomores, juniors and seniors to develop and teach STEM lessons.
The Summer Program, a paid internship also for grades 10-12, allows participants to work with students in summer school.
As juniors, students do field work in a class or subject area they’re interested in. For example, a student who enjoyed sports worked with a PE teacher this past year and taught lessons she designed, then reflected on what she learned from the experience and how the elementary school kids responded.
“It’s a really powerful learning opportunity for them,” Hellstrom said.
This upcoming school year, the first cohort of students, now seniors, will participate in internships in school districts across the county.
Under the umbrella of Fresno Unified’s Teacher Academy Program, students learn, then apply skills at an elementary school through embedded workplace learning.
The CTE course is designed for juniors and seniors to develop their communication, professionalism and leadership skills as well as learn teaching styles, lesson planning, class instruction, cultural proficiency and engagement techniques while gaining hands-on experience in elementary classes.
In Marisol Sevel’s mid-March CTE class, Edison High students answered “How would you define classroom management to a friend?” as Sevel went one-by-one to each high schooler, performing a handshake and patting them on their backs — modeling for them how to engage students.
Key components of the lesson were: building relationships and trust; providing positive reinforcement; exhibiting fair, consistent discipline; and other strategies to create a welcoming classroom environment.
“These are things that should not be new to you,” Sevel said about concepts the students have seen in the classroom and experienced, “but what is going to be new to you is how do you handle it as a teacher?”
Time as teachers
Fresno Unified’s literacy team trained high school students in the district’s Teacher Academy Program on the science of reading teaching method, which the high schoolers use to help elementary students during small group or individual sessions. Pictured is Bullard High School student Alondra Pineda Martinez with Gibson Elementary first graders Sara Her and Rowan Bettencourt. Credit: Lasherica Thornton/ EdSource
With schools within walking distance, Fresno high schoolers walk to the neighboring elementary school, where they apply the lessons they’ve learned in class.
At Gibson Elementary, first-grade teacher Hayley Caeton helped a group of her students with an assignment as others worked independently. In one corner of the room, two first graders created a small circle around Bullard High student Alondra Pineda Martinez while another first grader sat next to Bullard High student Marianna Fernandez. “What sound does it make?” the high schoolers asked as they pointed to ABC graphics.
Each week, Pineda Martinez and Fernandez covered specific concepts with the first graders in their groups based on the lesson plans that Caeton prepared.
The first graders, guided by the high schooler in front or beside them, moved from one activity to the next — from identifying words with oo vowel sounds to reading a book with many of those words.
“Good job,” Fernandez told first grader Tabias Abell.
More of Caeton’s students get academic support, as do other Gibson Elementary students across campus, because the high school students can pull them into small groups or individual sessions.
For instance, in Renae Pendola’s second-grade classroom, high schoolers provided math support as the teacher went around the class answering questions about an assignment.
Isabell Coronado and a second grader used fake coins to explore different ways to come up with 80 cents while Rebecca Lima helped three students with an imaginary transaction.
“Wouldn’t you make it just $1.24?” a student asked Lima, who reminded the group that they only had one dollar to spare at the ice cream shop, per the assignment.
Learning the reality of teaching
From the professional development to the hands-on involvement with elementary students, high schoolers in Fresno are experiencing the “daily struggle” and “joyous moments” of being a teacher, students attending Bullard, Edison and Hoover high schools told EdSource.
“It’s preparing you for what’s coming,” Edison High student Alyssa Ortiz Ramirez said. “We’re not romanticizing teachers in here; we’re being real.”
A Gibson Elementary first grader drew a picture of Bullard High School student Marianna Fernandez. Photo courtesy of Marianna Fernandez
The high school students spoke about how difficult it is to engage and educate a class full of diverse learners.
“I was confused,” Edison’s Issac Garcia Diaz said about the first time he saw different learning styles among King Elementary students. “I thought everyone learned the same.”
The high schoolers aren’t the only ones learning from the experience; elementary students are more often engaged and supported.
“It’s not just academics. They’re connecting,” Gibson Elementary’s first-grade teacher Caeton said about the teacher academy. “With an older kid, (the elementary students) just come out of their shell a little bit more.”
Hoover High junior Saraih Reyes Baltazar was able to help the diverse learners at Wolters Elementary. Baltazar, who spoke only Spanish when she emigrated from Mexico, explained science concepts to Spanish-speaking students. She narrated parts in English and parts in Spanish, hoping to make the students more comfortable to open up and use more English.
Hoover High graduating seniors Vanessa Melendrez and Johnathon Jones also provided individualized support for Wolters Elementary first graders. Melendrez usually slowed down a lesson to help kids struggling to read at grade level, and Jones most often helped students with comprehending the material.
“There’s only one teacher in the room, and there’s over 20 students,” Melendrez said. “A teacher can’t answer every question while they’re up, teaching.”
Gaining skills
Crowley, the graduating senior who worked in the Gibson Elementary fifth-grade class, said leading whole-class presentations and small-group lessons taught him public speaking and effective communication skills.
“It got me ready for the real world,” he said.
Teachers and students said the Teacher Academy Program in Fresno develops and builds skills that can be used in the teaching profession or any career, including life skills of communication, soft skills such as punctuality and personal skills of confidence.
“It’s broken me out of my shy shell,” said Bullard High’s Fernandez. “It’s taught me how to connect with people — classmates, teachers, students, everyone. It’s made me communicate in ways that I haven’t been comfortable with.”
Fernandez, a graduating senior, was able to talk with substitute teachers about what students were struggling with.
Her mom is a day care provider, and she has always enjoyed working with kids. She joined the Teacher Academy Program to test whether she’d consider majoring in education once in college.
She decided to pursue teaching as a backup plan, she said.
Hoover High School junior Kyrie Green wants to be a math teacher for high school freshmen.
Green, who is shy, viewed stepping out of her comfort zone and leading a classroom as her greatest challenge in becoming an educator.
But her time in the program has helped her speak up, she said. Now she’s looking forward to the next steps in becoming a teacher: graduating and earning a teaching certification.
Making an impact
There isn’t yet a system to track the students who go from a high school pathway into a teacher credentialing program after college, then into the education career, partly because of the number of years between high school graduation and teacher certification.
Students who’ve participated in high school educator pathway programs, such as those in Fresno, have gone on to become teachers, including Thao, the department manager. She worked at an elementary school while in high school, obtained a teaching credential and started teaching at the same elementary school.
“I did what these kids did; I know it works,” she said. “Little by little … we are making an impact.”
Still, only 18% of Americans would encourage young people to become a K-12 teacher, according to a 2022 survey by NORC, previously the National Opinion Research Center, at the University of Chicago.
With the programs in Fresno and San Joaquin County, “We have a whole group of students that are excited to go into a profession that is waning right now,” Hellstrom, Venture Academy’s division director, said.
Whether reaffirming a plan to pursue education or weighing it as an option, students told EdSource that the program has changed their perspective about teaching and has empowered them even more to become educators or to make an impact in another way.
“If I can be a teacher who gives students what they need, like attention, love or anything,” Ortiz Ramirez said, “then that’s why I want to be a teacher.”
I am still making peace with a difficult truth. I am not sure I did enough for my students during my short tenure as a teacher.
After two years as an intern, I held a preliminary credential and felt ready for my sixth grade class. Then I was quickly thrown into a new eighth grade class due to dropping enrollment at Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Just like my students, I felt awkward and uneasy — brand new again. I studied hard and quickly. I had amazing students who learned with me. But, I still think about Luis, a smart young man who struggled with reading, yet could understand complex concepts.
Luis and I both worked hard but needed more support than we were getting. I woke up at 3 a.m. daily as we approached eighth grade promotion, trying to think of how to reach him while there was still time. Unfortunately, by the end of that school year, our city, state and nation began to feel the effects of a recession.
Pink slips had been issued. I had other options and left teaching.
Now I am an advocate focused on how to improve student learning and teacher working conditions and outcomes. Nearly two decades later, we have a lot of the same problems — economic volatility, dropping enrollment and revolving teacher shortages. We can add the pandemic and its aftermath. It has been a downward spiral for teachers, with many leaving the profession and districts raising alarm bells about cuts.
There is one key difference, though.
We now have access to a powerful data tool, Teaching Assignment Monitoring Outcomes (TAMO), a data set that reflects student access to teachers who are appropriately assigned and fully credentialed in the subject area and for the students they are teaching. This data is available statewide and can be traced to the school level. It ultimately reveals where we need greater focus and investment on teacher recruitment and retention.
A third year of data was just released on DataQuest. Eighty-three percent of the state’s teachers are fully prepared. That is a good average, but it still leaves nearly 1 in 7 classes taught by teachers who are not fully credentialed and properly assigned. We also must analyze the data across and within districts to assess the equitable access to qualified teachers for low-income students, students of color, English learners and other student subgroups in our diverse student population.
Educators, parents, policymakers, advocates, and community leaders can conduct that equity analysis and engage in transparent, local conversations to examine unique areas of need such as disparities between schools with high and low proportions of English learners at the same district, or shortages in specific areas such as math or career technical education.
Public access to this data allowed our colleagues at The Education Trust–West (Ed Trust-West) to develop the TAMO Data Dashboard. They found, within districts, that schools with the highest percentages of students of color and low-income students have less access to fully prepared and properly assigned teachers. The tool also shows where higher proportions of high-need students are associated with more access to qualified teachers. By exploring this data we could identify places that have successful policies and practices to effectively and equitably recruit and retain fully prepared teachers.
While a wide variety exists, districts also have their own systems to closely track hiring, retention and vacancies. Actionable and publicly accessible teacher data systems are critical in our long-term quest to effectively and equitably staff schools. Oakland Unified, where 61% of teachers are fully prepared, has developed a public dashboard to track teacher retention data disaggregated by race and ethnicity. Oakland also employs a teacher satisfaction survey to help potentially identify systemic issues with teacher working conditions much sooner. It is possible to address teacher stress and provide more support to newer teachers at specific schools, for example, before they become overwhelmed and take steps toward leaving their jobs.
District, county and state leaders who use data to precisely define their teacher workforce challenges may have more capacity to envision solutions, such as those in the California Educator Diversity Roadmap, published by Californians for Justice, Public Advocates and Ed Trust-West.
Teachers have enormous impact on individual life trajectories, school communities, and, in the aggregate, whole societies. We must prioritize and invest in the potential of teachers as we recruit, train and retain them to help students also reach their full potential.
Luis and I didn’t get what we needed back in 2008, but we had assets. I built on mine when I moved on from El Sereno Middle School, and I hope he did too. We have much better access to data today. We must match that data with action.
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Angelica Salazar is senior policy advocate on the education equity team of Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination.
The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Tylyn Fields, with some of her fifth-grade students, is now a beloved teacher. But she almost never made it to the classroom.
Courtesy: Tylyn Fields
During California’s most recent teacher shortage, Tylyn Fields, a trained social worker, saw teaching as a calling and a promising career. Smart and motivated to make a difference, she was an excellent candidate for the high-need schools in the community where she lived and worked. Sadly, her research into teacher education revealed an impossible choice. A quality preservice program would require quitting her job for a year of unpaid coursework and student teaching. Taking out more loans was a nonstarter: she already owed thousands for previous student loans.
We desperately need more well-trained teachers across the state. And while there are countless aspiring teachers eager to make a difference in their communities, the financial barriers to entering the profession are pushing promising candidates toward emergency credentials or away from teaching altogether. Teaching is a public service profession. For too many, their future earnings as public school teachers are not enough to pay back the upfront costs of preparation, causing them to enter the profession as an Intern with little or no training so they can earn a salary, or simply give up on the idea of becoming a teacher.
California has made impressive progress in recent years to begin addressing this issue. In 2019, the state began investing in the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program to offer $20,000 tuition grants for teacher candidates who commit to teaching in high-need schools. And over the past 5 years the program has evolved to prioritize candidates who need the funding most and who seek meaningful teacher preparation before becoming teachers.
The GSTG program has made an extraordinary difference for thousands of teachers, including Tylyn. At the Alder Graduate School of Education, we focus on community-based recruitment of aspiring teachers and saw a significant jump in applications thanks to GSTG. Without the financial support from the state, Tylyn said she would have waited until she could pay off her student loans – about 10 years, she estimated.
To extend allocated funding for longer, GSTG awards were cut in half – to $10,000 – and the funding has run out. The Governor’s revised May budget for 2025-26 includes $64.2 million for the program, which is barely enough to extend GSTG for one more year. By the time the funding could be signed into law, teacher candidates will already be enrolled in programs, having less of a potential impact on recruitment.
We propose three big ideas to better support California’s teacher preparation pipeline.
Establish consistent financial aid for aspiring teachers so that districts and preparation programs can share reliable recruitment offers with candidates. Multi-year funding for the GSTG program is one way to do this and would allow for more reliable messaging to candidates. Another could be a teacher candidate loan program that could draw from Proposition 98 funds that are somewhat more shielded from the volatility of California’s General Fund.
Create a layered system of needs-based financial support, with baseline financial support for those meeting need criteria, and layered support for candidates who commit to a high-need subject, school, or region. This would broaden access for lower-income individuals while giving the state tools for influencing candidates’ choices.
Restructure aid such that pre-service preparation can compete with the financial appeal of emergency pathways. Ideally, candidates could earn pay and benefits while they learn to teach and have their training costs paid for. We wisely do this for Army and police cadets because it’s unthinkable that we’d send them directly to the field without training or have them pay for their own training. Similarly, teacher candidates should be paid for their pursuit of this public service profession.
In these tight budget times, the most helpful short-term action is to increase the proposed GSTG reinvestment to cover at least two or three years of awards, so that it is useful for teacher recruitment.
Ending with some great news: after enrolling in Alder’s pre-service residency program, Tylyn graduated a year later with a teaching credential and master’s degree in Education, and took a job as a elementary school teacher in her local school district. She is about to enter her second year of teaching and she is thriving – her students, principal and colleagues are grateful she was able to become a teacher. As a state, let’s continue to push forward with the good reforms we started six years ago, so that many more candidates like Tylyn can find their way to the classroom.
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Heather Kirkpatrick is CEO and president of Alder Graduate School of Education, a nonprofit, community-based, professional workforce development pathway that partners with public TK-12 school systems across California.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
