Teaching is a calling, but it's also a profession. Most teachers begin their career by earning a credential that authorizes them to teach.

In This Lesson

What is a teaching credential?

Who issues teaching credentials?

What is accreditation?

What do teacher prep programs do?

What is an alternative teaching credential?

What is an emergency teaching credential?

How many teachers are underprepared?

How does Teach for America train teachers?

Should certification programs be local?

Are credential programs effective?

What is the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC)?

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★ Discussion Guide.

This lesson explains how educators in California are prepared and certified to work in the classroom. It also addresses criticisms of the certification system.

Supply and demand for teachers

School districts and charter schools hire teachers when they have open positions and money available to fill them. Demand can vary based on local conditions, but the state budget matters a lot. When the economy booms, tax receipts rise, the state budget expands, and funds flow to school districts. Job openings blossom on EdJoin like California poppies in spring.

Most teachers earn their credentials at a college.

Inevitably, at these times there's a teacher shortage. Districts struggle to find good candidates with the required credentials. To fill their classrooms, they might recruit teachers away from other schools if they can. If not, they might resort to expedited hiring using emergency credentials.

When a boom ends, the conditions reverse. The state budget contracts, and school district budgets freeze. Listings on EdJoin dry up. If the downturn is severe, districts may have to let teachers go, usually on the basis of seniority, which we discuss in Ed100 Lesson 3.10. This boom-bust hiring pattern, sometimes known as churn, can have a particularly significant impact on schools in high-poverty communities. (The challenges of teacher placement will be explored further in Ed100 Lesson 3.4.)

Most teaching credentials are earned in programs offered by colleges or universities. The California State University system (CSU) is particularly crucial to California's supply of teachers. When overall market demand for teachers changes, either upward or downward, it has a big impact on the colleges and programs that prepare teacher candidates for certification. For these institutions, cyclical demand is a constant source of frustration.

How are most teachers certified?

The Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) established the expectation that all teachers should be highly qualified in an official way. This expectation persists in law today, and it influences the widespread use of certification programs, partly as a form of evidence.

Most teachers earn their credential as part of a college program. While it’s possible to finish in four years with perfect scheduling, most students take five. The state Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) oversees the requirements, guided by legislation. Rules change from time to time. For example, in 2021, legislation directed the CTC to modify its reading standards to reflect evidence about how children learn to read, drawing on research about how to effectively teach kids with dyslexia.

Credentials come in many flavors, meant to reflect each educator's readiness to teach particular grade levels and subject areas. For example, specific credentials signal that teachers are prepared to teach English Learners or students with disabilities. California law requires districts to verify the credential status of the teachers they employ. Credentials must be renewed every five years with a little paperwork.

Once a college or other institution is accredited to issue teaching credentials, it is responsible for quality control related to student admissions, course content, rigor, and candidate assessment. In principle, institutions that lack rigor or do a bad job can lose their accreditation status.

Alternative paths to a credential

In addition to colleges, teachers may obtain credentials through alternative credential providers. A few large school districts (such as Oakland USD) run their own certification programs in order to efficiently promote talented teacher aides and substitutes into full teaching roles.

Having a strong pool of teaching candidates is a persistent concern in California. California's Commission for Teacher Credentialing reports annually to the California legislature about the future supply of teacher candidates, based on enrollments in teacher preparation programs.

When schools need teachers and districts have funds to hire them, they don’t sit around and wait. If fully-credentialed teachers aren't available, districts resort to accepting intern credentials or other temporary permits on an emergency basis. This is legal as long as the candidate can meet standards set by the State Board of Education. The Learning Policy Institute keeps an eye out for looming teacher shortages across the USA.

To spur the development of teacher preparation programs and meet federal requirements, California collects data about the future "supply" of teachers — a rare success story when it comes to education data in this state. Even so, California schools are chronically short of candidates.

Teacher shortages can feel like an abstract topic, so it helps to think about what actually happens. When a kid is stuck in a classroom without a prepared adult, time passes and money is spent, but learning crawls to a halt. Teacher shortages need to be understood as a very expensive form of waste. How expensive? Learn more about it in Ed100 lesson 4.3, which explains how to put a dollar value on wasted school time.

In 2022, EdSource released a district-by-district analysis of available data related to teacher shortages. In 2026, Ed100 extended the analysis, focusing on California schools that rely most heavily on teachers with emergency-style credentials and comparing their results on the California School Dashboard to other schools serving similar student populations. Unsurprising patterns emerged: Reliance on emergency credentials is a marker of schools under stress, correlated with higher levels of student suspension and poor academic outcomes.

Are teachers in your district's schools fully certified? It can be hard to know. The state Department of Education makes data available through its DataQuest system, usually at a delay of about three years. You can look up individual teachers here.

Should teacher credentials matter so much?

Do credentials really matter? Oversimplifying greatly, there are two schools of thought about them: less is more, and more is more.

More is more. Some argue that credentials should be hard to get and narrowly defined in order to protect children from unqualified teachers. This point of view was ascendant in the first decade of the 21^st century, partly driven by a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) that every teacher must be certified as highly qualified.

Less is more. The "less is more" perspective argues that complex credential requirements do more harm than good. In this view, detailed requirements deter good people from entering the teaching profession, lock teachers out of course assignments where they are needed, and waste talent.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the "less is more" perspective came back to prominence with the elimination of two standardized tests, CBEST and CSET, which until 2021 teacher candidates were required to pass. (Most found the tests depressingly easy and passed them on the first try. Here are sample questions from the CBEST math test. What do you think?)

As part of the licensing process, California teacher candidates must pass a review process known as the Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA). In 2024, “less is more” advocates pushed for legislation to eliminate this requirement, too — it was notorious as a paperwork-intensive exercise, and many teachers resented it. In 2025, a workgroup (RDI-TPA) undertook a redesign process instead, focusing on improvements to make the assessment more relevant. As of this writing in late 2026, reforms are scheduled for implementation by July 2028.

Are teacher shortages overblown?

Teacher shortages are a constant topic in the news. Some have argued that California has a habit of crying wolf about them. There may be a shortage of teachers willing to work in certain districts, or in specific subjects — especially special education, math, and science — but there are many people who could be teachers.

There is some truth to this argument, but it kind of misses the point. From the perspective of students, it would certainly be better for there to be a surplus of qualified, motivated teachers who would be eager and proud to teach in each local school. It's better to have a choice of candidates. A teacher labor market that lacks a standing surplus might be theoretically efficient, but it would always leave the hard-to-staff schools short of talent.

Faster certification options

California's requirements for becoming a teacher can dissuade talented candidates. To make help qualified candidates begin teaching sooner, the state allows teachers with intern credentials to begin teaching while completing their preparation. Candidates must meet initial eligibility requirements, including at least 120 hours of preservice preparation.

Teach For America (TFA) is a prominent organization that uses this accelerated path. It selectively recruits college graduates, provides initial training over several months, and supports them as they begin teaching while working toward full certification. Does this kind of speedy preparation process compromise student learning? Apparently not. A 2024 analysis of 23 studies found that students taught by TFA teachers performed slightly better in math, substantially better in science, and about the same in English language arts compared with students taught by other teachers.

Can districts certify their own teachers?

Communities want teachers who understand their children, including the strengths, challenges, and cultures that they bring with them to school. Some districts have addressed this demand by developing a grow your own strategy, helping students advance from local community colleges to become locally-credentialed teachers. The California State University system is working to support the development of teachers with a sense of place as part of their Pathways to Teaching and Education Careers effort.

How useful are teacher credential programs?

It's difficult to find people who are enthusiastic about the way that teachers are prepared in California. The state has long been more fixated on finding enough teacher candidates than on making sure they are good.

In 2013, the National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) evaluated teacher preparation programs in each state. California was graded a D, up from a D- the prior year. The Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (yes, there really is an association for everything in education) collected objections to the low grade. In 2014, a scathing report by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education piled on, concluding that many teacher preparation programs "lack rigor."

Did the public shaming help? Apparently not. After the bad grade, the state of California simply stopped providing data to NCTQ for comparison. California's CTC convened a high-profile advisory panel in 2013, which generated a thick report with forty recommendations for change. EdSource helpfully slimmed the advice down to seven challenges. As of this writing it's difficult to argue that any of them have been met. In 2025 NCTQ again slammed California for its weak teacher preparation: “California programs perform among the lowest in the country.”

When an underprepared teacher lands their first job, it doesn't tend to go well. An awful lot of them quit. The next lesson examines what schools can do to support teachers so that they stay and succeed.

This lesson was updated in October 2026.