In California, as elsewhere, most teachers enter their profession by first earning a credential, a document authorizing them to teach. In California’s public schools a credential is mandatory.

Although teacher preparation programs vary, candidates generally spend limited time in actual classrooms. Most new teachers arrive in school with little practical classroom experience. A combination of “sink or swim” experiences and formal on-the-job training gets them through the first few years.

In California, about half of new teachers earn their credentials through the CSU system

In most states, including California, teachers tend to earn their credentials through a university-based program. Nearly half of California's teachers earn their credentials through the California State University (CSU) system, usually through a four- or five-year course of study. The rules for credentials are set by a combination of legislation and policies of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC). The 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 dyslexia.

The CTC authorizes colleges and universities to offer teacher credential programs in a variety of grade-level and content areas and for special student populations such as English learners and students with disabilities. Once an institution is accredited, it is responsible for quality control related to student admissions, course content, rigor, and candidate assessment.

Alternative paths to a credential

In addition to attending universities, teachers may obtain credentials through alternative credential providers or may work in the classroom as interns. The Federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) established in law the expectation that all teachers should be highly qualified, and this expectation persists in federal law today.

Having a strong pool of teaching candidates is a 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 of any kind. The training pipeline ran dry in 2013, perhaps largely because candidates understood the job market. Why enroll to become a teacher if the jobs weren't going to be there at the end of the program?

When schools need teachers and districts have funds to hire them, they don’t sit around and wait. If fully-prepared teachers are unavailable, school districts resort to using emergency teaching credentials. This is legal as long as the candidate can meet standards set by the state board. The Learning Policy Institute keeps an eye out for looming teacher shortages across the USA.

California has prompt and accurate data about the future "supply" of teachers — a rare success story when it comes to government data in this state. Much education data, like many other kinds of government data, is delivered by tortoises with a delay of about three years; analysis of the data can take even longer.

Even with good data, however, it is difficult to address a teacher shortage promptly. A state budget increase can boost demand for teachers quite suddenly throughout the state. All at once, it seems, everyone is hiring, and there aren’t enough good candidates. The market adjusts, but at a delay. It takes time for teacher-prep programs to recruit and train instructors. It takes time to secure space, enroll prospective teachers and train them.

The imbalance between supply and demand can lead districts to respond in several ways, including lowering their hiring standards to fill positions. These are the times when unions make the case for higher pay, for example. Some districts, desperate to fill open positions, will hire under-qualified candidates on an emergency basis; some of them will become permanent hires.

In 2022, EdSource released a district-by-district analysis of available data related to teacher shortages. The headline finding: “While 83% of K-12 classes in the 2020-21 school year were taught by teachers credentialed to teach that course, 17% were taught by teachers who were not.”

Are teachers in your district fully certified? An interactive map from the Learning Policy Center lets you take a look at the data.

Are teacher shortages overblown?

Teacher shortages have become an annual concern, and some have argued that the system is crying wolf. There may be a shortage of teachers willing to work in certain districts, or in specific subjects – especially special education, math, and science – but, they argue, there is not a shortage of teachers across the board.

There may be some truth to this argument, but it is clearly true that when the economy changes significantly the supply of good teachers always seems mismatched. From the perspective of parents and students, when hiring teachers it's better to have a choice of candidates.

Faster certification options

Not all teacher preparation programs are lengthy. For example, the training program of Teach for America (TFA), which selectively recruits new teachers, is famously short: in contrast to the usual two-year program offered by education schools, the TFA program lasts less than two months. A number of studies, but not all, indicate that Teach for America's elite rookies perform as well and sometimes better than graduates of longer programs, particularly for middle and high school math.

Teach for America is not immune from the nationwide difficulty in attracting new teachers. Faced with declining enrollment, it has revamped recruitment strategies and changed its training program to provide more extended support for its teachers.

Can districts certify their own teachers?

Communities want teachers who understand their children, including the strengths, challenges, and culture 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.

Should certification programs be rigorous?

Do credentials really matter? Should they? 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, to protect children from unqualified teachers. This point of view was generally ascendant in the first decade of the 21^st century, partly driven by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requirement that every teacher is certified as highly qualified. It takes several years to obtain a teaching credential through normal channels.

Less is more. The "less is more" perspective argues that complex credential requirements do more harm than good by deterring good people from entering the teaching profession, protecting less-talented teachers from competition, and wasting time.

Perhaps the purest example of this concept is the recommendation of the Education Excellence committee that county superintendents should have the authority to write credential waivers for individual candidates.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, these recurring questions came back to prominence, particularly in connection to two standardized tests, CBEST and CSET, that teacher candidates are required to pass and love to loathe. Strong teacher candidates tend to find the tests depressingly easy. Governor Newsom proposed to waive them for teacher candidates that earn good marks in university-based prep programs.

How useful are teacher credential programs?

In 2014, a scathing report by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) argued that many teacher preparation programs lack rigor.

In 2014, a scathing report of the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) argued that many teacher preparation programs lack rigor. The report called for sweeping changes in accreditation of teacher preparation programs to make them more relevant.

California withdrew from the quality review system after receiving a D

In 2013, the National Council for Teacher Quality (NCTQ) evaluated teacher preparation programs in California. The state 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. The state of California subsequently stopped providing data to NCTQ for this evaluation.

Partly in response to this national conversation, California's CTC convened a high-profile advisory panel in 2013, which generated a thick report with forty recommendations for change. EdSource slimmed its advice down to seven recommendations. But since the report, the state of California has mainly been consumed by addressing the chronic shortage of teachers.

How did the pandemic affect teacher supply?

It will take time to sort out the implications of the pandemic on supply and demand in the market for teachers. The pandemic triggered widespread resignations throughout the economy, including schools. In general, periods of high turnover create conditions for change in teacher pay as districts struggle to attract candidates for open positions.

This lesson was updated May, 2017; March, 2018; September 2018; February 2021; and August 2022