Teacher Preparation
The nation needs great teachers. Over the past nine years, the CSU has prepared nearly 100,000 fully qualified teachers. An updated and improved Elementary and Secondary Education Act can help strengthen recruitment, preparation, and support of new teachers.
Meeting the Need: The California State University has, over the last decade, prepared more of California’s teachers than all other institutions combined, and roughly 8 percent of the nation’s. Over the past five years, the CSU has nearly doubled (to 1,500 per year) the number of math and science teachers it prepares, over half of whom work in schools in which the majority of children are from families in poverty.
Leading the Way: The CSU is playing a lead role nationally in the transformative redesign of teacher preparation. Twenty-two CSU campuses are preparing P-12 teachers in innovative ways, working in close partnership with local schools. They focus on preparing outstanding new teachers who are effective with all students, giving special attention to the challenges of urban and rural communities and to preparing new teachers through experiential, practice-based, and engaged learning.
Emphasizing Accountability: The CSU has for a decade evaluated and refined its preparation programs by surveying school principals who rate the quality of its graduates, and by surveying the graduates themselves after a year of teaching about how well they were prepared for the classroom. The CSU has also put in place an advanced process to analyze the impact of its teacher graduates on student performance, using P-12 student achievement growth and value added outcome measures.
CSU Priorities for 2012: As Congress and the Administration work to strengthen teacher recruitment, preparation, and support in a reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the CSU supports legislation that will:
Reward the Most Promising Reforms: Institutions of higher education should be eligible to compete as principal grantees for the same funding opportunities as local education agencies or philanthropic organizations in all teacher preparation programs. Co-equal opportunities for funding encourage sustained partnerships between P–12 and higher education, help develop and retain teachers for hard to staff schools, and, along with clear partnership requirements, significantly advance clinical teacher preparation designs.
Target Funds to High-Need Schools and Shortage Fields: Federal funding should explicitly target high-need schools and teacher preparation in shortage fields, such as science, mathematics, and special education. Successful aspects of the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) program should be retained, and a dedicated source of funds (similar to the current 2.5 percent set-aside for IHE’s in Title II, ESEA) should be provided for partnerships between IHEs and high need school districts (which often lack significant resources for grant writing) for the professional development of both new and current teachers and school leaders.
Support Data-Driven Accountability in Teacher Preparation: The CSU encourages explicit provisions that advance rigorous measurement and evaluation of both candidate and program outcomes. Improving teacher preparation requires accountability by institutions of higher education and necessitates direct funding for building high-quality systems for tracking performance of graduates, the impact they have on P-12 students, and retention in the profession.