Once again this year, the Legislature has focused some of its attention and proposals on teacher preparation and more specifically on three important themes including, career technical education, administrator training, and teacher recruitment.

Career Technical Education (CTE)
CTE continues to be an important issue to Governor Schwarzenegger; in fact his administration is the sponsor of SB 52, authored by Senator Jack Scott. It would require the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) to make three changes regarding designated subject vocational education credentials. The first would be to rename the credential to the “Career Technical Education Teaching Credential.” The second would be to repeal the authority to issue part-time credentials. The third would require the CCTC to establish a list of authorized subjects for Career Technical Education Credentials that reflect fifteen industry sectors that were identified in the California Career Technical Education Model Curriculum that was adopted by the State Board of Education. The CSU does not have an official position on SB 52, but to the extent that various CSU’s may have to revise and rewrite their career technical educational credential programs, there may be a cost involved; however, a large system wide cost is not anticipated.

Administrator Training
There are a few administrator training bills that are of interest to the CSU, such as AB 1415 sponsored by EdVoice (an educational advocacy group) and authored by Assembly Member Julia Brownley which would require the CCTC to adopt a data evaluation report capable of assessing the effectiveness of CSU (and others) accredited program of professional preparation that provides preparation for the administrative services credential. Unfortunately, the CSU is currently opposed to this bill because it requires a determination as to the effectiveness of administrative credential recipients on “student learning” outcomes. CSU is working with EdVoice, CCTC, the author and others to resolve concerns given that student learning outcomes are affected by many different variables. AB 1415 may also have a significant financial impact on the CSU adding another layer of data collection and data analysis to the current workload within the schools of education.

Another bill of interest is Senate Bill 961 sponsored by Association of California School Administrators and authored by Senator Scott that would establish the Leadership Coaching Program for Public School Administrators. The program would be administered by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell who would be required to award incentive funding to provide leadership coaching to various groups of educators in the order of priority; namely, first or second-year principals, or principals with more than two years of experience. The CSU is working with the sponsor’s and the author to designate students in CSU’s independent Ed. D. programs as a priority for participation regardless of whether they are assigned to program improvement schools. Our Ed. D. programs will then be able to connect their participation with their mentor models.

Teacher Recruitment
The CSU recognizes that the state of California needs to replace at least 100,000 new teachers for its classrooms over the next 10 years. As a result CSU has made high quality teacher recruitment pipeline and preparation, including professional development, a top priority as we prepare California’s teachers. The CSU issues 55 percent of all teaching credentials and 68 percent of all the internship teaching credentials in the state. One measure of interest to increasing the teaching pipeline is SB 44 authored by Senator Tom Torlakson that would establish the California Cadet Program and would create the competitive grant program for partnership schools and institutions of higher educations to create and implement professional development schools for teacher education. The CSU has been working very hard with the author to strengthen SB 44 and we are supportive of this very important educational measure.

Senator Scott also has his SB 193 which creates the California School Paraprofessional Teacher Training Program, which is established to encourage paraprofessionals to enroll in teacher training programs. The CSU is supportive of efforts that assist school districts to work with our schools of education to provide a quality and approved program of credentialing for paraprofessionals. This is especially important with the provision of highly qualified teachers. Paraprofessionals need to have flexible programs that meet the same rigor as our traditional teacher preparation programs.