TCLA: What do you think is a reasonable remedy to the problem of California schools having to employ such a high number of uncredentialed teachers?
Linda Darling-Hammond: California schools don’t have to employ uncredentialed teachers. There are 1.3 million teachers with credentials in California and about 300,000 jobs. But these people are just not teaching. The problem really has to do with the adequacy of salary level and teaching conditions and the inequality in schools that serve poor and minority students. If California wanted to remedy the so-called teaching shortage the policy response ought to be higher and more equalized salaries across districts and much larger incentives for people who want to go into teaching to prepare to teach. These include forgivable loans and low interest rates. Additional incentives should target science fields, shortages in particular locations like the big cities, high minority districts, and teachers of colors.
Right now teachers of color are coming in with emergency credentials and 30% are gone in three years and 70 % in five years. If these teachers had access to pre-service education and the advantage of doing their coursework before they got in the classroom, their stay would be longer.
For every teacher who leaves in the early years, the overall cost to all of the parties is about $8,000. We have to turn that money toward the support that people need to be successful.
Another problem is that California is the only state in the country to get rid of undergraduate teacher education. That is the primary mode of teacher education for the rest of the nation. Doing away with undergraduate teacher education made it much harder for people to get on a pathway to teaching and to get their preparation in a cost-effective manner.
Finally, while California was trying to hire hundreds of thousands of teachers there was a surplus of teachers elsewhere who could not be hired because California did not have reciprocity with other states. California is the only state that requires people to take four tests before they can enter a teacher education program. You have to take 2 subject matter tests, PRAXIS and SSAT. If you’re elementary you have to take the MSAT (Multiple Subjects Assessment for Teachers) and the RICA (Reading Instruction Competence Assessment). In California, you can’t even student teach until you’ve passed all these tests. On the other hand you can be hired to teach in LA without having passed any of these. It’s kind of a bizarre policy environment that in many ways had the effect of creating it’s own shortages.
Prop 13 is implicated because funding declined in the 80’s and 90’s, the inadequacy of the salaries and working conditions really became pronounced. California ranks at the bottom of all of the states in terms of the support that it gives to its schools. We have to dig out of a situation that allowed low income and high minority schools to be predominately staffed by people who had not had an opportunity to learn how to teach. There is a strong correlation between teachers with emergency credentials and students who pass the state examination.
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