Even today few people really understand how special interest lobbyists craft education legislation in ways that enrich private business without necessarily doing anything for students. High-interest student loans and expensive test fees for teacher certifications didn’t just fall fully formed out of the sky. They were in many cases clothed in the noblest of intentions but at heart designed to make certain people rich.
We need only look to California to see an example of this process at work: The state is currently facing a severe teacher shortage—the result of its blinkered teacher credentialing policies—that will affect hundreds of thousands of public school students. The story of how it arrived here should serve as a warning to other states about how to avoid policies that serve special interests while doing nothing for, or even harming, educational outcomes.
The best way to begin this story is by posing a basic question: How did teacher credential programs in California become so expensive and bureaucratic?
In 1998, California state senator Deirdre “Dede” Alpert and Assembly Member Kerry Mazzoni introduced SB 2042, passed by the California legislature and signed into law that same year. Teacher preparation requirements had not been updated since the Ryan Act of 1970; SB 2042 was supposed to establish new teacher preparation program requirements. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing was given the authority to establish new teacher education curriculum and program standards.
SB 2042 was subsequently revised under the influence of the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation. The law burdened many states and public school districts with Federal mandates on penalty of losing Federal funding. Indeed, SB 2042 was revised before it was fully implemented, and as it faced headwinds from NCLB’s intense focus on teacher and student accountability. The initial intent of SB 2042 was to streamline the credentialing process, but instead SB 2042 ended up making individuals jump through even more bureaucratic hoops. Students in the California Teacher Credential Programs contend that certain classes are unnecessary and repetitive.
Student teachers also have to pass tedious Teacher Performance Assessments (TPAs) and must pay hefty fees to the private companies that administer these tests for the dubious privilege. They also must pay for and pass the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) and the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET) tests. The Multiple Subject and Single Subject Preliminary Credential Program Standards is now a two- to three-year teacher credential program that can be quite expensive. With all the requirements, many student teachers fall into debt, with some owing as much as $50,000.
These teacher preparation programs are too long, bureaucratic, expensive, and unaccommodating for older, working adults who have been in the labor force for decades and have full-time jobs to juggle while enrolled in the teacher credentialing program. It is easier for younger students already enrolled in a university to obtain a teaching credential, but they are liable to meet the same fate that every aspirant faces: colliding with the union-supported seniority system in place in most public school districts.
A highly experienced, motivated, and knowledgeable individual in his or her thirties or forties who manages to get through the credentialing barriers to entry will then face the disheartening fact that there are no job openings for a grade level or subject that she or he is expert in. Many end up quitting the teacher credential program and moving into substitute teaching. Those who make it through will often be sent to some of the toughest schools, where new teachers are often treated like migrant workers. They work intensely with minimal pay as administrators micromanage their every move in the classroom. No wonder so many burn out within the first or second year of teaching, even after having gone $30,000 to $50,000 in debt.
And that is why California now faces an acute teacher shortage: The public education special interests and for-profit credentialing industry got greedy and overplayed their hands. In their zeal to limit competition, they have created as massive public policy crisis.
Have teacher or student performance improved due to SB 2042? Not necessarily. Have state bureaucratic requirements increased for the purpose of rewarding politicians, empowering bureaucrats, and enriching testers and banks? Yes. By raising barriers to entry in teaching, has the implementation of SB 2042 harmed the children of the state of California? Yes, indeed.
SB 2042 needs urgent revision, and the current crisis should help get that done. It should not take more than two years to get a teaching credential. It should be a one-year (academic) program heavy on concepts and theory that leads to a one-year paid internship at a school that embraces and supports student teachers. Teachers do not really learn to teach in an education program; they learn to teach from mentors in an actual classroom.
The system should also not take advantage of free labor, as it does now, by requiring three months of full-time unpaid teaching by student teachers. How is someone supposed to pay rent or a mortgage if required to work for free for three months? Clearly, a revised SB 2042 should not punish professionals who want to switch careers and become public school teachers, as it does now.
Fixing California’s teacher credentialing requirements is not rocket science. There is no intellectual problem here; there is only a political problem. The legislature is in thrall to politicians doing the bidding of banks and testing contractors. No one seems to speak for the children. So maybe it’s time for parents to throw a temper tantrum on their behalf.