SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A teacher shortage is affecting schools across the nation, but it’s especially bad in California. A recent study by the California School Boards Association found California ranks 47th among all states for its student-teacher ratio.
Experts and teachers tell ABC10 the teaching workforce is shrinking due to retirements, relatively low pay and burnout. Fewer students are pursuing a career in teaching due to cost and the length of the credentialing process.
“We're facing a little bit of a crisis on the horizon,” said Senator Steve Padilla (D-San Diego).
He recently proposed Senate Bill 995, something he’s calling the High-Quality Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act.
“We need to recruit and train the most diverse, most qualified teacher workforce in the nation,” he said. “California deserves nothing less.”
Padilla’s bill, if passed as written, would create a 5-year pilot program starting in the 2025-26 school year between the three California State University campuses and three nearby California Community Colleges. It could facilitate easier transfers between those community colleges and CSU schools for students studying to become teachers.
It could require the CSUs involved in the pilot program to conduct marketing and outreach at local high schools to encourage a diverse pool of students to pursue a career in teaching.
“We want to be intentional around making sure we're going out more proactively with more resources into high schools and exciting our students about becoming teachers and recruiting them into a program that is less costly, is more effective and you can complete it in four years and build the teacher workforce of tomorrow,” said Padilla.
If passed as written, SB 995 could also allow college students to get their teaching credential in four years, instead of the typical CSU teacher-training program of five years, lowering costs for students.
ABC10 asked whether he has heard pushback over that, concerns that by shaving a year off the credentialing process, the quality would erode.
“The issue really isn't content, curriculum or capability here. The issue is money and costs,” said Padilla. “We’re not going to sacrifice standards here, but we are going to be a lot more efficient with what we're doing.”
If the five-year pilot program is successful, he said, it could be a model to expand to all CSU and community college campuses.
The bill will be heard in the Senate in coming months.
In the meantime, many teachers are feeling the pains of the shortage — and the reasons behind it.
Back in the fall of 2022, ABC10 first spoke with Tiana Andrade, a well-loved special education teacher at Diablo Vista Middle School in Danville.
For three school years now, she has been teaching on essentially emergency waivers, she says, with the state allowing the district to employ her as she works to pass a final test she needs to get her preliminary credential.
“There’s people out there wanting to do this job. They just make it so hard to get there,” she said, of the state’s requirements for teacher credentialing.
Andrade has a master’s degree in education and special education, with a teaching credential in intensive disabilities.
However, this one final test she is required to pass — the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET): Multiple Subjects — contains subject matter well outside what she needs to know as a special education teacher, she said.
“I'm taking a high school geometry teacher’s test when I don't teach geometry. I don't teach reading. I don't teach algebra. I don't teach life science. I don't teach any of that; I teach special ed. We're doing color identification. We're doing letters. We're doing numbers. We're doing waiting out behaviors. We're doing coping skills. We're doing emotional skills,” she said.
Depending on their area of teaching, some teachers can take a test specific to their subject matter, but there is not a CSET test specific to special education, Andrade said.
“Special education is thrown into this category of ‘Oh, a gen-ed teacher.’ And the gen-ed teachers are multiple subjects, so like algebra, geometry, everything I just named,” Andrade said.
She wants the state to “make a test for special ed teachers, and we'll probably all pass and there wouldn't be a shortage.”
She says two other teachers in her district are in the same situation.
“Personally, I've done, like, $10,000 on tests and tutoring,” she said. “We continue to attempt them and just keep failing.”
The district is out of waivers, she said. She’s worried she’ll lose her job after this school year.
“We're lined up out the door being like, ‘Hi, I'm here to teach special education.’ And they're just like, ‘Oh, well, you haven't met this on the list or this. So, thank you, next.’ But there's no one next! So then there's a shortage,” she said. “It's very rare to find people who love special education, and then they're just like, ‘Oh, but you haven't passed a standardized test that's about algebra, so we can't have you in the classroom.’ It just it sucks because there's three of us who might be leaving, and my district is freaking out.”
She grew up in that community and attended Diablo Vista Middle School as a child.
“I'm saying, 'Hi, I want to stay in this classroom for a long time and, you know, raise my family where I grew up.’ But if I can't afford it here and I'm not going to be able to stay because I have to pass a standardized test, then I'm out of here,” she said. "I don't think there's anything wrong with school I work at, or the admin I have, or the district that I have. It's a statewide thing.”
ABC10 reached out to California's Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC).
“The Commission does not have enough information to comment on this specific situation, however there are many flexibilities intended to help individuals move through the statutory credentialing requirements with as many options as possible to demonstrate competence to teach while maintaining high standards,” said CTC spokesperson Anita Fitzhugh.
She pointed ABC10 to the Commission’s interactive Roadmap to Teaching online tools.
That’s where ABC10 learned there are four alternatives to passing the CSET test, although not all might apply to Andrade’s situation.
She said she has a meeting with a teaching official next week to go over her college transcripts. She’s hoping classes she passed will be able to satisfy one of the alternatives to the testing requirements.
