California’s teacher credentialing agency wants to help aspiring educators get certified

The path to becoming a teacher in California might seem daunting, but the agency tasked with certifying the state’s public school educators wants to help demystify the process.

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing recently unveiled its new “Roadmap to Teaching ‘‘ initiative, a project funded by $1.4 million in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2022-23 budget to help prospective educators navigate the path to certification.

The initiative is another strategy the state has employed to try and fix its teacher shortage. The number of new teaching credentials issued by the state dropped 16% between the 2020-21 fiscal year and 2021-22, according to the commission’s most recent annual report to the Legislature. (Early indicators suggest the number increased in 2022-23, according to the commission.)

As part of the roadmap, the commission’s IT team developed new online tools to help teachers-to-be determine what credentials they need and whether they’ve met the basic skills requirements for math, reading and writing proficiency.

The credential you need largely depends on what profession you want to pursue. To become a middle or high school teacher, for example, you’ll likely need a single-subject credential in the discipline you want to teach. But, if you dream of teaching in elementary classrooms, a multiple-subject credential is what you want. Educators who want to work with young children could also pursue an early childhood education credential.

“Credentialing definitely has its own lingo,” said Erin Skubal, director of certification for the commission and one of the leaders of the roadmap project. “All the different pathways are somewhat confusing.”

Over the years, the Legislature has worked hard to establish various paths to become an educator. Instead of requiring everyone to take the California Basic Educational Skills Test, or CBEST, prospective educators can demonstrate their basic skills through sufficient scores on standardized exams such as the ACT, SAT and various College Board Advanced Placement tests.

Skubal’s team fields questions every day from future educators, and over the years, they realized the abundance of available pathways was incredibly confusing. They would receive call after call that boiled down to, “I just want to be an elementary school teacher. What do I need to do?”

Now, Skubal and her team can direct callers to the digital modules that suggest credentialing paths based on their career goals. Then, step-by-step, they can fill in their various exam and course credits to see if they meet the basic skills requirements.

For those who want even more support, the roadmap’s $1.4 million budget funds a new staff of eight career counselors who can provide one-on-one guidance to prospective educators. All you have to do is fill out an online request form, Skubal said, and a counselor will reply within a few days to schedule an appointment, typically within the same week.

Does the program reduce enough barriers?

Sasha Sidorkin, dean of Sacramento State’s college of education, agreed with Skubal that the state’s credentialing process can be confusing and highly bureaucratic. Although the commission is tasked with certifying educators, it’s the Legislature that often gives new directives and creates hoops that candidates must then jump through.

“None of the individual measures are unreasonable,” Sidorkin said of the Legislature’s mandates, “but if you add them all together, it creates something of a byzantine system for regulating teacher standards.”

Although the credentialing process is tricky to navigate, that isn’t the biggest barrier to teaching in California, Sidorkin argues.

“For many of our students, it’s a financial hardship,” Sidorkin said of the certification process. “A lot of our students work full-time or part-time.”

Programs like Roadmap to Teaching can help reduce some of the barriers to a career in education. But, without more easily accessible funding options, recruiting and training more teachers will be challenging. The problem will be solved, he argues, when teacher candidates have a way to earn a livable wage for their entire program.

Perhaps an even bigger challenge, though, is keeping teachers in the profession once they’ve earned all their certifications. Sidorkin argues that the districts need to step up and ensure their teaching staff feel supported – both morally and financially.

“We prepare the teachers. The districts just can’t keep them”