Lessons From San Francisco
Commentary authors
Jessica Lee Stovall
Kristin Smith Alvarez
Laura Hinton
Bobby Pope
Aman Falol
Summary
State agencies and school districts nationwide are actively working to address the problem of teacher shortages, often while simultaneously seeking to diversify their educator workforce. As California grapples with the need to improve learning significantly for a student population that is increasingly linguistically and racially diverse, policymakers must focus on opportunities to attract more teachers to the profession, diversify the teacher workforce statewide, and increase teacher retention. We focus on the explicit credential barriers that candidates face when trying to pass state-required basic skills and subject matter exams as well as on how policy improvements could more effectively diversify the teaching profession so that it better reflects the state’s 75 percent students of color. Specifically, we recommend that the state expand how candidates can meet basic skills and subject matter requirements; gather and disaggregate credential exam data by candidate race/ethnicity; reduce teacher education program costs for both individual candidates and programs; and support increased investments in GYO programs.
