Policy Statement of the Board of Directors
of the California Council on the Education of Teachers
on the Recommendations of the SB 2042 Panel
Adopted June 13, 2001
The Board of Directors of the California Council on the Education of Teachers appreciates that the SB 2042 Panel has strategically and effectively aligned the California teacher education program standards with the California K-12 content standards as required by law. The resulting recommendations of the Panel are true to both sets of standards, and thus have considerable potential for serving as a guideline for a seamless system of teacher preparation and induction consistent with the needs of the children of our state.
Yet, before the promise of the recommendations can be realized, we urge the attention of the Panel to the following factors:
Working within Limitations: Full and effective implementation of these new recommendations will further strain the already overloaded one-year teacher education programs that lead to the preliminary teaching credential. For more than 30 years teacher education in California has worked within the one-year and 9-unit constraints of the Ryan Act, while regularly adding to the professional requirements mandated for study and mastery within those brief initial programs. We suggest that these limitations on initial professional study were unwise in the first place and have become increasingly counterproductive as we seek to meet higher standards in the preparation of teachers. We understand that the mandate for the SB 2042 Panel has been to operate within the current stipulations of the Ryan Act and other relevant legislation, but we urge that the Panel comment on the manner in which these legislated limitations constrain the potential of initial credential programs. We believe that professional programs should be driven by the available knowledge base and by best practices, rather than by time and unit limitations, and we urge the Panel to speak to those realities.
Long-Range View: The SB 2042 Panel’s recommendations create a potential blueprint for preparation of teachers who will serve the children of our state through careers that span the next four or five decades. For that reason, the initial preparation and ongoing development of effective, creative, reflective, and innovative teachers who can help steer our schools through the first half of the 21st Century must be the primary goal. We urge the Panel to make certain that the language of the recommendations focuses on the theoretical and foundational understandings and creative and reflective skills that our teacher leaders of the coming decades must possess in order to work effectively in and provide leadership for a constantly changing and evolving educational system.
Social Justice, Equity, and Diversity: While the SB 2042 Panel’s recommendations to not explicity work against the concepts of social justice and equity which are shared by and featured in various ways in teacher education programs across the state, we do not find the kind of overarching language of advocacy for children which we feel is needed to continually remind all involved in our educational system that we must be ever-mindful of the diverse needs of the diverse population of students in California’s schools, all of whom must be served in an understanding and effective manner by our teachers.
Multiple Means of Assessment: While we applaud the SB 2042 Panel for not recommending yet another paper and pencil examination for California teachers or their students, we feel the opportunity should not be lost to remind all teachers that there are many different ways to assess student learning and that the well-prepared teacher exercises creativity and reflection in a variety of appropriate assessment practices on a daily basis.
Capacity and Collaboration: The effective implementation of the SB 2042 Panel’s recommendations will necessarily require a significant expansion in the capacity of institutions, agencies, and organizations currently involved in teacher education in California as well as a healthy new range of collaborative activities. We urge the Panel to speak to how collaboration can and should occur between such sectors as higher education, K-12 school districts, county offices of education, professional organizations, research institutes, and other potential partners, and to steps that may be needed for all such partners to learn to think and act in new arenas of collaboration in which the curriculum of teacher education will be effectively spread across several years from initial study to completion of the professional credential. Further, we suggest that the Panel recognize and articulate the developing need for all partners to the teacher education process to be self-critical, reflective, and accountable as collaborators serving the needs of California’s children.
Cost: We are concerned that the state fully recognize the potential costs of implementation of the T.P.A. structure imbedded in the recommendations of the SB 2042 Panel. The development of a seamless process of teacher education and induction that relies on collaboration, increases clinical study and field experience, and bridges the initial and professional credentials will require significant new resources at many stages and levels. We urge the Panel to speak to these realities, since it would be ineffective to implement the T.P.A. without a commitment from the state to fully support such activities. For the T.P.A. to be an effective means of assessing teacher candidate performance, it must be accompanied by an ongoing, high quality system of support. Such a system includes training and calibration of trainers and assessors, ongoing studies of reliability, validity, and test development, and close oversight and administration of the process. We urge the Panel to specifically consider how cost implications of implementing this new system of teacher education will impact private and public institutions differentially. To the extent that there are inequitable burdens imposed by the new system, these inequities should be addressed by the state in its policy and fiscal decisions.
We are also aware that many of our institutional and individual members of the California Council on the Education of Teachers have participated in field forums and responded in other ways to the SB 2042 Panel’s recommendations. We urge the Panel to review and consider all such feedback. We thank the Panel for its invitation for feedback and its willingness to listen to the field.