Courtesy: Eric Lewis / SFUSD
A key bill that could help California schools more effectively recruit and retain teachers has passed the Legislature.
Senate Bill 1391 would require the state’s new Cradle to Career (C2C) data system to provide data that answers critical questions about California’s teacher workforce, including trends in teacher training, certification, recruitment, retention, and the effectiveness of key programs to address the teacher shortage.
I think about this bill as I prepare to conduct a summer science workshop for nearly two dozen middle and high school science teachers from a variety of backgrounds. We will be rolling out a core science curriculum before the start of next year.
I know that these teachers have a hard time in their first few years in the classroom, and their first year is maximum It’s challenging. They are often overwhelmed with time management issues. They try to plan lessons, grade students’ work, attend many meetings at school and district level, and build relationships with students.
This first-year challenge is evident in our data. Last year, our district lost about 17 percent of its K-12 staff. That means we need a lot of new teachers, especially those from diverse backgrounds, to work with a diverse student body.
The good news is that California is trying to stem the loss of teachers through a number of innovative programs and resources. There have been efforts to get more people into the profession through the Golden State Teacher Grant, which pays stipends while teacher candidates earn their certification, and through a variety of teacher residency programs that we run in partnership with our school districts. The National Board Certification Grant for Teachers will also help keep more teachers in the profession by providing additional professional learning opportunities and additional funding possibilities once they earn their certification.
In my district, like many others, we have built teacher housing in the city, won a recent pay raise, and used state incentives to help teachers fill hard-to-fill subjects and schools.
All of these programs are great and certainly part of the solution, but are they working? How do we know? Are all these dollars and supports actually reaching the teachers and populations that need them? Are the states doing enough to provide us with the data to help us make the right decisions? We don’t have the information to answer these questions at this point.
The Cradle-to-Career Dashboard can provide important data on how effective our teacher grant programs and teacher education pipelines are, but they have not yet reached their full potential. While the Governor and Legislature debate difficult choices about state resources, including SB 1391, we cannot afford to delay investing in the future of our workforce. We must first get a clear picture of what programs are working and what are not, and then do everything we can to maintain programs that ensure all students have access to well-supported teachers who reflect the diversity of our state.
Once we know what works, we need to play the long game and focus on what new teachers need to be well-prepared and supported. We need to focus on how to bring diverse populations into the profession. Our teacher education programs need to connect our newest teachers to mentoring programs and affinity groups to help them overcome the challenges of their first few years. We need to identify and support programs that provide mentors or additional preparation time for new teachers (these programs are rare, but they help prevent our newest teachers from burning out too quickly). Through all of this, we need to be laser-focused on what helps our incredibly diverse student populations succeed. Let the Cradle-to-Career database inform how to make this future a reality.
So, I don't know how many of the teachers I work with in the summer science lab will stay in SFUSD next year, but I hope so. And I hope we have data to better understand why they stay, so we can know what to do better next year and in the future.
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Eric Lewis He works as a secondary science content specialist in the Science Curriculum and Instruction department of the San Francisco Unified School District, supporting middle and high school science teachers. He is a 2023-24 Teach Plus California Policy Fellow.
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