The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing will soon unveil new educator workforce data dashboards describing educator assignments in California.

The CTC has historically overseen statewide monitoring of certificated assignment data by California Statewide Assignment Accountability System (CalSAAS) to ensure educators are appropriately assigned for their positions. As most educators know, California is currently experiencing a teacher shortage and misassignments and vacancies occur more frequently due to external staffing pressures. There are various ways to legally assign an underprepared educator to a classroom and not incur a misassignment: Preliminary Credential, Local Assignment Option, Limited Assignment, Short Term Waiver, Intern Misassignment, Corrected Misassignment, Emergency Permit and Waiver.

The commission developed the new dashboards to fulfill a statutory mandate and to ensure that they are supportive in forming California’s policies impacting the education workforce. These dashboards reflect “fully prepared” and “underprepared” educator assignments, wherein assignment with a “fully prepared” educator means the individual has completed teacher preparation for the 1) setting, 2) subject, and 3) student population served, and “underprepared” means the individual has not completed teacher preparation in at least one of those three areas. Aligning dashboard data between the CTC and California Department of Education will, for the first time, bring educator workforce data into significant alignment with the data presented by other state educational agencies. The new educator workforce dashboards provide new insight into the state’s educator workforce, and will serve as a valuable tool for LEAs, policy makers and advocates to assess the state of the teacher workforce.

Field testing edTPA handbooks The edTPA is a subject-specific performance assessment that evaluates a common set of teaching principles and teaching behaviors as well as pedagogical strategies that are focused on specific content learning outcomes for P-12 students (birth-21 in special education settings). The assessment systematically examines a cycle of teaching aimed at subject-specific student learning goals captured by the three tasks that compose an edTPA portfolio: planning, instruction and assessment.

Field testing the content of edTPA handbooks is intended to meet the requirements in Senate Bill 488 with the intent of serving as a replacement for the currently adopted Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA). Evaluation Systems of Pearson plans to field test the edTPA Multiple Subject, Literacy with Mathematics, and edTPA Education Specialist, Literacy in winter/spring 2025 with Multiple Subject and Education Specialist candidates, respectively.

All candidates for a Preliminary Multiple or Single Subject Teaching Credential are required to pass an assessment of their teaching performance with TK-12 public school students as part of the requirements for earning a preliminary teaching credential. The teaching performance assessment must be approved by the commission and meet its current Performance Assessment Design Standards (PADS).

Staff recommended and the commission approved the following:

1. Approve the edTPA Multiple Subject, Literacy with Mathematics and edTPA Education Specialist, Literacy: MMSN/ESN field tests as proposed for fall 2024 and spring 2025.
2. Approve waiver requests for the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment requirement for candidates who successfully complete the edTPA Multiple Subject, Literacy with Mathematics or the edTPA Education Specialist, Literacy: MMSN/ESN assessments; and to allow this assessment as evidence the candidates have also met the TPA requirement.
3. Adopt a minimum passing standard for the edTPA Multiple Subject, Literacy with Mathematics field test.
4. Adopt a minimum passing standard for the edTPA Education Specialist, Literacy: MMSN/ESN field test.