California Progress Report

“Teaching Quality in California: A New Perspective to Guide Policy,” by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning is our Site of the Day

March 20, 2008

The Santa Cruz based Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning has released a new policy brief today that examines critical aspects of teaching quality and sets forth a working definition and approach for consideration by policymakers.

The Center is a nonprofit organization founded in 1995 to strengthen the capacity of California’s teachers for delivering rigorous, well-rounded curriculum and ensuring the continuing intellectual, ethical and social development of all children. Research for this 20 page brief was conducted by SRI International (formerly known as the Stanford Research Institute).

"Teaching Quality in California: A New Perspective to Guide Policy", presents a professional consensus regarding the dimensions of teaching quality and the issues that need to be addressed if California is to ensure high quality instruction for all students. It is based on the work of an expert panel of education stakeholders who reviewed research, met with outside experts, and discussed in depth the issue of teaching quality.

Here are the approaches to improving teacher quality they posit in the conclusion of this report:

• Statements about teaching quality should be based on good measures rather than on ad hoc assumptions. It is important to use sound data as the basis for analyzing teaching quality and strengthening practice.
• Teaching is too complex to be reduced to a single input or output. Similarly, efforts to support teaching quality are too complex to be reduced to a quick fix. Attention needs to be paid to all aspects that support quality teaching—the teaching surround—including leadership, materials, facilities, and structure of the school day, among others.
• Policy changes needed to build and support quality teaching require attention to all segments of the system. However, policymakers cannot address the segments in isolation. Systemic change will require purposeful connections so that segments of the system work together and enhance one another rather than contradict one another.

The Center also has released an excellent 4 page report, "The California Two-Step" on the effects of California’s budget crisis demonstrating how it is jeopardizing the progress made in strengthening the teaching workforce in the state. It has charts showing the declining numbers of underprepared teachers over the last 6 years and analyzes the numbers of enrollees in teacher preparation programs and brings together other information to show how the threat of impending teacher layoffs weakens the teacher preparation pipeline and affects California’s ability to attract and retain thousands of teachers.

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