The April 16-17 meeting of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) continued work on long-term projects to support teacher candidates in both qualifying for an educator preparation program and exiting one with a credential. Staff also returned with the results of a field survey regarding sanctions for local educational agencies that continually misassign certificated educators, and commissioners were presented with the 2024–25 Teacher Supply in California report for transmittal to the Legislature. The report will be covered in a separate blog post next week.
Subject matter competence
Assembly Bill 130 (2021) established additional options for candidates to demonstrate their subject matter knowledge, including through completion of an undergraduate degree in a major area that specifically aligns with the CTC-issued credential they are seeking or completion of coursework that aligns with the specified domains of the subject matter requirements (SMR) for the credential being sought. While AB 130 did create more options for candidates, it also brought some unintended consequences. Specifically, while candidates with a degree in the specific major aligned with the credential they were seeking automatically met the subject matter requirement, those with a degree major in a closely related area — such as marine biology for a Single Subject Biology credential — did not. Additionally, programs have reported the process of reviewing candidates’ transcripts to determine alignment with the subject matter domains to be challenging and time consuming.
After the October 2025 commission meeting, staff were directed to survey the field and create recommendations to streamline the SMR process based on that data. While survey results indicated that the average time for the SMR process was one hour, that time varied greatly depending on the complexity of the submission. Common struggles experienced by evaluators included difficulty interpreting course content from catalog descriptions and determining their alignment with subject matter domains, vague domain language and locating course descriptions.
Staff presented recommendations, two of which are being addressed in proposed 2026–27 budget trailer bill language:
- Recommendation 1: Clarify the guidelines and subject matter domains — This is being addressed in proposed trailer bill language that would clarify that qualifying majors must include required content-area coursework, aiming to resolve confusion about whether courses must be part of the major.
- Recommendation 2: Expand the list of acceptable degree majors — The proposed trailer bill states that for single subject credentials, a major in one of the subject areas closely related to an area in which the commission credentials candidates would count.
- Recommendation 3: Standardize subject matter requirement domain structures — Staff reviewed existing domain structures, identified the key content and skills, and then summarized those descriptors to focus just on the key content and/or skills. The goal was to maintain a consistent format and language across the subject matter areas.
Commissioners expressed concern around the vague wording in the first recommendation and how a “closely related” credential would be determined in recommendation two. They directed staff to circulate the draft condensed subject matter domain descriptions with educator preparation programs for feedback and bring the final set of condensed SMR domain descriptions to the commission for review and potential approval in June.
Model Teaching Performance Assessment
Continuing implementation of Senate Bill 1263 (2024) following the commission’s adoption of revised Performance Assessment Design Standards in February, staff presented draft design specifications for a commission model Teaching Performance Assessment (TPA).
“The Performance Assessment Design Standards that were approved at the last meeting are the universal standards that anybody who wants to offer a teaching performance assessment in California must adhere to. They establish expectations for quality, fairness, for scoring and for reporting,” said Adam Ebrahim, CTC chief deputy director. “With regard to the design specifications, this is adding a little bit more specificity and nuance, a little bit more translation from the broader standards language into how the thing looks in action. It’s intended to facilitate conversations with the people that build these things and the people that experience these things so that we can develop a very firm, clean project map to implementation and meeting the statutory deadline.”
The model must position the TPA within preparation so that it supports candidate development through an embedded process of practice, feedback, reflection and revision, and requires candidates to demonstrate formative use of evidence by eliciting, interpreting and responding to student learning in real time during instruction and through subsequent analysis. It must also provide a distinct final submission and scoring process so that results may be used as a determination of candidate readiness, to inform their continued professional development during induction, and for programmatic statewide reporting, accreditation and continuous improvement.
To support these functions, the proposed model is organized around four connected instructional-cycle components that reflect the work of teaching and instructional use of evidence of student learning. Together, these components are intended to provide a more coherent structure for candidates and programs.
Public comment focused on ensuring that the model TPA is equitable and creating standards for local scoring. Commissioners emphasized that the redesign should embed the TPA in the preparation program with far more formative support before final submission.
Commissioners affirmed the draft design specifications and directed staff to continue refinement through expert and panel engagement, research and structured information gathering and the subsequent development of a recommended TPA development pathway.
Teacher misassignment sanctions
The catalyst for exploring sanctions was in response to the Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools report, which among other findings cited inappropriate hiring practices.
At the December commission meeting, staff proposed a sanction plan that foregoes punitive measures and focuses on supporting LEAs through training. The training will focus on both how to appropriately assign educators and how to use various correction methods to maintain compliance. The latter is especially important during a time of teacher shortages, when fully prepared educators are not always available.
This training plan would be required for those legally responsible for educator assignments, including the principal administrator and the district superintendent. While the December meeting included a discussion on whether to require board members to take the training, staff ultimately recommended against that requirement.
Commissioner Juan Cruz said it wouldn’t be appropriate to make that requirement of the school board. “Board members are elected officials, and they need to remain at the policy level, not the implementation level,” he said.
Commissioner Kathryn Williams Browne echoed his point, citing her experience as a board member. “It seems to me that we ought to focus our attention on what schools do, and not over-involve school boards yet,” she said. “We are elected. We are from the school district — but we aren’t who run the schools.”
The field survey aimed to gauge what threshold should draw sanctions and other topics, like allowing sanctioned LEAs to apply for emergency permits/waivers. CSBA submitted a letter outlining three main recommendations: sanctions the CTC moves forward should help LEAs build capacity and employ a support-oriented approach; any regulations must apply to charter schools, especially nonclassroom-based charter schools; and the commission must recognize the unprecedented education staffing shortages and challenges filling those positions faced by LEAs, look beyond the quantitative data and assess available qualitative data to better inform its actions.
The following recommendations were created after survey evaluation, public comment and December meeting feedback:
- Design trainings with a tailored and targeted approach to training delivery
- Require sanctioned LEAs to report sanction status to their governing board
- Allow sanctioned LEAs to retain the ability to apply for emergency permits/waivers
- Count only uncorrected misassignments toward sanctions
- Consider sanctions based on the proportion of misassignment to all assignments
- Set the base threshold to 25 percent or more misassignments to all assignments
Commissioner David Simmons asked questions that clarified misassignment rates are calculated per school, based on total sections/assignments, not per teacher and not per LEA. Commissioners questioned the 25 percent threshold being too high.
Ultimately, the commission approved the recommendation as proposed with the expectation that staff return in June with recommendations to support and guide schools between the 10 percent and 25 percent threshold.
In other CTC items:
- The commission will be launching a new Center for Educator Workforce Development, which will serve as a program incubator, data hub and continue the work of the State Educator Workforce Collaborative, of which CSBA Senior Director of Research and Education Policy Development Mary Gardner Briggs is a member.
- An overview of the new Student Teacher Stipend Program was presented. It provides financial support to eligible prospective educators during student teaching and, where authorized, during the initial phase of a qualified teacher apprenticeship program.
The CTC will next meet on June 25-26.
