A new WestEd report, Strengthening California’s Teacher Workforce: Toward a Statewide Strategic Framework, outlines the work of California’s State Educator Workforce Collaborative in working toward a strategic framework to guide the state’s approach to teacher workforce planning and action.
The collaborative brings together state agencies and institutions that oversee the state’s workforce initiatives. Groups include the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), State Board of Education, California Department of Education (CDE), Student Aid Commission, Department of Finance, Governor’s Office, University of California system, California State University system, California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and the Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities.
This collaborative is the first time these groups have worked jointly to address the educator shortage in California. “Using a continuous improvement approach that draws upon an extensive review of teacher workforce data and meaningful engagement of practitioners and subject matter experts, the Collaborative’s focus has been to improve implementation of investments in the educator workforce and to establish sustainable cross-institutional collaboration to address challenging policy and implementation issues,” states the report.
The report notes that while there has been a history of teacher workforce development efforts in California, they have been supported with limited funding, and challenges related to the piecemeal nature of teacher workforce infrastructure have made them difficult to implement statewide.
“Effective long-term teacher workforce planning requires setting measurable goals, aligning policies and funding incentives, fostering cross-institutional collaboration and system coherence, using data to measure progress toward outcomes, and implementing effective district-level human capital management systems,” according to the report.
The collaborative used the most current teacher workforce data available to identify three goal areas that will contribute to achieving its ultimate aim that “all learners have equitable access to a fully prepared educator workforce that mirrors the diversity of the student population.”
The collaborative’s framework goals are to address teacher shortages, improve equitable access and increase teacher diversity.
The collaborative will use an ongoing process of strategic planning and implementation grounded in a set of guiding principles for state and regional collaborative planning. The principles include a utilizing a phased implementation, using a continuous improvement model leveraging data, centering practitioners, learning from and building on successful collaboration models, and finally, aligning and integrating state- and regional-level planning processes with existing processes and requirements.
“As part of the planning process, the Collaborative envisioned engaging regional and local leaders from county offices, districts, and higher education institutions to inform the design of an aligned regional collaborative process for strategic planning that leverages regional assets and integrates into existing regional collaboration and planning structures,” the report states. “A core element of a future regional planning process would be an intentional, iterative two-way engagement between the state and regional collaboratives, on the one hand, and between the regional collaboratives and their respective local districts and educator preparation programs, on the other. This two-way engagement would help ensure that data and decisions are informed by regional and local contexts.”
Moving forward
Like the initiatives it points out in the report, the State Educator Workforce Collaborative’s funding has run out, as it was provided through one-time philanthropic support. Members are seeking ways to enact their recommendations and institutionalize the collaborative in the strategic planning process. To do this, the collaborative recommends the following:
- Secure commitments from agencies and institutions to participate in the collaborative and support joint action.
- Launch the state-level collaborative under the leadership of a lead agency and enact the ongoing process of strategic planning anchored to the teacher workforce goals and grounded in continuous improvement principles.
- Coordinate with data providers and research agencies to provide annual updates on progress toward goals.
The collaborative’s longer-term actions to allow full alignment with its vision of a governance structure to support workforce planning at a regional level:
- Engage regional leaders to codesign and pilot a coordinated regional planning process that aligns with state infrastructure (e.g., CTC, CDE, higher education systems) and is embedded into existing regional governance, funding, and collaboration frameworks to ensure coherence and sustainability.
- Learn from the regional pilot and then test the approach in other contexts.
- Continue to work with data providers to align with the goal structures and ensure data is timely and accessible to the state and regional bodies.
