California's educational system faces many serious challenges. Addressing these challenges, however, is not easy given the size of California's school system. With over 6 million students attending schools in over a thousand school districts, California has the largest K-12 school system in the nation. Simply getting a complete picture of the system as a whole is problematic, since different state agencies maintain separate databases. The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning (the Center) has been working to overcome this, by assembling key information on the backbone of the educational system: teachers.

"Previously, there was no place for policymakers to get all this information in one place - pre-service education, recruitment, induction, professional development, retirement, and so on," said Margaret Gaston, executive director of the Center. "What we did was pull all this data together for release in one document so that any user - policymakers, foundation staff, education leadership and support organizations - can see the information in a context that covers the whole continuum of teaching."

The Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to strengthening California's teacher force in order to ensure that every child has a fully prepared and effective teacher. Each year since 1999, as part of the Teaching and California's Future Initiative, the Center has released a comprehensive report on the Status of the Teaching Profession in cooperation with SRI International, the CSU Institute for Educational Reform, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), UC Office of the President, and WestEd. Its most recent report, California's Teaching Force 2004: Key Issues and Trends (December 2004) highlights the significant shortages of qualified science and math teachers. In particular, it notes that one in five math and life science teachers, and nearly one-third (32%) of high school physical science teachers are not qualified to teach the subject assigned.

"We have been concerned about teacher shortage areas in science and math for several years," said Gaston. "The reason that we want to push hard on it now is because we want to take advantage of some events in education and public policy that would serve to highlight the importance of science and technology, including the adoption of last year's new science textbook standards, and the inclusion of science as a subject being tested under the No Child Left Behind Act."

Mathematics is another area of particular concern. Under the new curriculum guidelines, eighth graders are now expected to take algebra I. However in 2003-04, just 59% of fully credentialed middle school teachers who taught algebra I had a single-subject authorization in mathematics. The other 41% held either a multiple-subject credential or a single-subject credential in a different area. Although California state law allows either a multiple or a single-subject credential for grade 8, the Center report observes that "the mathematics requirements of a general multiple-subject credential may not be sufficient, given the heightened expectations for mathematics achievement in middle school."

As part of a broad strategy to help devise and implement solutions for these issues, the Center is partnering with CCST on multiple projects, including the recently funded critical path analysis of teacher production and the California Teacher Advisory Council, the first such state organization in the country. The collaboration is a logical step, as the Center and CCST already share an important connection: Karl Pister, CCST Board Chair, is also the vice-chair of the Center's Board of Directors.

"Partnership is important because it builds a stronger team with broader expertise," said Pister. "Consequently, we can speak with a more authoritative voice when crises occur, providing critical information to a wider range of constituencies while avoiding duplicative effort. This partnership gives us the opportunity to inform the development of policy to achieve a more coherent, more effective public educational system for California."