TABLE OF CONTENTS *

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON, CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC*

OPENING STATEMENT OF RANKING MEMBER MATTHEW MARTINEZ, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

STATEMENT OF DR. MICHAEL ACOSTA, ADMINISTRATOR, CERTIFICATE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES BRANCH, LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN GOCKE, SUPERINTENDENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF MS. SUSAN TAHSUDA, TEACHER ON SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF DR. CRYSTAL GIPS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF TEACHER PREPARATION AND K-18 PROGRAMS, OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE, CALIFORNIA *

STATEMENT OF DR. JUDY JOHNSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX A - WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC *

APPENDIX B - WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL ACOSTA, ADMINISTRATOR, CERTIFICATE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES BRANCH, LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX C - STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN GOCKE, SUPERINTENDENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA *

APPENDIX D - WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. SUSAN TAHSUDA, TEACHER ON SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA *

The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:00 a.m., in Room 8, Robert Frost Middle School, 12314 Bradford Place, Granada Hills, California, Hon. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.

Present: Representatives McKeon and Martinez,

Staff present: D'Arcy Philps, Professional Staff Member; and MaryEllen Ardouny, Minority Legislative Associate.

Chairman McKeon. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this official hearing of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-long Learning.

This hearing will focus on teacher quality. Specifically, our witnesses will be highlighting many issues facing today's teachers and discuss some very innovative initiatives taking place in California to help teachers be as effective as possible.

Because we have limited time, I would like to conclude my remarks at this time so that we can take full advantage of listening to our witnesses, who I'm so pleased are here with us today.

One thing I do want to mention, however, is regarding Ron Friedman, who is the principal of the school here, Frost Middle School. We want to thank him for his hospitality for hosting this. We held a hearing here just a little over a year ago. This is getting to be a habit, I guess, but it's a good one. We want to thank you, Ron.

I will now yield the time to ranking member of the Committee Mr. Martinez from Alhambra, my partner in, I was going to say in crime, but in good things.

WRITTEN OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN HOWARD P. "BUCK" McKEON, SUBCOMMITTEE ON POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION, TRAINING AND LIFE-LONG LEARNING, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND THE WORKFORCE, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, DC – SEE APPENDIX A

Mr. Martinez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for coming this morning. Because, as the Chair has said, there are a number of witnesses and we have a very limited amount of time, I'll try to keep my remarks brief.

I admonish the Chairman for not mentioning that we're in the process of drafting legislation that will provide states and districts with assistance in an effort to get high quality individuals into the classroom and keep them there. I think that's the most important thing, not just getting them in the classroom, but keeping them there.

The question is, how do we do this, keeping in mind the end goal, which has, of course, always been student achievement. California, I believe, has been one of the first states to undertake extensive education reform and has already struggled with some of the issues that can arise from implementing a major reform initiative such as striking an appropriate balance between class size and teacher quality.

As such, I believe that Congress and the rest of the nation can learn a great deal from the California experience. For that reason I'm very pleased that Chairman McKeon has convened this hearing, and I'm looking forward to hearing firsthand about some of the problems that California has encountered, and particularly the ways in which you on the panel are working to address those problems.

So without further delay, I'll yield back the balance of my time.

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. We'll hear first from Dr. Michael Acosta, the Administrator of the Certificate Employment Opportunities Branch from the Los Angeles Unified School District in L.A. Then we'll hear from Dr. Steven Gocke, Superintendent of the Lancaster School District, Lancaster, California. Then Ms. Susan Tahsuda, teacher on special assignment at the Lancaster School District, also in Lancaster.

Then Dr. Crystal Gips, the Associate Director of Teacher Preparation and K-18 programs, Office of the Chancellor at California State University, Northridge. She has the responsibility for several collaborative projects between CSU campuses and K-12 schools that are designed to improve the quality of teacher preparation and professional development to enhance student learning at all levels.

And finally, Dr. Judy Johnson, Associate Director from the Los Angeles Educational Partnership in L.A. She manages the development and supervises the pilot tests of teacher-directed educational projects involving reform school organization for Los Angeles inner city public schools.

So this gives us a broad spectrum, from the desert in Lancaster to the inner city down in Los Angeles. I think it will be a very interesting hearing.

Dr. Acosta.

Dr. Acosta. Good morning, Mr. Martinez and Mr. McKeon. My name is Mike Acosta. I am the human resources administrator for the Los Angeles Unified School District. Thank you for inviting me and for your legislative efforts to educate our children.

During the time allotted, I will present the major issues related to teacher supply and demand within our district and give some insight into the district's recruitment and retention efforts.

Firstly, an overview of supply and demand. There are three major factors that influence the district's teacher supply and demand and ultimately impact teacher quality. One, student enrollment growth. Two, class size reduction. Three, teacher attrition.

To date, there are approximately 700,000 students in the district, which represents a 16 percent enrollment increase during a 10-year period. The projected increase over the next five years is 50,000 students.

Since 1996 and the advent of state class size reduction legislation, the district has hired more than 12,000 K-12 teachers. We anticipate hiring an additional 4,000 K-12 teachers for the upcoming school year.

In addition to enrollment growth and class size reduction, our district has experienced a teacher attrition rate of approximately 5 to 6 percent each of the past three years. We anticipate a similar percentage of retirements and resignations this year.

Now, let me share with you two programs that have proven successful for our district in recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers for our diverse and growing student population.

Firstly, I'd like to talk about one of our most effective recruitment tools, the district interim program, which is a state alternative certification program option. Since its inception in 1984, the district interim program has had three primary goals. One, to supply the district with high quality teachers in subject areas where shortages exist and where local universities cannot meet the district's demand for qualified teachers.

Two, to implement a program specifically geared to the subject field needs of our district, including teachers in elementary, mathematics, science, English and special education.

And three, to provide an opportunity for a career in teaching to persons whose economic circumstances preclude them from entering the traditional program or whose life experiences and maturity make them particularly suited for a program that closely ties theory to practice and is committed to the on-the-job training.

Generally speaking, district interns have a strong subject-matter background but have a limited experience with educational methodology. Therefore, through course work taught by experienced, outstanding practicing teachers and guidance and support provided by mentor teachers, this program prepares the new teacher for the realities of classroom teaching.

Since the district's implementation of the program in 1984, 4,708 district interns have been or are currently being trained by the district's professional development branch. To date, 2,704 interns have received their professional two-year California credentials. This program has significantly narrowed the district's shortage for teachers in critical subject fields.

Currently, 72 percent of the total participants remain with the district. Please remember that this is over a 15-year span. By offering an opportunity to begin teaching at full pay with full benefits while earning a teaching credential tuition-free, the district has successfully recruited not only recent graduates with degrees and shortage subject fields, but also those individuals making mid-career changes.

Another successful recruitment tool has been the district's para-educator career ladder program, which currently includes approximately 4,000 participants. These participants are teacher assistants currently working in district classrooms. Over 600 K-12 teachers have been hired over the past four years with a 99 percent retention rate thus far.

The career ladder program offers partial tuition reimbursement, support and counseling to those para-educators who are committed to teaching as a career. This program offers entry into the teaching profession through traditional programs or via the internship route.

Currently, successful district retention techniques include competitive salaries and benefits, new teacher support, including mentor support, a 40-hour pre-service for alternative certificates candidates, bilingual stipends up to $5,000 and a 15 percent salary increase for holders of the national board certification.

In closing, I believe that the two miles I have shared with you, the district intern program and the para-educator career ladder program, will give you some insight into how a large urban school district utilizes its resources to recruit and retain high quality teachers.

I have provided two brochures for your review. I'll be happy to answer any questions when you're ready. Thank you.

[The provided material follows:

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL ACOSTA, ADMINISTRATOR, CERTIFICATE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES BRANCH, LOS ANGELES UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEE APPENDIX B

Chairman McKeon. Thank you very much. Dr. Gocke.

Dr. Gocke. Well, a little bit earlier this morning we had a few minutes to talk to Congressman Martinez about the mind-set for what we might be able to help out with today, and it kind of came to us as we were preparing last week, needing sort of a directional mind-set in terms of what can you do from a federal standpoint.

So with that in mind, looking at our efforts for teacher recruitment, we've gone a couple of different ways over the past several years, but it's led to more recruitment in our local area.

One of the problems that we've had, being in kind of a remote area, is that if you recruit people from out of state that aren't sure where they're going, and then when they get there, they want to be back home.

So we've actually looked more at, sort of like Dr. Acosta said, a career ladder program. So we're looking real closely at working with our community college and actually our CSU system and currently working with Cal State Bakersfield to set up a local academic track that people can take in the Antelope Valley. They don't have to leave the valley to get it. That's been one of the problems we've had in the past.

I think that's going to be a real major thrust for our program development and our teacher development. So I think things that you might be able to do to support that kind of a partnership would be one direction to look at.

The other side of the coin is we've talked about the significant difference in the preparation needs for teachers with the clientele of kids that we have these days. I was indicating that when I went through some of my teacher training, I believe it was a federal program that lured me into a more special area of study was the fact that by teaching for so many years in that special area, I got some help with the cost of the educational process.

That was in special education. So we were thinking, you know, about talking teachers into going into tough areas to teach, and you really have to look at some kind of an incentive to get them in the door. Maybe some kind of a subsidy for the educational cost, as well as some real good training to prepare them for that environment, I think, is real important.

What we're doing right now is really focusing on teacher preparation, because, as we look to the achieving schools research, and states that are really starting to make some gains, they are putting a lot of resources into teacher preparation, both pres-ervice and post-service; so they’re working very closely with the teacher training colleges. I think that's real important.

One of the other things that we found by recruiting people from out of the state is that California still has a real tough kind of quirk in its credential commission that puts people that are pretty well educated from other states back into a university system for credits that don't seem to make a whole lot of sense. They're actually pretty well trained.

That's an area that we're working at at our state level to try to get our state legislators to work on the rest of the prosody process and make it a little more manageable. Because we get a lot of people that transfer into our area from other states because of the aerospace industry out there. So I think that from a credentials standpoint, there are some things that can be done, too.

The bottom line for us is working on better, more applicable pre-service training, which means getting people that are studying to be teachers in the classrooms a lot sooner than they're in right now. And I know that the intern programs do that very well.

That's been a little problem for us not having a college close by, so that's why we're working on that partnership. But much more pre-service hands-on training, practicums, and special training and working with difficult populations.

I think every teacher, for example, in their pre-service training, should go through some crisis intervention technique development. I mean, that's a must. I don't care whether you're in Lancaster or any part of L.A. Unified or El Monte or Alhambra or anywhere else.

Our populations are diverse, and the management of classrooms right now is a state-of-the-art part of the job, and they need a lot of training in that area. So that's just one area that I think could use a lot more work in terms of pre-service and post-service.

Support that you might be able to give to partner with the state programs, for example, the BITSA grant program right now that we're entering in helps our credentialed teachers that are in first or second-year service, but it's hands off for anybody with an emergency credential. We need the same kind of a thing just as much, because we have a lot of people with emergency credentials.

We talked a little bit about maybe another concept where we had mentor teachers that didn't have to teach at the same time they were mentoring, which is what happens right now. The need to mentor first-year teachers, and a lot of whom are on emergency credentials, is so great that we need teachers on special assignment that can come out of the classroom for a year and spend all of their time working with these new people in the classrooms because a lot of our emergency folks have never taught in a classroom before, and they've never had any student teaching. So that's another idea for you. Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gocke follows:]

STATEMENT OF DR. STEVEN GOCKE, SUPERINTENDENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA – SEE APPENDIX C

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Ms. Tahsuda.

Ms. Tahsuda. Well, my testimony today comes from a very practical perspective. As a result of the observations that I've made while working in the classrooms with new teachers and while comparing notes with my colleagues in similar positions, I would make the following recommendations.

First, new teachers need more opportunities to observe their more experienced colleagues. In the crunch to fill positions created by class size reduction, we have many teachers in classrooms whose experience is very limited.

Mentoring programs like mine -- Teacher on Special Assignment -- and the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program give new teachers a resource for information. In addition, new teachers need the support of a buddy teacher or a grade-level team on site and fewer outside responsibilities for the first year or two.

Every year, conferences and seminars should be required for teachers to attend, whether they're new or seasoned teachers, to keep them current in methodology and be able to incorporate new techniques into their classroom practices.

Another area of difficulty, as Dr. Gocke mentioned, is classroom management. Many new teachers have very unrealistic expectations of what today's classes are like on a daily basis. California schools have many types of special programs and specialists, such as resource specialist programs, school psychologists, speech therapists, and support for English language learners and special day classrooms.

New teachers need to be more familiar with these programs. These teachers are confronted with low-functioning students that do not qualify for any of these special programs and are students who have learning disabilities as a result of exposure to drugs, alcohol, and low socioeconomic conditions.

Teachers need to know how to deal with these students. Many times it is those students who require teachers to make differentiated lesson plans. Those students also take valuable teaching time away from the average student. Therefore, it is very important that new teachers are aware of the specialists and programs that are available to them to help meet the needs of all students.

New teachers need to spend more time watching someone else teach. College classes need to require more classroom observations and devote more time to teaching them how to do short- and long-term curriculum planning.

New teachers are having great difficulty integrating state standards into their curriculum. The new standards require teachers to differentiate instructions for all learners according to their special needs.

Most new teachers are intelligent people who have passed all the required tests, but they do not know where to begin in the classroom. Even the simplest little function of taking roll, they're just unaware of classroom scheduling and the procedures of what they do once they walk into a classroom.

Teaching is not just a job, but a profession. We are role models for our future leaders, and there is a need to cultivate a sense of professionalism in our new teachers. A lot of the new teachers do not know how to handle certain situations in their classroom. They have difficulty handling situations with parents, even some administrators in the schools. So they need to have a little bit more background on how to handle themselves in certain situations that arise in a classroom.

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF MS. SUSAN TAHSUDA, TEACHER ON SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT, LANCASTER SCHOOL DISTRICT, LANCASTER, CALIFORNIA – SEE APPENDIX D

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Dr. Gips.

Dr. Gips. Good morning. My name is Crystal Gips, and I represent the chancellor of the California State University system here today. As you know, we are a 23-campus system. Twenty-one of those campuses prepare teachers and other professional educators, and I am technically on loan from the Northridge campus this year to the chancellor's office.

Two factors characterize public education and the dilemma that we face here today here in California. First, that approximately 30,000 unprepared teachers work in our schools today throughout the state, over half of whom are here in the greater Los Angeles area.

Secondly, that the children of California score near the bottom of national rankings on a variety of measures of performance. These two factors together have led the public to call for both more teachers and greater teacher quality.

California’s problems relating to the quantity of teachers come from several factors: class size reduction programs designed to improve student opportunities to learn; increases in the size of student population; the aging of the teaching force, which produces increased numbers of retirements -- and California has one of the oldest teaching forces in the nation -- ; and conditions that unfortunately make the teaching profession less than attractive to many people we would like to bring into the profession.

Our problems of quality come in large part from having so many unqualified teachers in the classroom and from a need to better link ongoing professional development over the career of teachers to issues of student performance.

The California State University system has responded to this crisis through a variety of programs that are designed to increase student access to teacher education programs, improve teacher preparation curriculum, set high standards for program graduates, and build relationships with the K-12 schools to ensure high quality professional development.

Today I want to share with you just four brief examples of California State University's effort to produce more high quality educators. The first is in the area of recruitment. A program entitled CalTeach was established last year as the state-wide center to recruit to the teaching profession qualified individuals to represent the diversity of the student population in California schools.

It operates a media campaign through television, radio and newspaper to attract potential teachers to the field, and it serves as an information clearinghouse for prospective teachers and their employers.

Interested prospective teachers can contact CalTeach in two ways. First there is the telephone line, counselor-assisted help lines staffed by eight counselors from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. daily. Three of these counselors are bilingual in Spanish and English.

Secondly, CalTeach has an interactive website which provides information about available teacher education programs, along with a job-matching service for school districts and prospective teachers. We've had more than 100,000 hits on the website and over 600 teaching positions posted on that website.

The second project that I want to talk about addresses issues of access to teacher education and quality curriculum. A program entitled Cal State Teach is the multiple subject credential program with an emphasis on preparing teachers to work in multi-cultural classrooms.

This program is currently in the last phases of development, with one-time funding from the 1998-99 state budget. It will be offered on a statewide basis by the California State University to meet the critical need for elementary teachers in the State of California.

Designed around the intern model of teacher preparation, that is, to serve presently unqualified teachers who hold full-time positions in the classroom, Cal State Teach will offer instruction through multiple resources, including print, video and audio materials, the worldwide web and the internet.

The curriculum is designed to integrate all areas of pedagogical studies in a sequence and format that addresses the need of the novice practicing teacher. In other words, students learn to teach reading, management of students and work with parents from the beginning of the program.

The program is field-based and provides an intensive support network of university faculty who are based in off-campus centers located throughout the state and thus geographically convenient to provide support for students.

The intern teachers also receive extensive program support from assigned mentors and from principals at their own school sites. This program will begin serving students in September '99 and is expected to enroll 500 to 1,000 students in its first cohort.

The program was recently launched by Governor Gray Davis and Chancellor Charles Reed, and recruitment is actively underway.

A third program that I want to talk about focuses on partnerships with K-12 schools and the development of quality curriculum. A model program close to the site of testimony involves California State University Northridge and the Francis Polytechnic family of schools, which includes 15 school sites in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Presently, the first cohort of approximately 60 prospective elementary, secondary, and special education teachers is nearing completion of an intensive one-year teacher preparation program designed and delivered jointly by university faculty and the teachers and administrators of the partner schools.

Students experience a multi-disciplinary team-taught curriculum integrated with substantial experience in classrooms and with coaching from master teachers in the schools. The pre-service elements of this program are one part of a larger effort to provide support to new teachers and to provide professional development for all teachers over the span of their careers in a comprehensive teacher development program linked to the learning plan of the school family.

Each element of this program is focused on improving the performance of K-12 students. The teacher preparation program also draws extensively on a parent involvement and training program in the same family of schools.

And finally, I would like to mention that California State University Northridge has a rather unique partnership with the Antelope Valley Union High School District to provide an intern credential program for secondary teachers who have been hired without a credential. That program is being taught jointly by the university faculty and staff and administrators from the Antelope Valley Union High School District and that it is linked to the BITSA program which was mentioned earlier here to serve credentialed and new teachers in that system.

I'd be glad to answer further questions about these programs and others within the CSU when we come to that time. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Gips follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF DR. CRYSTAL GIPS, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF TEACHER PREPARATION AND K-18 PROGRAMS, OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR, CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE, CALIFORNIA – SEE APPENDIX E

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Dr. Johnson.

Dr. Johnson. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I am the associate director of the Los Angeles Educational Partnership, which is a nonprofit organization that works with educators, business leaders, and community members to foster and support improvements in public education in the Los Angeles area.

In 15 years of working with schools, the L.A. Educational Partnership has gained a depth of knowledge and expertise. We apply our experience to strengthening classrooms, schools and communities by enabling them to adopt best practices and embrace emerging solutions for educational barriers.

LAEP is one of 44 other local public education funds that exist out of 26 states and the District of Columbia. Those funds work with more than 250 schools across the country, serving 5 million children, or one in every 10 public school students in the United States.

These funds are uniquely and strategically positioned as nongovernmental entities to be influential partners with the school system and the general public in facilitating school improvement or change.

We believe the issue that you have selected teacher quality is absolutely essential for educational quality. Studies have determined that teacher quality is one of the strongest determinants of student achievement. The emphasis on improving the preparation certification competency qualifications and ongoing training of teachers is rooted in public concern about the disappointing educational achievement in many public school students, especially in larger areas.

Professional development in training for teachers is one of the most effective avenues for implementing educational outcomes for all students. For 15 years, local funds such as ours have been devoted to providing opportunities for public school teachers to enhance their teaching capacity and provide an environment for high learning and achievement for all students.

I'd like to place our views about teacher quality in the context of our goals for public education. First, we believe that student achievement for all students is the most important challenge facing public education today, and second, we believe that the public school is the single key institution that can prepare all children for the future.

We believe public schools are part of the solution and that they are the most important in assisting the entry of citizens into a viable democracy.

The Los Angeles Educational Partnership has a series of programs that we've developed over the course of 15 years. We work with more than 3,000 teachers per year on an ongoing professional development basis.

We have programs in math and science and the humanities which have been recognized nationally. In our interdisciplinary humanities program done collaboratively with the Unified School District, over 500 teachers as the high school level are involved teaching 10,000 students.

And early evaluations of the program show that humanities students were applying to four-year colleges in twice the number of their counter-parts in the same schools, but not in interdisciplinary humanities programs.

We have suggestions on the quality of professional development and the characteristics of professional development that we believe are most effective. We believe the qualities common to excellent teachers fall into three categories.

First, excellent teachers organize curriculum not only to reach students with a variety of learning styles, but that lead them to discover rather than to be told. This is a complicated endeavor. Curriculum and standards must be broken down into lesson plans and strategies to reach all students, a process that is extensive for numerous curriculum standards.

Second, excellent teachers are passionate about their subject matter. They are scholars who are curious about new developments in their fields of expertise, and they seek ways to connect new material with learning goals for those students.

Third, excellent teachers continually seek to improve their teaching capabilities.

We believe a framework is necessary to support quality teaching. That framework has at least three key components. One is that there needs to exist a framework of aligned standards for curriculum, teaching and student assessment. Secondly, there must be a consistency of those standards over time. And third, you must offer high quality usable professional development.

High quality professional development allows teachers to learn, discuss and practice and try new behaviors over time. Professional development of high quality relies on demonstration in coaching. It is often school-based and takes part in teacher-directed forums.

Theory and pedagogy are taught in conjunction with specific curriculum content, and teacher learning often reaches out beyond the school walls to draw in talent and expertise for subject content, educational research, and teaching strategies.

We recommend a number of things to improve the quality of teaching in California. With respect to teaching standards, we would like you to consider forming a temporary commission to examine some of the highest quality teaching standards offered by states and districts across the country, then recommend and encourage states and districts to adapt or adopt similar standards of high quality for their state or local region.

In the area of professional development, we suggest you continue federal support for K-12 reform and training professional development of K-12 teachers.

Federally funded teacher professional development, though, should be tied to state and/or district content standards in learning priorities at the schools. At the same time, each school should be encouraged to set its own professional development schedule annually which matches these goals.

We suggest you evaluate and recognize exemplary professional development by its effects on both teaching practices and on student achievement.

We offer that you should inform the public about the importance of continuous professional growth of educators and support states financially which extend school year in order to offer more professional development.

Recognize the role that intermediary nonprofit community-based organizations can play in testing new models for teacher preparation and professional development as appropriate.

In the area of teacher leadership, we suggest that you encourage states to provide incentives for differentiation of roles in the K-12 teaching faculty with teachers who meet high standards working on school time as coaches and mentors for every teacher.

In the area of preparation and certification of teachers, we suggest support and the highlighting of best practices, teacher certification colleges and universities working collaboratively with public schools to provide teacher training in K-12 sites operating as professional development schools.

Regarding recruitment and retention of high quality teachers, we suggest you highlight the best practices in teacher recruitment and retention, including continuous support of new teachers in a network of colleagues who share their expertise and knowledge, and that you increase interstate and district agreements so that teachers with a credential in one state can move far more easily to another without losing their credential status or their credit for years work in the education level.

And finally, with respect to postsecondary education, as California leaders, we encourage you to encourage all Californians to pursue some form of postsecondary education or training; that we reallocate public resources to reflect the growing importance of education to the economic prosperity and social well-being of both the state and the nation; that we encourage the development and the use of new educational technologies and distance learning in order to provide greater student access to postsecondary course work and teacher preparation; and that we integrate education into the policy discussions about economic prosperity of this country.

Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'd be happy to answer questions.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Johnson follows:]

WRITTEN TESTIMONY OF DR. JUDY JOHNSON, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES EDUCATIONAL PARTNERSHIP, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – SEE APPENDIX F

Chairman McKeon. Thank you. Can you hear me back there without turning this on and causing undue harm?

In Washington, now we would kind of go to a formal question and answer period, and everybody gets a certain number of minutes, and they talk.

One of the things I would like to do in a field hearing like this -- and we've tried to do this before and Mr. Martinez is very supportive of this, I think, and has been offered great praise on our hearings -- is have a more informal-type dialogue? It makes your job a little tougher, but I think we learn a little bit more from this.

So we have about 45 minutes or so. We'll just talk on this a little bit. But I'd like to get started with Dr. Acosta.

You talked about the two programs that you're working on. You've had pretty good attrition over the last few years. It looks like it's going to be at least that bad or worse going forward, talking about the aging of California teachers. Do you feel that those two projects you're working on will be able to get you an adequate number of teachers to provide for your needs?

Dr. Acosta. No. I think it makes a big dent. However, we still need to work with our local universities to produce more qualified teachers. We only see our programs as supplementing, not supplanting, any programs in the universities.

We went to this mode only because we had to. We see it as supplementing the pipeline. We would like to see more collaboration with universities produced with these kind of results.

Oftentimes you hear about lack of interest in teaching. In my experience, from my perspective, there is no lack of interest in teaching. There is, however, a real problem with entry into teaching for many individuals. And that may be economic, among other reasons.

So in trying to take care of the economics, we've turned to tuition-free and tuition reimbursement-type programs. This has been a real incentive.

So as far as credentialed teachers, I think trying to provide incentives with extra salary with national board certification is going to be another good recruitment tool, if not within our own district, to provide incentive for those current teachers to take on more study.

After one year of having it being offered, already 45 people in our district have become nationally certified, and we expect more up the next couple of years.

Chairman McKeon. I served on a school board for nine years, and in dealing with the teacher unions, there was, in my particular experience, real concern about doing anything that would pay one teacher more than another. That was the time when we instituted the mentor program; and we had a pretty good relationship between our management and our union, and we were able to get that in, but there was some fight on that. I don't even know what the program is right now, but at that time, there were matters selected at each school, and they would get a $2,000 stipend; they weren't totally freed from teaching responsibilities, but this was in addition.

And they, on a part-time basis, would help new teachers, but there was reluctance to pay one teacher more than another.

You had something?

Mr. Martinez. Yeah. On the question that the Chairman asked about teacher retention, you have a 5 or 6 percent attrition rate.

Steve and I were talking earlier in the cafeteria about this mentoring program, and we were talking about two things, a mentoring program that would have a master teacher, and trying to figure out what we can do with them from the Federal level; and if there is this potential problem that Mr. McKeon is talking about in regard to paying one teacher more than another.

I think the teacher who is going to be a master teacher just for the prestige of it would want to do it even if they weren't receiving more money, as long as they were freed up to do it. Would you think that a Federal program should provide a grant to school districts which want to implement this kind of a program and have one master teacher for every 10 teachers, let's say? Would it help young teachers?

Dr. Acosta. I think anything like that would be helpful, Mr. Martinez. In a large urban district, however -- I think it would help in many districts across the country -- my belief is if somehow we can think of programs other than pulling more teachers out of the classroom to help, because I think that's causing a problem; we already have a class size reduction; we already have teacher attrition; we have growth; and we're looking for more new teachers, and in many good ways, people want to pull the good teachers out to help, which is a good idea in many districts. In urban districts, I think we need to find other ways to get those people help and maybe have some kind of program where we can have retired teachers be trained and come and help so we're not pulling people out of the classroom.

Mr. Martinez. The thing is, though, that if you're losing teachers because they can't handle the problems, if you had teachers that were trained to handle the problems and the problems didn't discourage them, you would be not pulling people out of the classroom, but keeping teachers there.

So that pulling out of one teacher for 10 teachers, if you retain 10 teachers because of what they learn from that master teacher being able to handle situations, you're really ahead rather than thinking of pulling somebody out of a particular situation, wouldn't you think?

Dr. Acosta. That would certainly help.

And just to clarify one point on the national board certification. That 50 percent salary increase, seven and a half percent is right off the top. The district provides that increase. But the other seven and a half, the teacher must provide some kind of service to the school or teachers, like a mentor teacher at the site. So they are getting paid for extra work on that seven and a half percent. And the union has agreed to that part of the contract.

Chairman McKeon. I've had another concern over the years, and that's tenure. Teachers have tenure and have union protection. It's kind of a double duty. I mean, it's kind of like no matter how poor a job a teacher may do, they're untouchable.

Dr. Gocke, will you explain to us how tenure works, how a new teacher starts out, when they receive tenure, what they have to do to get tenure, and what that means in their future career?

Dr. Gocke. Well, basically, right now the probationary period is two years. And if a district opts to keep them in the district after that second year, once they start their first day of teaching, they essentially have tenure in the profession and in the district.

One of the areas that we work to sort of deal with that feeling, that once you receive tenure that there's nothing you can do, is we've developed two different teacher assistance processes in the district, one for people on probation or on emergency credentials, where we actually have a team of teachers and administrators that create a teacher assistance plan for people who are having a tough time, and it's called a teacher assistance panel. And that's for the probationary teachers. Also, our association has worked with us to create another panel that actually works with the tenured, credentialed teachers, and we put them on a certificated progress improvement plan, basically, work improvement plan. The acronym is CWIP.

But what that means is we've made some headway with our association. They know that it really behooves all of us to have good professional teachers, whether they're tenured or not. That process was a step in the direction of breaking down the barriers of ``there's nothing we can do.''

And as a matter of fact, if a teacher decided, "Well, I don't want to go through that," our teachers' association wouldn't support them in the process of having to remove them. They've basically said, "We will create a support structure," and if that doesn't work, then maybe they need to be counseled into a different profession. They're actually on board with us on that.

And I think you're going to see a lot more of that, because I read recently where even the national associations are really starting to step up to the plate and talk about a peer review process, which we'll be doing next year under the governor's bill in California. I think it's of national interest.

And that maybe some of that barrier that we used to experience where, man, you'd have to spend a lot of money and a lot of time dismissing an incompetent teacher, I think we're working through some of that. So maybe some of the pressure that's come to bear on accountability and teacher excellence has actually helped us in that direction. But I think you have to have those support structures in the district to show that you've really made an attempt to help people.

Chairman McKeon. Well, I don't think the goal is to try to get rid of people. The goal is to try to make people better. But if you have a teacher in one classroom that is really doing everything they can to do, an outstanding job, and right next door -- for instance, I visited a class one day, one teacher, the leader of the leadership group of the school, as I walked in to meet with him and the students, I said, "How are things going?"

He says, "Well, pretty good, It's almost 3:00." That was the start. At 3:00 o'clock, he left. We were still meeting, still talking to the children, but I thought, what kind of an example is that to those students? And that has to have impact on other teachers that aren't knocking you down to get out at 3:00 o'clock; and they're both being paid the same and they're just obviously not doing the same job.

In the sales field, where you're getting a commission; you don't care about somebody that's not producing, because they're not going to get paid and they're not going to be around. But it's a different kind of situation.

If it's a matter of attitude, that's harder to work with. If it's a matter that they just haven't been taught, you can put a strong mentor teacher or administrator, somebody that could really work with these people, and they're hungry for that, they'll soak that up, and then they become a better teacher, which is the ultimate goal, I think. That's why we're doing this. We're trying to see what can we do on a Federal level to help teachers do a better job because the ultimate goal is better education for all.

Dr. Gocke. Well, I think supporting the whole peer review concept is important, because that's teachers taking responsibility for teachers, and it's creating a whole new climate; I remember that experience as a young teacher myself, looking at the guy next door, wondering how come that doesn't change.

Well, in our system now, if somebody has that type of an attitude and is really not performing in a classroom, we now have this collaborative group of administrators and teachers that sit down and get that person into an improvement process. If they're not willing to do that, our association won't support it.

Chairman McKeon. Boy, that's great. I mean, you know, it's the same in all professions. You hear about policemen protecting the policeman that's not doing the job or attorneys protecting the attorneys. or physicians, etc.

So we're not trying to say that this is just in teachers. It's human nature. And where somebody has ultimate protection, that no matter what you do, you can't get to them, it could be a problem; it sounds to me like you made some good positive steps.

Dr. Gocke. Yeah, because tenure basically is protection against administrators that maybe don't follow the process that I just described. It is a partnership process. And the more we do that, the more we get peer review and team review going, the less need there is to be worried about somebody firing you just because they don't like you. I mean, that's the problem with tenure.

Chairman McKeon. Right.

Mr. Martinez. You know, we're having sort of a debate in Congress about President Clinton's suggestion that somewhere in the budget and somewhere through one of the programs we initiate, basically out of our Committee on Educational and the Workforce on the House side, and the same thing with the Senate, 100,000 new teachers.

And the debate centers around, if we're going to provide a certain amount of money for 100,000 new teachers, do we provide that money for new teachers in every case or should some school districts, some LEAs, determine that they don't need more teachers, that they've got sufficient teachers, or maybe even this, that they can get the teachers if you can give them monies to use for the two programs you're talking about.

So I would ask, would you rather have the money for that than somebody assign you a certain amount of money to hire a certain number of teachers? Any one of you can answer that.

Chairman McKeon. When you're finished, I'm going to ask the same question in a little different way, because this is very important.

Dr. Gocke. It depends on how much it is, to be real honest with you, because for me to hire new teachers creates a whole other structure of costs, which are classrooms -- the same thing we've really experienced with class size reduction.

So based on what I think the amount probably would be, it would be more usable for us for teacher preparation programs and staff development. That's where we would use it. We have our teachers, and unless you give me a whole bunch of money to reduce class size and other grade levels, I'm not going to do that because financially I can't do it.

But I may take some of that money and help develop new teaching techniques for the people that now have 21 so that they can learn how to differentiate, do those kinds of things.

Mr. Martinez. That's an interesting answer, you know, because it's the same thing as when we're talking about 100,000 new policemen. A lot of police chiefs said, "I hire the new policeman, and you give me the money to hire him this year, and after this year is over, I've got to continue to pay him and find somewhere in the city budget for his salary."

Besides that, he said we have to put a policeman on the street, and it costs a city anywhere from $30,000 to $50,000, when you consider you have to buy a car for him, and you have to buy all the equipment.

Dr. Gocke. It's the same thing.

Mr. Martinez. And you do the same thing with the teachers?

Dr. Gocke. Same thing.

Mr. Martinez. If you have the ability to recruit the teacher, the next most important thing is the quality of training they get and the kind of situation they move into, depending on who mentored them and how they learned how to deal with their individual different situations in the school that they'll encounter as to whether they'll stay or not.

Dr. Acosta. And I would concur with you, Mr. Martinez. That's exactly how we would go. Like I said earlier, we don't have a lack of interest in teaching. We can find a lot of potential teachers, but we need teacher preparation, staff development, and getting that pre-service so they can be successful and stay in the classroom. I think you're right.

Mr. Martinez. Buck is going to ask the question a little different, and I'm interested in seeing how he's going to ask that question.

Chairman McKeon. One of the things that -- we just had this debate last week in Congress -- our side is saying, is we have a big Federal program right now called IDEA, and at one point the Federal government was going to -- I've learned a lot about this program, and I thought it was originally a Federal mandate as the result of a court case -- but the Federal government said they would provide 40 percent of the funding for the students with disabilities, and they've never gotten up to that, never close.

It’s up to about 12 percent now, and what we're saying is, if we have more money, if we would send it to the local districts to provide what you're spending now for IDEA, then that would free up monies that you're using for IDEA to use for if you need teachers, or if you need in-service work, or if you need new computers, or if you need new classrooms.

By one fell swoop, if we sent the money out through that program, then that frees up the money you're now spending that the Federal government was obligated for originally, and you could then, whether you're here or in Miami or in New York City or in Star Valley, Wyoming, you could make the decision at the local level, and we wouldn't be making it in Washington. You could make that decision, and spend that money as you desire.

We're saying that we should do that. And instead of arguing over new programs, we should join hands and fight for more money, and send it down until we get up to the 40 percent and let you run those programs.

So that's the big debate that we're having. That's at the K-12 level. At the postsecondary level, we're saying basically the same thing, only put the money into Pell grants.

In other words, put money into programs that are already there, that are already working, instead of forming new Federal bureaucracies and making you at the district level hire new people to administer new programs when we're already up and running on these, and they seem to be working and effective. How does that sound to you?

Mr. Martinez. Let me give you the other side of the coin, because when we started this whole debate last week -- it is a resolution, not a bill, which really has no force in law; it's just a resolution. It's the feeling of the Congress over on the side of the House of Representatives because the Senate has an incentive which is slightly different. The Senate sets Pell grants and campus-based student aid as the highest priorities for Federal funding but does not talk about new programs.

My only difference, not that I disagree with the Chairman or his side regarding that we ought to be funding the programs that are successful -- and I have a higher priority than even IDEA, which is Head Start, which is not a school program, but it's to get children ready for school, where they develop cognitive power in those children so when they come to school, they're ready for you to teach. We've never full-funded Head Start. And there are a lot of other programs that exist.

So I'm in sentiment with the idea, let's fully fund the programs that we have now. They have 12 words in that resolution which I disagree with, which did not define what is a new program. And there are certain programs, like Gear Up, which is one that has been funded for one year, but was never authorized. Is that a new program? I wanted a clarification because already Gear Up is working towards the same goals that you are in getting new teachers and quality teachers, and I think that's a program that should continue.

I don't think the Federal government does enough or lives up to anywhere near its responsibility in providing support for the LEAs because some in Congress feel we have no business in education, but I think we do.

As I mentioned to you earlier, Terrel Bell, who was one of the first Secretaries of Education under Reagan, was one that came in with the idea that he should dismantle the Department of Education until he finally realized, sitting there, that they shouldn't be dismantled and had a great responsibility to provide incentives and leadership and provide a network of communications back and forth between the districts and LEAs, what works and what doesn't work, and provide some leadership and guidance to LEAs that were having trouble and struggled.

So the whole question is, should we set priorities? Definitely. Should we do those priorities at the expense of programs that are successful too? No. But in this situation it comes down to the 100,000 teachers and programs like it. The question is, can you use the money better than, let's say, us defining you're going to use the money for 100,000 new teachers? I say, no.

I have no problem with funding IDEA, because we don't nearly come to the rate of funding that we should, as Mr. McKeon said. The problem is that the responsibility for teaching and training and giving an adequate education to these young children with disabilities is the local schools’ responsibility.

The court case found that the schools weren't doing it because it cost too much money. If you've got to provide ramps and access ramps and special desks and everything else, it's going to cost a lot more money for that one student than the rest of the students, and you're not going to get it from the State. The State gives you per pupil the same amount, whether it's a person with disabilities or not.

I find that's a problem that the State should deal with, that the state should say, "Hey, these students that cost more money to educate them, we ought to provide more per diem for those kids than the rest of the kids." But they don't do that, so the Federal government stepped in and said, "Yeah, we'll provide 40 percent," realizing it's going to cost more money. But the responsibility still lies at the local level. You cannot deny an education just because a child is disabled.

But here again, since we accepted that responsibility some years ago, I think we're negligent in not providing that money. So I agree with him on that point.

We have a very limited ability. We cannot dictate what program or the structure of that program that they'll use in trying to achieve the goal that we want to see achieved. More quality teachers and retaining them in class.

So what we actually are asking, Chairman, is what do you feel we can do? Now, you suggested this program, which I believe has great merit. One master teacher for 10 teachers, which would then provide you with monies rather than to hire new teachers if they're going to give you a certain amount of money for hiring new teacher, to use that money for that program you suggest, one master teacher for 10 teachers.

Because we've found repeatedly, over the time that we have been holding these hearings, that when we talk to the people that have experience from the field, that the big problem is -- and this I'm going to come back to because it may sound like it’s in conflict with the university's teacher training and their programs in the L.A. Unified, but it's really not, the question is not intended to do that. The question is intended to clarify the claim that was made to me in my office in Washington by someone from the L.A. Unified, that one of the problems with university-trained teachers is that when they are being trained for their teacher credentials, their field experiences are not like situations encountered in regular schools.

Now, you're saying there's a new program that's coming up that's training the teachers to be prepared to teach when they get to that classroom, regardless of the setting that it's in, whether it's in a South Central Los Angeles school, or East L.A., or Beverly Hills, that they're going to be ready to teach because they've had the life experience.

And I heard from both of you at the coffee session we had this morning that in too many cases the teachers that are coming in, even though they have teacher credentials, they're not really prepared for the real life situations they encounter in the classroom.

But these are university-trained teachers, right? And their program is slightly different in that their program puts these people that they're training for the teacher credentials into those real life situations.

Now, you guys have at it and go ahead.

Dr. Gips. Well, maybe I can clarify a little bit more about what the university does in teacher training. We have programs that are very much like those that Dr. Acosta has described. The teacher is employed by a district first and then comes to the university to join what we call an intern program.

And that means that the teacher is working full time in a classroom and takes courses with us and gets supervision from the university and gets supervision from the school district.

Mr. Martinez. Now, this is a new program, right?

Dr. Gips. No. It's been going on for years.

Mr. Martinez. How many years?

Dr. Gips. Intern programs have been in this state for--

Dr. Acosta. Since 1960, probably.

Dr. Gips. Since 1960.

Mr. Martinez. A long time.

Dr. Gips. Okay. The numbers of people in those programs are much larger in recent years because we have more people who are hired without being prepared first. So there are more people in that situation.

We also serve people who are referred to as emergency permit teachers. They are at a lesser level of preparation in that they have not met subject matter. They haven't been able to demonstrate subject matter competency.

And they are in less well organized programs, but they are teaching full time, and they take courses from the university, and the universities do as much as they possibly can to focus the course work on the day-to-day experiences of the students.

And they supervise those students in their classrooms during at least part of that program, so there is a fair amount of interaction between the district and the university and between the student's workday and the university.

When I leave this meeting today, I'm going to Los Angeles to meet with an official of the district teacher's union to work on a collaborative program that we're trying to develop between Los Angeles Unified School District and the CSU, four of our campuses, to do a joint intern program, through which students will register at the university and which we hope will be taught jointly by university faculty members and the kinds of folks that the district typically has teach their intern program. So there are a lot of collaborations going on.

Even in our most traditional programs, our students do upwards of four brief early field experiences and then two segments of student teaching, which are either one full semester or two half semesters, so there are 15 weeks of student teaching.

They are in classrooms with regular certified master teachers who work in the district, and they are supervised and supported by those teachers, and they are in regular classrooms. Some of them are in the Antelope Valley. Some of them are throughout Los Angeles. Some of them are in Las Virgines or Ventura County.

Depends on, in part, where the students live and where they want to work, but they are in real schools and real classrooms, and they should learn how to take attendance. If that goes on in the classroom, that should be part of what they experience.

So I think what we struggle with are immature professionals. And we tend to forget, I think when I began teaching in 1965, probably she would describe me in the way that she described some of her new teachers, too, and I bet if you thought back to yourself, you'd describe yourself that way as a new teacher, too, that we are baby teachers when we start and we aren't professional and we don't have all those experiences.

And the question really is, how much can we get into that pre-service program, and how much of it comes with maturation and with experience. Did I know in the first month and did I do a very good job in my first parent-teacher conference? I'm sure I didn't. I don't even remember it, I was probably so scared.

But I could do it now. I probably could do it well in three or four years after my first year of teaching. So part of that is learning. I think one of the real issues that various folks have raised is whether the districts, in fact, have sufficient money to provide the ongoing professional development, training that's necessary for people to go from being a very novice professional to being an accomplished professional. And that certainly is the sort of funding that we need.

I would personally argue that we need a different kind of school year structure at least for teachers. Perhaps not for children, but at least for teachers. We need not to put teachers in a position of working 180 or 182 days, or some people do less than that because schools are on year-round schedules, and to be on performance, on the stage all day long on all but two or four of those days.

It doesn't work because teachers need to talk to each other about their work, and they need to talk to their principals and they need the kind of training that we're talking about.

I think we need to consider the cost of just adding 10 percent. Make it a 200-day year for teachers and think about ways to build in that training or put it all at the end if we want to do it in what isn't teaching time in a block.

But we have to come to the recognition that the teaching profession, just like every other profession, needs development time and that we can't expect people to perform in classes with 20 to 40 kids all day long and be on top of it, and then be willing to think about how to do a new curriculum at 4:00 o'clock in the afternoon because they're too exhausted, and besides, they've got to get ready for the next day so they can perform again. So I think we have to do some serious thinking about a reconfiguration of a teacher's work year.

Mr. Martinez. Susan and Steve, I think you both commented on the fact that the 16-week training period was not extensive enough to really give them the capability that they need or even work towards becoming the professional that Dr. Gips has described. Would you comment?

Ms. Tahsuda. Well, a lot of the teachers that I've been working with throughout the last couple of years and doing staff development and training with them, a lot of them haven't even had any student teaching. They're on an emergency credential, and they go right into the classroom, and they usually do have some type of a university person coming in and observing certain lessons, like an hour once a month. I don't know exactly what their schedule is, but up until that time of getting that position and being on an emergency credential, they haven't really had any exposure to a classroom. Therefore, especially in elementary, you could be anywhere from a kindergarten classroom to an 8th grade classroom, and you're not specifically trained in college or university for a 1st grade classroom or you're not specifically trained for a 5th grade classroom. So there's a lot of different variances in each of those different grade levels.

So here they walk in, and it's like what's the first thing I do? What do I plan? What is the curriculum? And they're just at a loss, and there's nobody really there to guide them and to do that step-by-step training in the classroom.

They have a lot of theory. They're coming out of these universities with a lot of theory and a lot of knowledge, but they don't know how to put it to practice. And that's where a lot of the problem comes, where they need to go in, they need to watch some seasoned teachers on how to teach. They need to sit down and say, "Okay. This is what you need to teach at your grade level, and this is how you prepare for it. This is the standard. This is some of the material, and this is how you're going to deliver it to your students."

And because we are faced with a lot of different types of children in our classroom, we do have to differentiate our lesson plans, and it's not like you just go in with one set of lesson plans per classroom, but you're in a classroom with many different types of lesson plans so that we can meet the needs of all the different children in those classrooms.

Mr. Martinez. You were actually commenting that this might be where that master teacher comes into play, by being in there with that person with that lack of experience.

Dr. Gocke. You know, California used a little tax-related benefit for retired teachers to help us with the class size reduction short-fall of teachers, where we actually brought some retired teachers back. I think they had three years to work, and they didn't have to worry about the cap for making money in the same. I mean, that's an idea that could certainly help us because Dr. Acosta is right. He would, especially, in the volume of teachers that they need, maybe a couple of thousand a year, be a little reticent to pull somebody out of the classroom.

But if you could bring an experienced teacher back and tell them, you know, for three years you can work as a mentor, and the cap on your retirement structure goes off for those three years. If you did that on a federal basis, that would free up a whole lot of retired people that are sort of looking for something to do anyway. That's an idea for you that I think would help.

I think the partnerships with the universities are real important. Dr. Gips mentioned the intern programs. I think they're great. I think we need to expand those. The other thing is, Chapman University is out in our area with a program. We have staff sit on an advisory panel with the college to determine the makeup of that teacher program.

Because Dr. Gips is right. There's only so much time. You have to decide, what are the critical elements of that program that are going to really prepare people through that student teaching process.

So having the districts like Antelope Valley High School sit and work with the university on actually creating that curriculum and actually helping teach it, I think, is a real strong model that is probably going to be a lot of the answer to a lot of our needs. It has to be much more of a partnership with the teacher training colleges.

Mr. Martinez. Dr. Acosta, your program is actually a partnership with the university, but you work from your angle to the university rather than the university student coming to you.

Dr. Acosta. Our district stands alone. We do all the training.

Mr. Martinez. You do all the training?

Dr. Acosta. We do all the training that's recognized by the California Commission of Teacher Licensing. We are independent.

Mr. Martinez. Oh, okay. That's what I thought.

Dr. Acosta. We are like a university, basically.

Mr. Martinez. Then why do you feel your program is so much more effective than a teacher from a university?

Dr. Acosta. I won't say it's more effective. I think studies have proven that we are just as effective. The commission has done studies that have shown that we are just as effective as a university.

I think that the comment you made earlier, about five minutes ago, regarding somebody who had said some teachers aren't prepared; to be fair, in the Los Angeles basin, the universities that are training teachers have no choice but to train them in schools that have a linguistic diversity and socioeconomic diversity.

So that need is being met. I think what's happening, though, in some other universities away from the urban sites, those students who are fully credentialed may have a problem coming to an urban district, whether it be large or small.

And maybe those kind of districts like us -- we need to acclimatize those teachers by better pre-service to get them ready. That's where your idea of having money for the district availability to do what we need can do that.

For example, I go on recruitment trips around the country, and I go -- I don't go frequently, but I go enough to get a feel of what's going on. And a lot of those well-trained teachers just aren't trained in a setting like we have in Los Angeles, but they're willing to come out. So we owe it to them to give them some kind of pre-service to acclimatize them to what the Los Angeles experience is.

And also, somebody made a comment on the emergency teachers. One of the things we're trying to do with emergency teachers is have a as a precondition of employment that they must, before they enter a classroom, have at least 40 hours of pre-service with us. In other words, they have five eight hours a day of training. I know that's not a lot, but that's all we can afford at this point.

Again, if we had money to expand that to 120 hours, we could have emergency teachers who are better prepared to go into the classroom.

Chairman McKeon. I want to get your comment on that, but there is a related question here too that came up in our hearing last week. The idea of university teachers preparing teachers to go into the classroom that maybe haven't been in one of these classrooms for a long time. The suggestion came that maybe we should provide a program where the university teachers teaching future teachers would go out and serve a semester working in the 3rd grade or the 5th grade or the 1st grade. Not a day, a semester, so that they understand the real problems that these teachers that they are teaching are facing. What is your feeling on something like that?

Dr. Gips. I think that it's accurate to say that some of our faculty need that, but I think it's also important that you know that, at least last year when I was counting the numbers at Northridge, approximately 60 percent of our teacher education classes were taught not by full-time faculty at the university, but rather by practitioners from the field. We are that short of faculty, that we are drawing on teachers, administrators, and recently retired teachers.

And I would also say that many of our full-time faculty are very recently from the schools and that some--

Chairman McKeon. This is why we want to find out.

Dr. Gips. Yeah.

Chairman McKeon. Because sometimes ideas sound good in Washington, and we put together a program and find out it's not needed or--

Dr. Gips. I think that what happens is that there are characters in all of our colleges of education around the country who haven't been in schools in a long time, and they create an image which people then talk about.

Would the program that you are offering be useful? Yes. It doesn't need to accommodate the entire college of education in every campus around the country, but small numbers of people could take advantage of that and it would be useful; and I think it would facilitate the kinds of partnerships we're talking about.

The universities are right now hiring what they're calling teachers-in-residence. That is, they're hiring people from the schools full time. We have one from Aqua Dulce at Northridge right now who is just completing her second year with us as a full-time faculty member. She will go back to the school district to work.

That actually is difficult for the universities because classroom teachers, and administrators, for certain, are paid much more than university faculty members. And so we have a very difficult time affording to hire such people. We've tried to hire people from LAUSC and can't do it.

So that's another area that there could be some help in. Universities want more and more to hire teachers-in-residence, but we don't get the resources to do it.

Can I take a moment to give you some numbers that I think help to understand this problem a little bit? California talks, I think accurately, about a projected need of 250,000 to 300,000 teachers in the next decade, 25,000 to 30,000 per year.

Last year the commission on teacher credentialing reports credentialing of about 16,000, 17,000, something like that. That's after having upped our productivity considerably in the past two years. California State University credentials a little more than half of those.

Chairman McKeon. That's what I was going to ask, how many you had graduating.

Dr. Gips. The CSU system credentials a little more than half of those.

We also know from some very--

Chairman McKeon. About 8,000, 9,000?

Dr. Gips. Yes. New teachers into the field.

We also know that of those earning their first-time teacher credentials from SCU, approximately 85 percent of them are already working in the classrooms. We are not putting out very many newly credentialed teachers who haven't been working on emergency permits and intern permits.

And the teachers that go to schools on emergency permits are typically unprepared. They haven't had any student teaching because they haven't been in a teacher education program. They have a bachelor's degree in political science or art or English or whatever it happens to be, child development.

The reason they don't know the kinds of things that are being described here is that they haven't been prepared at all. Some people take two or three courses and then go to work on an emergency permit. But most of them are quite unprepared.

So we need to distinguish between the folks who come out just with a bachelor's degree, which is not designed to prepare teachers. It might have a little bit of field experience so that folks would know that, in fact, they want to enter into a teacher education program, but they have not had any courses, for the most part.

And that puts a tremendous burden on the district. It's exactly the situation that's being described here of people who have no knowledge of what to do because they haven't been prepared. And so we have a whole continuum of programs and of people and various places in those programs with different levels of preparation.

And I would agree that 16 weeks of student teaching is not adequate, and that's why we've gone to the kinds of partnerships with schools. For example, the one I've described, Francis Polytechnic, where the students are in field experiences over the course of that entire 12 months, the entire year, because we feel that more time is needed in the schools.

The state is also now asking us, and the CSU is actively involved in developing what we're calling integrated undergraduate programs. That is, teacher education is being moved back to the undergraduate level, at least in pilot programs, and students will take their pedagogical studies simultaneous with their content areas.

So that somebody who thinks he or she wants to teach chemistry will, from the freshman year, have field experiences, something that's unheard of now in the state, and will gradually increase those field experiences and the pedagogical studies simultaneous to the subject matter studies.

And we actually will have the faculty members who teach chemistry, for example, working with education so that those courses are linked and, in the best of all cases, integrated. We hope--

Chairman McKeon. So they don't wait until their senior year and go out and take a few weeks of--

Dr. Gips. Well, they only do it in their senior year. Teacher education is, for the most part, post-baccalaureate in this state. So people get a bachelor's degree, they might have a course or two in teacher education, and then they do their student teaching and the rest of their courses, about 30 units, after their bachelor's degree.

Chairman McKeon. But they will start that now?

Dr. Gips. So now they will start that in their undergraduate degree.

Chairman McKeon. Find out if they really want to be a teacher?

Dr. Gips. And take the courses then. We hope that they will earn their bachelor's degree and their credentials simultaneously in four years or four and a half or five.

And this has been a delicate discussion on most of our campuses because students, if they're going to do what they've done in five or six years, now in four, obviously, they're going to be taking fewer credits.

And so we've had to find ways of not losing quality and course content and packaging it in very different ways. But I believe that all 20 of the CSU campuses will implement at least a pilot version of this program in September.

One already has such a program in place. Cal State L.A. has been running a program now in its second year. So 19 new ones will come on line in the fall and one additional one in January of 2,000.

So that should also send more prepared people to the schools. And we think it will attract more people to the profession.

Chairman McKeon. So if we need 25,000 a year and we're credentialing 16,000, it doesn't take a genius to figure out we have a real problem.

Dr. Gips. The gap is getting bigger.

Chairman McKeon. I think a couple of you commented about the problem when you bring in teachers from other states -- I know this is something that Mr. Martinez has been talking about, where somebody may have been teaching in Arizona for 10 years and may be a very well qualified teacher -- but because of certain criteria we have in the state, you can't hire them, or if you can, you have to put them back into the school to get more education.

I think we want to work on something like that to make it easier so that a credential will have validity nationally or--

Mr. Martinez. Well, some way to make them be more available to us. I guess that's what I would say. Let me explain what brought about the whole thing. Our Parliamentarian on our side of the aisle, a gentleman by the name of Fred, his daughter had taught in the Boston School District for 16 years. Her husband got transferred out here, so she then moved out here to California, and wanted to continue in the teaching profession. So when she came here, she applied and she got hired by a school based on the fact that she had a teaching credential from Boston.

But she hadn't been teaching very long when she was notified by the State that she had to go back to certain classes which she had already had and take those classes over again, or she would have to stop teaching immediately, which I thought was not very smart at all.

Chairman McKeon. That wasn't diagramming.

Mr. Martinez. But Fred then asked me, because I know him real well, if there was anything I could do, so I called Theresa Hughes. Now you all know who Theresa Hughes is, I believe. She's Senator Theresa Hughes, who is Chairman of the Education Committee in the Senate.

So I asked her about this. Well, she put one of her legislative aides on it, and it wasn't too long before the threat of a teacher having to stop teaching was taken away. She did have to arrange to take some classes, but she could do it as she went, which is what you've been describing all along.

And I thought that this whole thing having to be brought to somebody's attention to intercede on her behalf was ridiculous. It should have been an automatic thing by the State itself.

I'm wondering how many times people encounter this kind of a problem. So I started asking around, and it happens in many States many times. And so I thought there ought to be some kind of incentive we could create, because we can't dictate for them to more readily acknowledge these teachers as they come from one State to another.

Dr. Acosta. You're on the right track, Mr. Martinez. We go all over the country to recruit, and we have to be very careful what we say because we have to look at transcripts and we have to look at what kind of course work they took and then analyze it when we get back to L.A.

Sometimes we can help them and sometimes we can't, but there's got to be an incentive for the states to start having a more reciprocal credentialing and licensing program. And they've got to speed it up because our need is now. We can't wait three or four years after they do a study. We need it now.

Chairman McKeon. We just passed ED-FLEX. I don't know if that will have bearing on that, but hopefully it will where the States will have more flexibility. But you know, Mr. Martinez served in the State legislature. I served on a school board. During that time, we had more problems probably with Sacramento than we did with Washington.

So I think what we're trying to do in Washington is give the power out to the localalities. For example, in California, it has to go through Sacramento, but we're trying to get decision-making down to the school board level. In L.A. city, that's bigger than most states, anyway, but down to the more local level.

The problem we run into sometimes is maybe Sacramento doesn't want to do the same thing. So we're, you know, trying to help from Washington. We need to get that same kind of attitude in the State houses to where they will take the flexibility we've given them and pass on, not just hold it and start just trying to run everything with a firm grip out of Sacramento.

You take the State of California, we're huge. Now, you know, we have 52 Congressmen from California, 12 percent of the is here in California. You go to Wyoming, a pretty big state, one Congressman, you know, and they have different kinds of problems. They don't have real tight urban problems, but they have rural problems that we don't see.

I mean, you think Lancaster is rural, we were in North Platte, Nebraska, a few weeks ago -- that was on an Older Americans Act hearing with the same group -- and I mean you get into real rural areas.

Nebraska has three Congressmen. Omaha has one, a little bit of the state has the other one, and then Mr. Barrett has like three-fourths of the state. It’s a huge district.

So trying to solve all those problems out of Washington just doesn't work. What we need to do is see what few things we can do that will be helpful without causing problems and then try to free you up.

I mean, you're all very sharp. You know your jobs. You're doing your jobs very well. Free you up from things that hamper you in carrying out your jobs. That's what we're trying to do.

I think this has been a very educational hearing. I think we've learned a lot. What we would like to do is ask you -- we do this at the end of each of our hearings -- if you thought of something that you didn't say or on the way home, you think of something that you didn't get in, we will hold the record open and add anything else that you want to get into the record.

Then, if you will watch as we come out with a bill, which we're working on, we'd like to have your input on it and like you to work with us closely in this process to keep us from making irreparable mistakes.

Mr. Martinez. Irreparable harm.

Just let me ask, we were sitting here talking, MaryEllen and I, and she's going to talk to D'Arcy about this, and then we're going to talk to the Chairman about it, but we're going to let the Chairman know that we're doing this.

You know, I happened to think when you said that we could create incentives from the Federal government, but we can't dictate. One of the incentives we could create for the State to develop better reciprocal programs is make it a condition of getting their waiver for ED-FLEX.

Now, ED-FLEX is already law, but there may be some way through the Higher Education Act, or the teacher training bill, rather, we can make an amendment to ED-FLEX and say that a part of the request for waivers is for you to have a good reciprocal law program or good reciprocal program in place as a part of this waiver. It's a thought.

Chairman McKeon. Different ways of skinning a cat.

Thank you very much. We appreciate you being here, and your work on this. We'll adjourn at this time.

[Whereupon, at 10:30 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]