Cal State Stiffens Requirements for Teacher Training

Beginning next year, California State University students will have to be in the top half of their college class to enter upper-level teacher training programs.

The new requirement, combined with the state’s basic skills test for teachers, is designed to dispel the notion that prospective teachers are often the least able students in college.

“The message is that if you are a weak student, don’t consider teaching as a career,” said Linda Bunnell Jones, a dean of academic affairs at the Cal State system headquarters in Long Beach.

California needs an estimated 110,000 new teachers in the next decade, and university officials say they want to use the demand pressure to raise standards, rather than to lower them.

“We don’t attract greater numbers of successful teaching candidates by ‘dumbing down’ our preparation program,” said Cal State Chancellor W. Ann Reynolds. Top-quality students “are now put off by the image of teaching as a second-class career for those who cannot qualify for more rigorous professional preparation.”

Cites Study on Grades

Most education school deans strongly dispute the notion that their students are academically weak, citing one study that found that Cal State education graduates had grades on a par with the university average in non-education courses.

Nevertheless, several campuses were embarrassed in 1983 when the state began publishing passing rates on the new basic skills test for teachers. At three Southern California campuses--Dominguez Hills, Los Angeles and San Bernardino--half or more of the graduates failed the reading, writing and mathematics examinations.

In response, the Legislature demanded that college students take the test before beginning their education courses, usually in their junior or senior years. The 19 campuses in the system have required that students pass all three sections of the test before they can be admitted to the education departments.

Starting in the fall of 1986, education students will have to have a grade average that is at or above the campus norm. For example, if English majors have a 3.0 or a “B” average on a Cal State system campus, students who plan to become English teachers must also have at least a 3.0 average.

Prospective teachers in the Cal State system typically spend five years in college. The new guidelines, the first specific rules imposed on the campuses, also say a student must work briefly in a school as a tutor or aide before starting a teacher training program.

Realize They Don’t Like Teaching

“We get too many people who get too far along and realize that they don’t like teaching or aren’t suited to it,” Jones said.

As the rules were being formulated, several education deans and members of the Cal State Board of Trustees complained that the standards could screen out black and Latino teachers, who are in short supply in California’s schools. In what Jones called a “negotiated compromise,” the final rules say that up to 15% of the students may be admitted to education departments if they fall below one of the standards but have other “compensating strengths.”

Interest in the schools of education has picked up recently as new teaching jobs have become available and as starting salaries have jumped. The Los Angeles Unified School District, which said it needs as many as 2,500 new instructors this year, is offering about $21,000 a year to beginners, up from $13,700 in 1982.

Ray Terrell, dean of education at California State University, Los Angeles, said he believes that the higher demand will help offset any losses from the more stringent entering standards.