California State Educator Workforce Collaborative

Educators and policymakers in California face persistent teacher shortages, forcing many districts to meet staffing needs with substitute teachers and teachers who have not received adequate preservice preparation. While the state has made unprecedented investments in strengthening the teacher pipeline, strategically leveraging these resources requires bringing together leaders from across state agencies, teacher preparation programs, counties, and districts to engage in intentional statewide, regional, and local planning grounded in data and aligned to shared goals.

The California State Educator Workforce Collaborative, facilitated by WestEd, brings together key staff from the major state agencies and higher education institutions implementing the state’s educator workforce initiatives, including the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, State Board of Education, Student Aid Commission, Department of Education, and state and private higher education institutions. The Collaborative facilitates much-needed dialogue across agencies and has built momentum to achieve the following:

• improve implementation of one-time investments and initiatives that will strengthen California’s educator workforce
• establish a sustainable mechanism for effective cross-agency collaboration to address challenging policy issues

The systems change work of the Collaborative has the potential to substantially address root causes of low enrollment in high-quality teacher preparation and improved information-sharing systems for state agencies and institutions serving the educator workforce. In the second phase of the work, the Collaborative will focus on establishing a long-term, sustainable infrastructure for statewide educator workforce planning.