The Preparing a New Generation of Educators for California initiative intends to ensure that California State University (CSU) teacher preparation programs are producing the teachers needed by the state’s K-12 school districts as they complete their transition to the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards.

Launched by CSU in partnership with the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, this multi-year initiative also aims to build the capacity of individual CSU campuses and the CSU system as a whole to collect, analyze, and use data to drive programmatic decision-making to inform improvement of teacher preparation programs.

WestEd and SRI are conducting a formative evaluation of the initiative at eight CSU campuses: CalStateTEACH, Channel Islands, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, San Luis Obispo, and Stanislaus. WestEd’s Neal Finkelstein serves as Principal Investigator of the evaluation, which will investigate the teacher preparation pipelines, changes to the nature of credentialing programs, effectiveness of teachers, and campus systems for supporting ongoing improvement.

States SRI International’s Evaluation of the New Generation of Educators Initiative project page:

“Researchers will analyze quantitative and qualitative data to examine individual campus efforts to transform teacher preparation, how well these efforts are being implemented, and to what extent they are resulting in more effective teachers. In turn, the evaluation will support funded campuses in building the capacity to self-monitor their progress both during and after the study.

The evaluation will summarize lessons learned for policymakers and educators interested in improving teacher preparation programs’ ability to graduate effective teachers of the new academic standards and to institutionalize data systems and processes to drive programmatic decision-making.”