The Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC), created in 1970, is responsible for preparation of educators in California public schools, licensing and credentialing of professional educators, enforcement of professional practices and discipline of credential holders.  

Leo Ryan probably won’t be remembered as the author of legislation that created the Commission on Teacher Credentialing in 1970 while he was a California Democratic Assemblyman. Wikipedia doesn’t even mention it.

People might recall that the then-Assemblyman once took a job as a substitute teacher in Watts after the 1965 riots to observe firsthand the desperate conditions there. Five years later he investigated conditions at Folsom Prison by entering as an inmate under a pseudonym. He traveled to Newfoundland in the ‘70s as a congressman to document the killing of seals, was a vocal critic of the CIA and issued early warnings about destructive cults.

It was his interest in cults that led to his murder in Guyana while investigating the People’s Temple in 1978 at the onset of the Jonestown massacre.

But in the late ‘60s Ryan’s focus was on education. The Department of Education had been firmly in control of teacher credentialing during the previous decade and was heavily influenced by the professional training views of teacher educators from schools of education.

But that ostensibly changed in 1961 when the Fisher Act was passed. It attempted to resolve a debate that pitted people who thought the emphasis should be on hiring people with “education” degrees against those who recognized accomplishments in specific academic areas.

Democratic state Senator Hugo Fisher, author of the Fisher Act, strongly favored an academic emphasis over “education” training. Practically speaking, that emphasis dictated a credential standard that required a significant decrease in the number of educational methods courses and a subject-matter major other than education.

The law laid out a loose regulatory outline but left the details and implementation to the state Board of Education. Although the Legislature had spoken (through the Fisher Act) and the Board of Education seemed to be firmly behind it, an entrenched education establishment fought back and undermined the law at every turn. By 1965, the Fisher Act was in disarray and the board bent to the will of the Department of Education.

Enter Leo Ryan. A former superintendent of a small Nebraska high school district, Ryan was frustrated when he moved to California and was denied a teaching position because he lacked a minor education credential. By the time he became an Assemblyman in 1963, he had developed a well-known distaste for educational bureaucracies.

Ryan was critical of the state Department of Education and in 1965 set out to craft legislation that would beef up Fisher Act standards and remove the department from oversight of teacher credentialing. The 1970 Ryan Act did that.

It created the independent Commission on Teacher Preparation and Licensing, reduced a proliferation of various credentials to a single one for all teachers K through 12 and endorsed the strong emphasis on subject matter preparation contained in the Fisher Act.

The 15-member commission was appointed by the governor and consisted of six certified public school persons, of which at least four had to be full-time teachers; four college or university faculty members; two school board members; and three private citizens. This commission was later succeeded by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC).

About CTC (CTC website)

A History of Policies and Forces Shaping (CTC website) (pdf)

Commission Members (CTC website)

The commission currently consists of 19 members, 15 voting members and four ex-officio, non-voting members.

The governor appoints 14 voting commissioners and the state superintendent of public instruction serves as the 15^th voting member. The four ex-officio members are each selected by the major elements of the California higher education constituency: Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities; Regents of the University of California; California Postsecondary Education Commission; and the California State University.

The governor-appointed commissioners consist of six classroom teachers, one school administrator, one school board member, one school counselor or services credential holder, one higher education faculty member from an institution for teacher education and four public members. Governor-appointed commissioners are typically appointed to four-year terms and serve as volunteers in unpaid positions.

The Agency is broken down into five divisions under the executive office, which consists of the executive director.

The divisions are:

Certification, Assignments and Waivers

Professional Services

Professional Practices/Office of Governmental Relations

Enterprise Technology Services

Administrative Services includes the Office of Human Resources and the Fiscal and Business Services Section

The CTC offers assistance for current California educators in renewing credentials or adding additional authorizations to a credential. It offers information on reactivating or reinstating a credential. The commission also helps prospective educators as well through various approved educator preparation programs. It provides information on credential requirements, examinations and application materials.

Organization Chart (CTC website) (pdf)

The commission has lost about 30% of its funding since FY 2003-04.

About 56% of the commission’s current $46.3 million budget comes from the state’s General Fund. A third of its funding comes from teacher credential application fees and most of the rest from other testing and application fees.

About 72% of the commission’s budget is spent on “Professional Services.” These include developing and implementing license examinations and standards, administration of programs like the Alternative Certification/Intern Program and the Paraprofessional Teacher Training Program, data collection, reporting and policy research.

Around 18% goes to evaluating and processing more than 250,000 applications annually for credentials, permits, certificates and waivers for authorizations to serve in public schools.

A little more than 10% goes to policing credential holders and applicants through the Division of Professional Practices. The division investigates allegations of misconduct, criminal activity, unprofessional behavior or other behavior that could impact the status of a license.

Top 10 Contractors: The Commission on Teacher Credentialing's largest service contractors in 2012, according to the  State Contract & Procurement Registration System (eSCPRS) in the Department of General Services, were:

3-Year Budget (pdf)

Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) (Legislative Analyst’s Office) (pdf)

“One of the Worst-Run”

The Bureau of State Audits had high hopes when it began its study of the Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s Division of Professional Practices.

“We expected to find that the division uses management practices that enable it to efficiently and effectively resolve cases involving holders of or applicants for teaching credentials. . . . We also expected to find that the commission expeditiously addresses cases in which criminal conduct is alleged.”

Instead, investigators found that in the summer of 2009 there was a backlog of 12,600 unprocessed Reports of Arrest and Prosecution, known in the business as RAP sheets, from the Department of Justice. The division processes around 300-400 a month.

Those who were processed and punished were inadequately tracked.

The division manager cited employee shortages and “the lack of an information system capable of effectively tracking the division’s workload” as reasons for the backlog.

The investigation was spurred by Kathy Carroll, a former lawyer for the commission, who complained to state Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg in 2009 about problems where she worked. Steinberg requested the state Auditor investigate and during the investigation, Carroll, a heart transplant recipient, was placed on administrative leave.

State Auditor Elaine Howle, after releasing her office’s findings in April 2011, characterized the commission as “one of the worst-run” organizations she had ever investigated. Auditors found flaws in nearly every aspect of the commission’s regulatory process, including lapses in launching investigations, updating files, gathering facts, tracking cases and revoking credentials.

Among the credential holders suspected on wrongdoing were people accused of distributing obscene material to a student, kissing a student and inappropriate sexual comments to female students. One teacher was charged with a range of offenses, including petty theft and prostitution. She pleaded guilty to misdemeanor prostitution but was allowed to renew her credential the next year. It was revoked two years later.

It took the commission six months to revoke the credential of a teacher banned by a judge from teaching for a year because he urinated in class in front of students.

The six-page summary listed a litany of the division’s transgressions and shortcomings, and recommendations that started with the basics: stop accepting work they can’t do, figure out procedures for doing the job and find out how many people they need to function.

Following release of the audit report by Howle, two top commission officials resigned. Executive Director Dale Janssen and general counsel Mary Armstrong’s resignation were announced in June 2011 during a public meeting of the commission.

According to the board’s chairwoman, Ting Sun, the two no longer felt that they could be effective leaders “in the environment created after the release.” The announcement came one month after Democratic Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, chairman of the Joint Legislative Audit Committee, called for their replacement.

Whistle-blower Carroll was fired in November 2010 and appealed her dismissal to the state Personnel Board.

Commission on Teacher Credentialing (California State Auditor) (pdf)

Agency Fails to Crack Down on Teacher Misconduct, California Audit Says (by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee)

2 Resign from Calif. Teacher Licensing Commission (by Juliet Williams, Associated Press)

Two Leaders of California Commission on Teacher Credentialing Step Down (by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee)

Dismissed California Whistle-Blower Battles to Get Job Back (by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee)

No Intern Left Behind

With the creation of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, a standards-based education reform was established. The law was intended to increase accountability required of schools and teachers. Students are required to take a standardized test each year to measure the improvement among student test scores over the fiscal years. And the states are under pressures to improve teachers’ credentials or hire more qualified teachers.

The No Child Left Behind Act requires that all core classes, including English, math and science, be taught by teachers with a “highly qualified” classification by the end of the 2005-2006 school year.

In August 2005, a lawsuit was filed against the commission by the Californians for Justice, a public interest group. The group alleged the commission had created new internship credentials so that teachers with emergency credentials could be reclassified as “highly qualified” under federal law.

In November, Superior Court Judge James L. Warren voided the credentials of 4,000 teachers who had been improperly labeled “highly qualified” and told the commission to stop issuing new internship certificates.

The issue eventually made its way into the federal education bureaucracy, federal courts and Congress.

First, the federal Education Department loosened up the definition of “highly qualified” to include those making “satisfactory progress” toward certification.

The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed out the regulation in October 2010 for “impermissibly” expanding the definition of “highly qualified.” One of the court’s concerns was that a broader definition would lead to less qualified teachers ending up in poorer school districts.

And then Congress passed a resolution two months later that redefined “highly qualified” in a way that effectively overturned the court’s decision.

Questions Arise Over State Teaching Credentials (KTVU)

Judge Tells State to Void the Credentials of 4,000 Teachers (by Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Times)

State Illegally Labeled Teachers as “Qualified” (by Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle)

Ninth Circuit Strikes Down ED Regulation on Alternative Certification for Teachers (Thompson.com)

Renee v. Duncan (Public Advocates)

Transparency

The commission website currently provides a public database for looking up the credentials of any California teacher. But that is all that can be checked out: just the credential.

It has been suggested that the database be updated to include information on any teacher accused of wrongdoing, convicted of a felony or issued a letter of reprimand. A similar database is provided by the Medical Board in the Department of Consumer Affairs.

Opinion: Commission to Police Teachers Has Failed Utterly in Its Duty (by Larry Sand, San Jose Mercury)

Application and Credential Online Search (CTC website)

Physician License Lookup (Medical Board of California website)

Is the Commission on Teacher Credentialing Worth Keeping?

In the wake of a scathing report by the state Auditor and the subsequent resignations of two top officials, the commission’s very existence has been brought into question. A few years earlier, the commission was found to have improperly credentialed at least 4,000 teachers in response to the 1991 No Child Left Behind.

Should we really be credentialing these credentialers?

Get Rid of the Commission

Critics of the commission come after it from a number of directions.

Some say it is just another example of how inadequate public school systems are and reinforces the necessity for a movement toward privatization, vouchers and charter schools.

Others say the commission is stacked with unionized teachers with a built-in conflict-of-interest who are just trying to protect their own. Others say the commission is yet another redundant agency in an all-too-large government and the state Department of Education could administer its functions. Then again, a number of those same people want to get rid of the Department of Education as well.

Keep It

One decade later, it is not an uncommon perception that schools were given an impossible mission by President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind. Now they are being punished when they try to find innovative ways to meet unreasonable standards.

The same economic pressures that resulted in the commission’s intern credentialing misstep have been felt elsewhere at the CTC.

The Division of Professional Practices, skewered in an April 2011 state audit for horrible oversight of educational miscreants, was a victim of budget cuts that devastated its workforce by not only shorting its numbers, but leaving it with many under-trained and experienced workers.

Three months after her report, state Auditor Elaine Howle told lawmakers who were considering legislation to establish an enforcement program auditor that the commission and its wayward division had already taken steps to implement 12 of her agency’s 13 recommendations.

The legislation’s author, Assemblyman Ricardo Lara, also said that he was pleased by the commission’s progress.

The much-derided Professional Practices division’s enforcement activities are only one function of the commission and uses only 10% of the commission’s funding. There are few complaints about its much larger responsibilities for credentialing teachers and setting standards.

Defenders of the commission suspect that much of the criticism it receives is mostly a veiled attack on the teachers union, and the allegation that the commission is controlled by teachers is spurious.

Four of the 19 commissioners are non-voting members chosen by higher education institutions. One is the state Superintendent of Public Instruction. The governor picks the other 14.

There is one school administrator one school board member, one school administrator, one school counselor, one higher education faculty member and four members of the public.

Only six are teachers.

Defenders also that although intense public scrutiny has been focused on paring state government, the commission was not on Governor Jerry Brown’s hit list of 42 agencies and departments he wanted eliminated at the beginning of 2011.

Brown announced six new appointees to the commission on August 2, 2011. Five are Democrats and one is registered as “declined-to-state.”

A Troubled Agency Needs to Disappear (Sacramento Bee editorial)

CTA Bars the Way to Reform in School (Alan Bonsteel, Los Angeles Daily News)

Bill Analysis AB 229 (pdf)

Troubled Teacher Credentialing Panel Wins Kudos for Progress (by Jim Sanders, Sacramento Bee)

Beth Graybill, 2011 (interim)

Dale Janssen, 2006-2011

Sam Swofford, 1996-2006

Ruben Ingram (Interim), 1995-1996

Philip Fitch, 1989-1995

Richard Mastain, 1985-1989

John F. Brown, 1980-1985

Peter LoPresti, 1973-1980

George Gustafson, 1971-1973