During the 2020-21 school year, about 83% of courses in K-12 public schools in Los Angeles County and the state, including charter schools, were taught by fully and properly credentialed teachers. In Los Angeles Unified, the number was slightly lower, yet still comparable, according to data released Thursday, June 30, by the California Department of Education.
While the majority of classes were taught by appropriately assigned teachers, that still left nearly 1 in 5 courses that weren’t.
Moreover, the percentage of classroom assignments considered “ineffective” was 5.1% that year in LAUSD, 1 percentage point higher than L.A. County or the state.
An teacher’s assignment to teach a course is considered “ineffective” if the instructor holds only an emergency teaching permit, is teaching outside their credentialed area without state authorization – known as a mis-assignment – or possesses no credential, permit or authorization to teach in California.
During the 2020-21 school year, 83.1% of teaching assignments statewide were labeled “clear” — indicating that a class was led by a credentialed teacher fully authorized to teach that course.
Meanwhile, 4.4% were “out-of-field” assignments — the courses were taught by teachers with credentials, but not in the subject they teach, or they weren’t credentialed to teach certain pupils, such as English learners, but were assigned such students.
Another 1.5% of classes were taught by teachers with an intern credential who had not completed training or credential requirements.
In L.A. Unified, 82.3% of teaching assignments overall were clear, 3.9% were out-of-field and 2.6% were led by teachers with intern credentials.
But digging deeper, the percentage of “clear” courses with fully credentialed teachers was below 80% in the key courses of English language arts, math, and science.
In LAUSD, the percentage of classes taught by a fully authorized and properly credentialed teacher was just 77.7% in English language arts, 78.6% in mathematics and 76.6% in science.
Parents and the public can look for statewide, county, district or school-specific data to see how many courses at their child’s school are taught by properly credentialed teachersor they can compare the results at different campuses to see if certain schools have more teachers who aren’t considered fully trained or credentialed to teach their courses. The data is available on the Teaching Assignment Monitoring Outcome webpage, available through DataQuest, a state education department site.
“As we begin to emerge from a global pandemic, this data is an important tool to drive conversations about how we can best serve students,” said Mary Nicely, chief deputy superintendent at the state Department of Education. In her statement she said, “By launching this annual report, we are providing a new level of transparency … including statewide education workforce shortages.”
For years, educators have been warning of a national teacher shortage that did not start with the pandemic but was worsened by that crisis.The result: filling classrooms with teachers not considered fully or properly credentialed.
The labor shortage has been felt locally, with the nation’s second-largest school district failing to hire the number of teachers it wanted last year to help students recover from the pandemic.
This spring, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho deployed hundreds of non-classroom district employees with credentials to teach in classrooms as a temporary fix for teacher vacancies. The staffing issues were worsened by the COVID-19 vaccination mandate that forced hundreds, if not thousands, of workers to be removed from on-campus assignments.
In a statement, the district said it expects to start the upcoming school year with “appropriate staffing levels” and is working with principals to reduce the number of courses that aren’t taught by fully, or properly, credentialed teachers.
“Los Angeles Unified is working closely with our partnering institutions of higher education, our internal pipelines and the state to ensure we have appropriately credentialed teachers in every classroom,” the statement said.
The latest data is the result of a 2019 bill requiring the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing to develop a system to annually track teacher assignments in order to meet federal reporting requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act.
While recognizing that “a vast majority of teaching assignments are properly filled,” State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond said more should be done to hire, train and retain educators.
“There is no question that well-qualified teachers are among the most important contributors to a student’s educational experience,” she said. “California is committed to ensuring that every student has teachers who are well prepared to teach challenging content to diverse learners in effective ways and are fully supported in their work.”
Over the past four years, the state has invested over $3.6 billion to recruit, retain and train teachers, according to the state Department of Education.
