SCTA Newsletter

The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing affects you in a variety of ways. For now, it is most important that you understand these three points: first, a credential or an emergency permit from the CCTC is required to teach in a California public school, however, it is not always needed if you intend to teach in a private school.

Second, it is the CCTC that bestows on you-the prospective public school educator-your license to teach in California. It is neither your school nor its "Teacher Preparation/Credential/Pre-Credential" programs that provide you with the license to teach. Those programs hope to provide you with what they believe are the best curricula to meet the requirements of the CCTC. In turn, once you pass or graduate from those programs, the program coordinators will recommend to the CCTC that you receive a credential, which in essence, is your license to teach.

Third, Commission-sponsored Senate Bill 2042 (Alpert/Massoni, 1998) is the legislation that, in addition to other aspects of education, overhauls the standards and assessment for teacher preparation in order that they become aligned with the state-adopted academic content standards for students in California K-12 public schools and curriculum frameworks. In other words, teachers are required to know at the very least what students should know when those students are being tested.