Tylyn Fields, with some of her fifth-grade students, is now a beloved teacher. But she almost never made it to the classroom.
Courtesy: Tylyn Fields
During California’s most recent teacher shortage, Tylyn Fields, a trained social worker, saw teaching as a calling and a promising career. Smart and motivated to make a difference, she was an excellent candidate for the high-need schools in the community where she lived and worked. Sadly, her research into teacher education revealed an impossible choice. A quality preservice program would require quitting her job for a year of unpaid coursework and student teaching. Taking out more loans was a nonstarter: she already owed thousands for previous student loans.
We desperately need more well-trained teachers across the state. And while there are countless aspiring teachers eager to make a difference in their communities, the financial barriers to entering the profession are pushing promising candidates toward emergency credentials or away from teaching altogether. Teaching is a public service profession. For too many, their future earnings as public school teachers are not enough to pay back the upfront costs of preparation, causing them to enter the profession as an Intern with little or no training so they can earn a salary, or simply give up on the idea of becoming a teacher.
California has made impressive progress in recent years to begin addressing this issue. In 2019, the state began investing in the Golden State Teacher Grant (GSTG) program to offer $20,000 tuition grants for teacher candidates who commit to teaching in high-need schools. And over the past 5 years the program has evolved to prioritize candidates who need the funding most and who seek meaningful teacher preparation before becoming teachers.
The GSTG program has made an extraordinary difference for thousands of teachers, including Tylyn. At the Alder Graduate School of Education, we focus on community-based recruitment of aspiring teachers and saw a significant jump in applications thanks to GSTG. Without the financial support from the state, Tylyn said she would have waited until she could pay off her student loans – about 10 years, she estimated.
To extend allocated funding for longer, GSTG awards were cut in half – to $10,000 – and the funding has run out. The Governor’s revised May budget for 2025-26 includes $64.2 million for the program, which is barely enough to extend GSTG for one more year. By the time the funding could be signed into law, teacher candidates will already be enrolled in programs, having less of a potential impact on recruitment.
We propose three big ideas to better support California’s teacher preparation pipeline.
- Establish consistent financial aid for aspiring teachers so that districts and preparation programs can share reliable recruitment offers with candidates. Multi-year funding for the GSTG program is one way to do this and would allow for more reliable messaging to candidates. Another could be a teacher candidate loan program that could draw from Proposition 98 funds that are somewhat more shielded from the volatility of California’s General Fund.
- Create a layered system of needs-based financial support, with baseline financial support for those meeting need criteria, and layered support for candidates who commit to a high-need subject, school, or region. This would broaden access for lower-income individuals while giving the state tools for influencing candidates’ choices.
- Restructure aid such that pre-service preparation can compete with the financial appeal of emergency pathways. Ideally, candidates could earn pay and benefits while they learn to teach and have their training costs paid for. We wisely do this for Army and police cadets because it’s unthinkable that we’d send them directly to the field without training or have them pay for their own training. Similarly, teacher candidates should be paid for their pursuit of this public service profession.
In these tight budget times, the most helpful short-term action is to increase the proposed GSTG reinvestment to cover at least two or three years of awards, so that it is useful for teacher recruitment.
Ending with some great news: after enrolling in Alder’s pre-service residency program, Tylyn graduated a year later with a teaching credential and master’s degree in Education, and took a job as a elementary school teacher in her local school district. She is about to enter her second year of teaching and she is thriving – her students, principal and colleagues are grateful she was able to become a teacher. As a state, let’s continue to push forward with the good reforms we started six years ago, so that many more candidates like Tylyn can find their way to the classroom.
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Heather Kirkpatrick is CEO and president of Alder Graduate School of Education, a nonprofit, community-based, professional workforce development pathway that partners with public TK-12 school systems across California.
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