Big changes in requirements to become a special education teacher in California

Massive alterations are being made to the training processes of special education teachers in California. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing is reviewing and revising the courses and other assessments, in order to train the teachers who can provide special education.

The State currently has an estimated number of 740,000 children with special abilities, which has led to the decision to put extra efforts into training more people to serve as the special education staff. As a result of the implementation of these changes, it is expected that more children, who have special abilities, will be identified and provided help, education, and caretaking.

This step is being taken as a result of the statistics released which reflected upon the poor performance of the children with special abilities as compared to the other categories of students. A crucial change being made to this system is the introduction of foundation courses which will be mandatory for all the special education and mainstream teachers. These courses are aimed to train the teachers in class management techniques and instructional skills.

“Our kids in special ed are doing extremely poor. The training and credentialing system has been broken for years.” said LindaDarling Hammond, Chair of Teaching Commission.