How to Ensure Linguistic Equity in California’s Transitional Kindergarten Workforce

In 2021, California launched a significant change to its early education system, aiming to offer universal pre-K to every 4-year-old by the 2025–26 academic year. State leaders have spent subsequent years preparing to realize that vision. This could mark a watershed moment in American early education politics and policy: If California is able to build a workforce equal to the task of delivering high-quality early learning to its uniquely diverse population of young children, its system will be an example for the rest of the country.¹

Successful implementation hinges on many factors, but none is more important than staffing. Research suggests that quality early educators are key to effective pre-K programs. In a state as richly diverse as California, bilingual early educators will be particularly essential to make the new classrooms work best. But finding, training, and retaining those teachers is no simple matter—and will require both public investments and structural changes to the state’s educator workforce policies.²

Careful design and implementation will be essential for California’s universal pre-K ambitions, not least because of the state’s size. In 2021, California enrolled 147,351 children in its public pre-K programs, or slightly under one-third of the state’s 4-year-olds (31 percent). That year, the National Institute for Early Education Research ranked the state eighteenth for public pre-K access, behind states like Florida (68 percent), Georgia (55 percent), and Texas (47 percent). Since California is the country’s largest state by population, its burgeoning early education investments are a step towards what would assuredly be the most extensive state system for educating 4-year-olds in the country. Indeed, by the 2022–23 school year, California had already grown its early education programs to serve 166,452 4-year-olds (38 percent of all 4-year-olds). At full capacity, the state estimates that it will enroll around 400,000 children. That would be slightly larger than the 2022–23 4-year-old pre-K enrollment of the states of Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma—combined.³

California’s path to universal coverage largely runs through expansion of its transitional kindergarten (TK) program. Initially created in 2010, TK was designed to enroll 4-year-olds whose birthdays narrowly missed the September 1 kindergarten age cutoff. The new batch of TK funding will progressively broaden eligibility until all 4-year-olds are eligible.⁴

This major early education investment is backed by a strong research consensus. Designed and implemented well, universal TK should help prepare students for success by advancing their language and literacy development, thinking skills, self-control, and self-confidence. Research shows that public investments in high-quality early education can improve children’s kindergarten readiness, as well as long-term academic and life outcomes.⁵

These benefits for students will create long-term aggregate benefits for the state. Children who arrive at kindergarten prepared to learn will complete more years of education, which is correlated with numerous advantages, including producing higher incomes, greater public revenues, and less poverty and crime. A study of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s pre-K programs found a return of $3 to $4 in social benefits and public savings for every dollar spent on pre-K. But while Tulsa’s program enrolls fewer than ten thousand students, California’s forthcoming universal system will reach nearly fifty times as many children—with commensurately greater social and economic benefits for the state.⁶

And yet, capturing the benefits of universal pre-K programs requires thoughtful, careful design and implementation. Otherwise, increases in access can come at the expense of program quality, which risks undermining the return on program investment for students and the state as a whole.

The most significant implementation hurdle in any rapid early education expansion is staffing, and California is no exception. According to a 2022 Learning Policy Institute report, California districts must hire 11,900 to 15,600 additional lead TK teachers by 2025–26 to reach universal pre-K coverage. Furthermore, California needs between 16,000 and 19,700 assistant TK teachers by 2025–26 to arrive at a 10:1 adult-to-student ratio. Early returns suggest that many local education leaders are struggling to find the teachers and assistants they need to keep TK expansion on track.⁷

California must prioritize the training and hiring of linguistically diverse early educators.

What’s more, California students’ remarkable diversity means that the state’s TK program needs teachers with a specific skill set to be maximally successful. In particular, California must prioritize the training and hiring of linguistically diverse early educators. In 2022–23, the state’s 1,112,535 English learners (ELs) constituted 19.01 percent of the total enrollment in California K–12 public schools. Furthermore, most of these ELs were in elementary school. Linguistic diversity is greater still in the early years before elementary school, when these children are often referred to as dual-language learners (DLLs), since they are still developing proficiency in both English and their home languages. A Migration Policy Institute analysis of U.S. Census data found that nearly 60 percent of California children 5 years old or younger speak a non-English language at home. In the 2021–22 school year, 27 percent of TK students were formally designated as DLLs.⁸

These children do best when they have bilingual teachers capable of helping them develop in both of their emerging languages. Research indicates that bilingual or dual-language immersion (DLI) programming can help DLLs succeed academically and makes them more likely to reach English proficiency by middle school.⁹

State leaders are aware of the challenge. The state legislature approved $597 million in funding to support the second year of TK implementation (2023–24). Specifically, the California Department of Education’s Pre-Kindergarten Planning and Implementation Grant Program supports schools looking to expand access to early education. California’s Commission on Teacher Credentialing has taken steps like developing a new credential specifically for PK-3 teachers, and awarding grants to financially support aspiring educators pursuing credentials in TK.¹⁰ 

So, what can California do to build a historically TK workforce that is also linguistically diverse enough to deliver the bilingual learning opportunities young Californians deserve?

This report examines California’s policy options. First, we’ll explore the ways credentialing reforms could make TK roles more accessible to California’s existing bilingual early educator workforce. Second, we’ll evaluate ways to recruit new bilingual teachers to the classroom. Third, and finally, we’ll look at how to retain bilingual teachers in the teacher workforce.

Credentialing Reform for TK Workforce

TK’s Future

Teacher training and licensure policies operate within a set of competing priorities. For instance, policymakers and the public justifiably want educators to have credentials that accurately reflect that they have received the training they need to provide children with effective, quality instruction. They also want teachers who have the necessary skills to deliver instruction that best meets students’ needs—particularly historically marginalized students like ELs. They also want to have a teaching force that resembles their students’ demographics, and one that’s large enough to fill all of the state’s classrooms and keep class sizes low.

The answer to defining a state’s educator workforce is always, ideally, a balance between goals such as these. For instance, increases in formal credential requirements may produce some increased skills on behalf of new teacher-candidates, but they also may reduce the overall pool of new teachers—and the diversity of that pool—by raising the cost of joining the workforce. Or, similarly, efforts to change credential requirements may create unnecessary roadblocks to becoming a teacher, requiring teacher candidates to complete unnecessary or unproven trainings that do not ultimately benefit students. There are innumerable other examples of tradeoffs that come with translating public priorities into policy reforms. 

And, of course, any reforms are inevitably framed by, and responsible to, historical and political contexts. For instance, for better and worse, a state’s ability to define its future teacher workforce is inevitably shaped by the characteristics of its present teacher workforce. Leaders rarely get to reconstruct a large portion of a sector’s workforce, let alone build an entire new workforce from scratch.

Still, because its early education plan involves a large, rapid expansion of the number of new TK teachers, California has a unique opportunity—and unique leverage—to define the contours and demographics of its early education sector. The design and implementation of California’s TK teacher policies will reveal which of these aforementioned goals it plans to prioritize.

With that in mind, here are the current pathways the state has devised for becoming a California TK teacher. The tables and information provided below are sourced from documents published by the California County Superintendents, the California Department of Education, and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, whose contributions significantly informed this report.¹¹

Table 1

Pathways to Becoming a Certified Lead Transitional Kindergarten Teacher, by Level of Credential at Start
P-3 Credentialed Teacher (Requires steps in Table 2)	Multiple-Subject Credentialed Teacher (Complete ONE of the following)	Child Development Permit Holder with Bachelor’s (Complete BOTH of the following)	Child Development Permit Holder without Bachelor’s (Complete BOTH of the following)	Bachelor’s Holder with No Permit or Credential  (Complete ONE of the following)
	Possess or obtain at least 24 units in ECE or Child Development	Possess or obtain at least 24 units in ECE or Child Development	Complete bachelor’s degree with 24 units in ECE or Child Development	Complete all steps in an approved P–3 Program (See the required steps in Table 2)
	Hold a Child Development Teacher Permit or higher	Complete clinical practice hours at an approved P–3 Preparation Program (Preliminary and Clear PK–3 ECE Specialist Instruction Credential, University Intern Credential, or District Intern Credential) or Multiple-Subject Credential Preparation Program (Preliminary and Clear Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential, University Intern Credential, District Intern Credential, General Education Limited Assignment Permit, Short-Term Staff Permit, or Provisional Internship Permit)	Complete clinical practice hours at an approved P–3 Preparation Program (Preliminary and Clear PK–3 ECE Specialist Instruction Credential, University Intern Credential, or District Intern Credential) or Multiple-Subject Credential Preparation Program (Preliminary and Clear Multiple Subjects Teaching Credential, University Intern Credential, District Intern Credential, General Education Limited Assignment Permit, Short-Term Staff Permit, or Provisional Internship Permit)	Complete a Multiple-Subject Credential program and one of the options under “Multiple-Subject Credentialed Teacher”
	Professional experience in a classroom setting with preschool-age children that is comparable to the 24 units of education, which is determined by a school district governing board
Note: ECE = Early Childhood Education.

Table 2

P–3 Credential Requirements

P-3 Credential requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree • Completion of the subject matter requirement via one of the following: • Major in an early childhood education related field, or • Completion of 24 semester units in child development or the equivalent quarter units of nonremedial, degree-applicable coursework at a regionally accredited institution of higher education • Completion of clinical practice hours at a commission-approved preparation program, either intern, traditional, or residency • Passage of the Reading Instruction Competence Assessment (RICA) or a commission-approved literacy performance assessment for early childhood education. • Passage of a commission-approved teaching performance assessment for multiple subjects in a PK-3 setting, or passage of a commission-approved teaching performance assessment for early childhood education.

Table 3

Other Credentials Permitted for Teaching TK

• General Kindergarten–Primary (K-3) • General Elementary (K–8) • Standard Early Childhood (P–3) • Standard Elementary (K–9) • Specialist Instruction Credential in Early Childhood Education   • Emergency Transitional Kindergarten Credential (renewable one time for a total of two issuances)

Table 4

Additional Requirements for Bilingual TK Teachers

California Bilingual Authorization Teaching credential Language Development Specialist Certificate; Cross-Cultural, Language, and Academic Development (CLAD) Certificate; teaching credential with an English Learner Authorization or CLAD Emphasis; or eligibility for a CLAD Certificate or teaching credential with an EL authorization via: Recent passing scores on Subtests 1, 2 and 3 of the California Teacher of English Learners (CTEL) Examination; Possession of an out-of-state credential with an EL authorization; or National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification in Early and Middle Childhood/English as a New Language or Early Adolescence through Young Adulthood/English as a New Language. One of the following: Recent passing scores on Tests II (or III depending on the language, covering Language and Communication), IV, and V of the California Subject Examinations for Teachers (CSET): World Languages; Completion of a state-approved bilingual teacher training program and recommendation for authorization by the program’s sponsor; or Completion of course work in a commission-approved bilingual program, combined with passing scores on the CSET: World Languages Examination(s).

Of course, these varied pathways make clear that California’s “new” TK workforce will not be entirely new, in the sense of being made up of young, rookie early educators trained in a particular, state-defined way. Rather, the TK workforce will be largely built from—and alongside—the state’s existing early education workforce, much of which has spent years working in other private or public early education settings. This is particularly pressing, since teachers in the state’s TK classrooms make significantly higher incomes than their peers working in other early education settings.¹²

The large public investments and accompanying policies building universal TK will impact these current early educators’ career prospects—and shape the pathways that future early educators must take. Fortunately, California is blessed with a vibrant and diverse early education workforce that has deep expertise in how to support multilingual development while working with young children. To make TK expansion maximally effective for California’s diverse young learners, state policymakers should build upon this workforce’s strengths and assets. 

First, California’s early education workforce is nearly as linguistically diverse as the young California children it serves. Data from the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment show that 48 percent of California’s early educators in center-based programs speak a non-English language, and 52 percent of early educators in family child care programs also do so. By comparison, just 27 percent of the state’s elementary and secondary educators spoke a non-English language.¹³

Second, this workforce is diverse in other ways as well. As of 2020, approximately 83,800 lead teachers and assistants or aides worked in California’s child care centers. As of 2021, 66 percent of these center-based educators were educators of color and 34 percent were white. By contrast, only 39 percent of public school TK–12 educators were educators of color. (See Table 5 below).¹⁴

This diversity in the child care workforce is an extraordinary resource for the state’s TK classrooms. Research shows that bilingual education is the best model for young, linguistically diverse DLLs. A bilingual teacher can show students the importance of knowing more than one language and embracing different cultures. They can also help students to fully develop their emerging bilingual skills—and to reap the personal, professional, and cognitive benefits that come with these.¹⁵

But that’s only the beginning. A bilingual teacher can also explain academic content and key concepts in students’ first languages, making it easier for them to stay on track. These explanations help students connect what they already know with new material in English. Further, a bilingual teacher can connect with linguistically diverse students in ways that help them navigate language and cultural differences in school and beyond. This helps students feel included and supported in their learning community, which further boosts their academic and emotional growth. Furthermore, there is growing evidence that children of color benefit from having teachers who share their racial and/or ethnic identities.¹⁶

Thankfully, California has a wealth of diverse early education talent. As it builds toward universal TK, the state must take steps to maintain it, including—particularly—by ensuring linguistic diversity in its early childhood education (ECE) workforce. This should be an urgent priority: while California is moving most of its early education seats for 4-year-olds from private to public programs, it is not yet providing pathways to allow most of its experienced early educators to follow kids into these new settings.

TK in California Today

California’s current early learning workforce isn’t just diverse. It also boasts practitioners with significant expertise gleaned from many years working with 3- and 4-year-olds. Clearly, the state should avoid credentialing measures that serve as barriers for seasoned ECE teachers—particularly those bringing diverse and valuable skills—who wish to transition to TK settings. How do California’s current policies defining the TK workforce stack up when measured against the goal of ensuring a smooth transition of linguistically diverse teachers to TK settings?¹⁷

While data are scarce, early returns suggest that California’s rules are producing a less diverse ECE workforce in TK classrooms. For instance, a CSCCE effort to gather data on California’s TK workforce before the state began expanding to universal coverage struggled to gather representative data, “due to the lack of centralized data on the TK workforce.”¹⁸ Nonetheless, they were able to survey 282 teachers across 150 school districts, and found that their sample was 71 percent white and 22 percent multilingual.¹⁹ 

This relative lack of diversity appears to be because the state’s TK workforce policies to date privilege TK roles for K–12 teachers with a generic Multiple-Subject K–12 Teaching Credential.²⁰

As experts on the state’s system put it in an article earlier this year, 

To obtain the preK-3 credential, an early educator with a bachelor’s degree and at least six years’ experience will still need to complete additional coursework and clinical practice, including at least 200 hours in a K-3 setting. By comparison, K-12 teachers in private schools can apply directly for an elementary/middle school credential without additional training, even if their teaching experience covers only a single grade level.²¹

This could be a significant policy error, since—as noted above—data show that California’s K–12 teaching force has less linguistic diversity and less direct experience working with young children than the state’s crop of current early educators.

Table 5

Demographics of California Teaching Staff, by Ethnicity
	Early Educators in Center-Based Programs (2020)	K–12 Teachers (2018–19)	K–12 Students (2018–19)
Black	5%	4%	6%
Latine/a/o	39%	21%	55%
Asian	10%	6%	9%
White	34%	61%	22%
Two or More Races	8%	1%	4%
Multilingual	48%	27%*	40%
Note: Data on CA K–12 teachers’ multilingualism are from the 2021 American Community Survey’s Five-Year Estimates. Source: Ed-Data: Education Data Partnership, California Department of Education, EdSource, Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team/California School Information Services, “Teachers by Ethnicity: California Public Schools,” accessed August 23, 2023, https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA; Anna Powell, Elena Montoya, and Yoonjeon Kim, “Demographics of the California ECE Workforce,” Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California-Berkeley, January 13, 2022, https://cscce.berkeley.edu/publications/data-snapshot/demographics-of-the-california-ece-workforce/; U.S. Census, “ACS 5-Year Estimates Public Use Microdata Sample” (2021), U.S. Census, author’s analysis, https://data.census.gov/mdat/#/search?ds=ACSPUMS5Y2021&cv=LANX&rv=ucgid,OCCP&wt=PWGTP&g=0400000US06; “Facts about English Learners,” California Department of Education, accessed October 17, 2023, https://www.cde.ca.gov/ds/ad/cefelfacts.asp; Ed-Data: Education Data Partnership, California Department of Education, EdSource, Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team/California School Information Services, accessed August 14, 2023, https://www.ed-data.org/state/CA.

For instance, as of 2021, only 37 percent of TK teachers had previously worked with children younger than 5, and 34 percent of new TK teachers had an associate degree or higher specifically in early childhood education or child development. The new TK workforce appears to be coming heavily from elementary schools: 90 percent had previously worked in K–3 grades.²²

Why do California educators working with 4-year-olds in ECE centers appear to be so much more diverse than California TK and K–12 teachers? In large part, it’s because credential requirements are considerably more stringent for those TK–12 roles than for ECE centers. This begins with undergraduate education: as seen in Table 1, K–12 teachers are required to complete a bachelor’s degree. But it also includes additional requirements. To acquire a Multiple-Subject Teaching Credential in California, teacher candidates must complete specific coursework and pass a series of assessments covering various teaching domains, as well as one measuring knowledge of the U.S. Constitution. Teacher candidates must also pass the CalTPA, the state’s teacher performance assessment. Additionally, teacher candidates must perform 600 hours of student teaching throughout the course of an academic year—typically with no pay.²³

The state is also rolling out a new PK–3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Instruction credential, which is designed to become the standard license for TK teachers over time. Similarly, it requires candidates to have a bachelor’s degree, complete specific coursework and assessments demonstrating competence, pass the CalTPA, and perform 600 hours of student teaching. For instance, candidates must have twenty-four hours of credits in child development coursework—meaning even many current TK teaching candidates with bachelor’s degrees may need to make heavy financial and time commitments to go back to school.

Put simply, this battery of requirements is a poor fit for many California early educators outside of the state’s growing TK sector. The same 2021 CSCCE study found that 49 percent of ECE center teachers in California had a bachelor’s degree or higher. This leaves 51 percent of ECE teachers, regardless of how long they’ve taught or been effective teachers, relatively distant from lead TK teaching roles. They could not easily transfer over to lead TK teaching roles without obtaining a costly bachelor’s degree (though they may be eligible for assistant TK teaching positions).²⁴

The CalTPA, the state’s teacher licensure test, requires teachers to demonstrate their competence via video clips of instruction and written reflections on their practice. The test is a significant obstacle for prospective teachers. One thousand three-hundred teachers who took a California Teachers Association survey providing feedback on the CalTPA said it caused stress, took candidates away from collaborating with mentors and for teaching, and did not prepare them to meet the needs of students. Further, the test costs $300, which can be a major obstacle for early educators trying to move from lower pay in California’s private early education centers to the new and growing public TK system. Additionally, CalTPA preparation can be logistically challenging, as teachers need to navigate various technologies along the way. Candidates must record a clear video of themselves teaching, clip and edit the video to get a section that fulfills a requirement, upload the video to their ePortfolio, annotate it, and provide written reflections on the video.²⁵

In sum, narrow and inflexible pathways leading to expensive teaching credentials often produce reductions in teacher diversity. This might be acceptable if this approach produced a TK workforce that was uniquely effective at advancing children’s social, emotional, linguistic, and academic development.

However, frustratingly, research indicates that many licensure requirements don’t generally produce higher-quality instruction or better outcomes for students. For instance, a REL Northwest report found that “teaching exams are not strong predictors of teaching effectiveness, and there is little evidence that testing translates to better teachers overall.”²⁶

In an analysis of existing research on teacher credential requirements, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee wrote, 

Little evidence is available on which systems of qualification requirements lead to the best outcomes, or on whether national credentials produce more effective teachers and better outcomes for children.²⁷

Several pages later, the authors added, 

The available studies alone are insufficient to enable conclusions as to whether a bachelor’s degree improves the quality and effectiveness of educators, whether for early childhood settings or for K-12 schools.²⁸

If a state decides to mandate more specific training and credential requirements for early educators on top of a bachelor’s degree mandate, it is committing to even sharper limits on teacher diversity in exchange for uncertain—at best—improvements in quality.

Given the field’s lack of consensus on precisely which credentials produce maximally effective early (and/or K–12) educators who can consistently provide high-quality instruction and better outcomes for children, California policymakers should be wary of setting strict, inflexible, and narrow pathways into the classroom. Credential requirements are best understood as codifications of public priorities governing the supply of teachers, particularly in terms of the perceived impacts of additional training on instructional quality, teacher diversity, and other educational goals. But state leaders should be clear-eyed about the real—not just assumed—consequences of the priorities they codify into policy. If a state decides to mandate a bachelor’s degree for all early educators, that signifies a hope—though not a certainty—of raising teacher quality while likely also reducing overall teacher diversity. By contrast, if a state decides to mandate more specific training and credential requirements for early educators on top of a bachelor’s degree mandate, it is committing to even sharper limits on teacher diversity in exchange for uncertain—at best—improvements in quality.²⁹

Policy Recommendations

The discussion above—both about the state of the California ECE workforce and about the state of the research on credential requirements—presents the state with a relatively straightforward policy problem: many linguistically diverse educators have valuable language skills that are key for supporting the needs of California’s many DLLs. Many of these teachers also have ample early learning expertise born of years of working with children younger than 5. And yet, they do not always have all of the specific credentials California has selected as requirements for teaching in TK classrooms. How can California keep these teachers in classrooms as it merges its heretofore-predominantly private ECE system into its rapidly growing number of TK campuses? 

To ensure that there are accessible, equitable pathways for ECE educators to enter the TK workforce, California can take the following measures.

Put Real Value on ECE Teaching Experience by Counting It towards Credential Requirements

In public policy, it is relatively standard to recognize the particular skills of students and workers as equivalent to formal credentials. For instance, at many universities, college students who exhibit language proficiency may use their proficiency to satisfy language course requirements.

This equivalency approach is even more common in policies governing the California teacher workforce. For instance, teacher candidates who hold a general Multiple-Subject TK–12 Credential are required, in theory, to complete an additional twenty-four credit hours of early childhood education or child development coursework. But the state also allows candidates who hold a child development permit to waive this requirement. And what’s more, the state allows local officials to count “professional experience in a classroom setting with preschool age children” as equivalent to those twenty-four credit hours of additional coursework.³⁰

This is a fine start, but California leaders should go further to create TK licensure policies that better connect its existing—and linguistically diverse—early education workforce to careers in its new universal TK classrooms. In particular, it would be valuable for California to establish guidelines for counting ECE teachers’ language skills and instructional expertise as partially or fully equivalent to the credentials required for becoming a TK teacher. Instead of forcing ECE educators who may have already been working in an early childhood education center for numerous years to return to higher education for further costly and time-consuming coursework, these teachers could be credentialed through alternative methods based on their teaching abilities. California should pursue at least one of the following:

Provide a four-year grace period for candidates to pursue their additional coursework and credentialing. If a California early educator has some of the required credentials to work as a TK lead teacher as well as years of expertise in other ECE settings, they could still be granted a preliminary P–3 ECE specialist instruction credential with the understanding that they would need to complete further credentials within four years. The grace period will allow candidates to fill California’s TK teacher roles and receive commensurate pay as they work towards more permanent credentials.³¹

Create a program that recruits ECE teachers without a degree to be assistant teachers while they obtain credits. San Diego currently allows child care center-based teachers to be assistant teachers in TK as long as they have a Child Development permit. A statewide version of this program could address the demand for assistant TK teachers and ensure California reaches its goal of a 10:1 teacher-to-student TK ratio.³²

Credit Early Childhood teaching experience towards existing credentials for Child Development permit holders. To become a credentialed TK teacher, candidates must possess or obtain at least twenty-four units in ECE or Child Development and perform 600 hours of student teaching. However, there are some exceptions for candidates with early childhood education experience. For example, California allows candidates with six years or more of early childhood education teaching experience and the twenty-four ECE credit hours to waive 400 of their 600 clinical practice hours, leaving them with 200 clinical practice hours to complete. To build on this, California can also use years of experience to waive the twenty-four ECE credit hours.³³

Recognize the demonstrated bilingual skills of TK teacher candidates as of equivalent importance as existing credential requirements. Just as California should give teacher candidates meaningful credit towards licensure for their prior ECE teaching experience, it should assign real value to linguistically diverse candidates’ language abilities. California could, for instance, waive the CalTPA or other licensure requirements for TK teacher candidates who can demonstrate proficiency in a non-English language. 

Have on-site hours of professional development count towards ECE credit requirements. Often, these ECE credits must be obtained outside of work hours at times that make the process more difficult and laborious for candidates with temporary teacher licensure, who must also teach throughout the day. In order to make this process easier, California can count professional development during the workday towards ECE requirements.

Put bluntly, California has a large number of multilingual early educators with years of experience working with 4-year-olds in the private ECE system. It needs a large number of multilingual early educators to provide quality instruction to the many DLLs enrolling in its new public TK classrooms. But instead of finding ways to ease their transition, the state’s current approach to staffing TK classrooms establishes structural obstacles. Without changes, it appears likely that California’s TK teachers will be less diverse and their classrooms will be less likely to be multilingual.

Streamline Credentialing Requirements

As we wrote in a 2023 report on bilingual teacher training pathways, “policymakers should examine their state licensure system to ensure that each of its components is essential to supporting high-quality instruction—and that no components worsen bilingual teacher shortages.” California state leaders should use this as a guiding principle as it expands to universal TK.³⁴

If California develops a more streamlined process for the P–3 certification to fewer requirements, this will rapidly increase the number of bilingual TK teachers. One example is including all assessments, like the CalTPA, within the teacher preparation program, instead of having them registered for and completed separately. As noted above, these tests are unreliable metrics for predicting whether or not a teacher will be effective, but relatively reliable at serving as a barrier to hiring bilingual teachers for several reasons.

These tests are costly, particularly if teacher candidates do not pass each of them on their first attempt. Logistically, when a candidate must take too many steps to become a teacher, this makes it difficult for candidates to follow the sequencing to become a certified TK teacher in California. Linguistically, many teacher licensure tests are designed for monolingual, English-dominant teachers completing English-only coursework to teach in English.

California could take several steps to make the teacher licensure process more accessible for linguistically diverse teachers to ensure their entry into the workforce. Policymakers should consider the following.

Waive or reimburse licensure fees for bilingual teacher candidates. Out-of-pocket costs (tests, fingerprinting, transcripts) that pile up on the road to teacher certification may delay or slow the process. The state can alleviate this by allocating funds to eliminate as many out-of-pocket costs as possible. They could learn from Oregon’s example, where the Diversity License Expense Reimbursement Program reimburses diverse educators for their licensure fees once they qualify.³⁵

Trim the TK certification process to as few steps as possible. The fewer tests and certifications, the clearer the path to becoming certified is for teacher candidates. For example, in Connecticut, HB 5436 has simplified the pathway toward certified teacher status by eliminating a step in the existing three-tiered system and making it easier for educators to teach at different grade levels.³⁶

Improve Compensation for Bilingual Candidates

Proper compensation improves bilingual teachers’ morale and decreases teacher turnover. This is particularly important in the early years, where education investments can have the most impact on students’ long-term success. It’s particularly critical to prioritize DLLs’ access to bilingual instruction.³⁷In sum, providing compensation for bilingual teachers at the TK level will provide great returns; here is how California could do this. 

Increase stipends associated with bilingualism specifically for TK teacher candidates. Some local education agencies across California offer an annual stipend or hiring bonus for bilingual educators. Increasing the stipend for bilingual teachers, specifically in TK, could increase the number of bilingual teachers available. For example, San Francisco Unified School District has a $1,000 stipend for bilingual teachers. An additional $1,000 for bilingual TK teachers could go a long way towards boosting recruitment.³⁸

Designate a portion of Golden State Teacher Grant funding exclusively for recruiting bilingual TK teacher-candidates. California’s Golden State Teacher Grant program provides financial aid for teacher candidates who are studying to work in high-need teaching roles, including bilingual education. State leaders could add funds to this program that are specifically designated for supporting the training of bilingual TK teachers.³⁹

Starting TK teachers who are bilingual higher on the pay scale by even a year may be a way to incentivize them and reassure them that their bilingualism is valued and that their pay will reflect that value in the long term.

Start bilingual candidates for TK off higher on the pay scale. California can provide grants to incentivize school districts to start off bilingual TK candidates higher on the pay scale. These grants could cover the difference between what they would have made and their salary at an increased pay grade. For example, if a teacher started off making $62,000 a year instead of $60,000 because their bilingualism earned them an advanced position on the pay scale, California would provide $2,000 in grant funding to cover the difference. Starting new teachers higher on the pay scale than their teaching experience wouldn’t be novel. For example, in many communities, teachers with master’s degrees are credited on the pay scale with additional years of teaching experience beyond their actual classroom experience. Nationwide, the average starting salary is $44,530 for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and $48,182 for teachers with a master’s degree. Starting TK teachers who are bilingual higher on the pay scale by even a year may be a way to incentivize them and reassure them that their bilingualism is valued and that their pay will reflect that value in the long term.⁴⁰

Perform More Strategic Recruiting Campaigns

In order to fulfill the shortage of linguistically diverse TK teachers in California, the state must be creative and intentional in all aspects of its recruiting. California should use recruiting strategies that make bilingual candidates feel that teaching is a viable career choice and that they belong in the field. While the teacher workforce is becoming increasingly diverse, it must not be lost that many bilingual teacher candidates likely grew up going to U.S. schools when the teacher workforce was less diverse and may have a preconceived notion of what a teacher looks like: white, non-Hispanic teachers made up 80 percent or more of the workforce until 2017–2018.⁴¹ TK recruiting strategies should center on the impact of identity and search in non-traditional sectors for bilingual TK educators.

Have bilingual teachers recruit bilingual candidates. California should have the people recruiting bilingual teacher candidates be bilingual themselves to lead to increased enrollment. For example, districts could use local professional organizations already serving bilingual educators as recruitment venues. In these professional organizations districts can find mid-career bilingual professionals interested in transitioning from their careers to the classroom and provide them with the resources to make that transition.⁴²

Strengthen the Seal of Biliteracy to Bilingual Educator pipeline. In recent years, California has concentrated on linking high school students to in-demand fields predominantly related to career and technical education. To fulfill the demand for bilingual teachers, specifically in TK, California could similarly mount a concentrated effort to develop a pipeline of bilingual teachers from an early age through the usage of the Seal of Biliteracy. In 2021, 72,593 students in California earned a Seal of Biliteracy. Developing a program where these students have opportunities to tutor, learn more about the education field, or receive scholarships to pursue an education degree could be one way to increase the number of bilingual teachers available in TK in the long term.⁴³

Target former immigrant teachers. Bilingual teacher candidates can be found working in many different work sectors. Foreign-born workers make up 30 percent of the construction industry, one-fifth of the professional and business services industry, and one-fifth of the leisure and hospitality industry. Meanwhile, they only make up 14.3 percent of the education and health services industry. According to a report from the Migration Policy Institute, college-educated immigrants who work in the education sector in their home country are the least likely to find a job in the same field once they get to the United States. In many communities, bilingual immigrants who were teachers in their home country switched careers once they arrived in the United States due to the barriers to getting into the classroom.

California should be creative in finding and getting these unrecognized teachers credentialed in the United States to fill the need for TK teachers throughout this expansion. They could recruit from the health care sector, where these former bilingual teachers may already be present and typically have the patience and tenacity to work in a TK setting. Similarly, local non-profit organizations may have members with former teaching experience in their home countries. Once they’ve found these members, they could create a program for these candidates similar to California’s MiniCorps program, a program where college students with a migrant background work as tutors to newcomer students and develop them to become bilingual credentialed teachers.⁴⁴

Conclusion

As California rolls out universal transitional kindergarten (TK), it faces the challenge of ensuring linguistic equity within its TK workforce. To tackle the shortage of TK teachers in California, the state will need more than just changes to credentialing. It needs to find a way to incentivize and persuade more bilingual adults that TK careers are worthwhile to pursue. To do this, it’s essential to set meaningful credential requirements that actually produce the TK workforce the state needs, improve bilingual TK teachers’ pay, revamp recruiting strategies, and boost representation within the teaching field to make it a more attractive career for bilingual candidates. By doing this, California can ensure there are enough bilingual TK teachers to meet the needs of its diverse student population.

Success in this endeavor relies on three main areas: credentialing, recruiting, and retaining a diverse group of bilingual educators to serve the state’s linguistically diverse student population.

1. Credentialing reform is a critical starting point. Streamlining certification processes and providing alternative pathways for experienced early childhood educators can help more linguistically diverse educators enter TK classrooms.
2. Recruiting strategies must tackle systemic barriers that deter bilingual candidates from teaching careers. Improving compensation, enhancing representation in the profession, and implementing targeted recruiting efforts are vital to attracting bilingual educators in TK classrooms.
3. Retaining linguistically diverse teachers is equally important. Creating supportive environments, offering mentorship programs, providing manageable workloads, addressing mental health challenges, and providing ongoing professional development are key components of a strong retention strategy.California should prioritize building a more inclusive and effective TK education system, ensuring all students, especially DLLs and ELs, have equitable opportunities to thrive. As California leads the way toward universal TK, it sets a precedent for other states that may look to implement TK in their own states, paving the way for a more equitable and inclusive pre-kindergarten landscape nationwide.

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank Anna Powell, Carolyne Crolotte, and Kelly Reynolds for reviewing early drafts of the report. We would also like to thank the Heising-Simons Foundation for their invaluable, continued support of this report and the broader work of TCF’s EL Forum.

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Tags: early education, California Education, English Language Learners