As the threat of COVID-19 forces drastic changes in normal life all over the world, teachers and aspiring educators are similarly impacted. Schools throughout the country have been closed indefinitely, including every school in California. Governor Newsom’s decision has directly affected the typical credentialing process for hundreds of thousands of applicants. Throughout California, the decision whether to have educators provide remote instruction or refrain from instruction entirely will be left to the discretion of the individual local education agencies. While many issues remain to be resolved, here is a brief summary of the answers we do have for current credential applicants based on the guidance recently released by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing:

For clinical programs

1. Supervision requirements remain. That means participants instructed to provide remote instruction should continue to work closely with either program or district employed supervisors in order to ensure all hours completed count towards program requirements. Participants who engage in professional development involving experienced teachers, delivering instruction and reflection, and analyzing student work will have those activities count toward their hours requirement;
2. In districts not providing remote instruction, individual programs will determine whether to count hours from previous grading periods towards the total hours requirement.

For Speech Language Pathology

1. Clinical hours completed via telecommuting will count, so long as they remain supervised.

The Commission on Teacher Credentialing will have its regularly scheduled April commission meeting, and has identified the following items to be decided:

2. For School Psychology Programs
   1. Whether individual programs will be allowed to decrease their hour requirements.
3. For Induction Program Participants
   1. Whether to excuse the coaching requirement;
   2. Whether to allow programs to accept the shortened 2019 – 2020 school year in lieu of a full school year;
   3. As of today, programs cannot recommend candidates to the CTC unless they have fully completed all CTC requirements, including participation in the induction program for a full school year. The April meeting will result in further guidance.

Testing:

It is important to note that the CCTC does not have authority to waive any statutory testing requirements. However, the California Educator Credentialing Assessments have all been postponed for 30 days, until April 16^th, 2020.

You can find additional detailed information released by the CCTC at the following links:

1. https://www.ctc.ca.gov/docs/default-source/commission/files/covid-19-clinical-questions-faq.pdf?sfvrsn=885b2cb1_2
2. https://www.ctc.ca.gov/docs/default-source/educator-prep/accred-files/induction-program-guidance.pdf?sfvrsn=e5d2cb1_2
3. https://www.ctc.ca.gov/commission/covid-19-information-for-commission-stakeholders#credential