About MSTI
Increasing California's supply of Science and Math Teachers
California is projected to need upwards of 33,000 new mathematics and science teachers in the next ten years. The demand for credentialed teachers in these fields is significantly higher than the supply of fully qualified candidates. As a consequence, large numbers of students in California are taught math and science by teachers who are not credentialed in those fields. Access to qualified math and science teachers is associated with improved achievement, and ensuring that all students have fully credentialed teachers is critical to closing the achievement gap in these critical subjects.
The California State University (CSU), the state’s largest producer of math and science teachers, has responded to this challenge with a commitment to double its annual production of credentialed teachers in math and science over a five-year period. CSU committed to increasing the number of qualified teachers in these fields from a baseline of 750 to approximately 1,500 by 2010 and has achieved this significant goal, preparing more than 1,500 teachers in both 2010 and 2011. It is especially noteworthy that a rigorous value-added study demonstrates that urban secondary students who are taught mathematics by new teachers who received their credential from a CSU campus learn significantly more math than comparable students taught by math teachers who were not prepared by CSU.