Bertelli's visit follows the death last week of Andrew "Bart" Simpson, a British crewman on Sweden's Artemis Racing catamaran. Simpson was trapped under the craft after it nosedived and broke up near Treasure Island. San Francisco police, the U.S. Coast Guard, and a panel appointed by America's Cup organizers are investigating the accident. The incident has sparked an international debate about whether the giant 72-foot catamarans planned for the America's Cup competition this summer are too dangerous to race.

(NPR's Richard Gonzales reported on the issues surrounding the so-called AC72s on Friday's "All Things Considered":)

Bertelli, who runs Italy's Prada fashion empire, said Friday in a press conference at the Luna Rossa base in Alameda that he wants organizers to agree to cancel races when winds exceed 25 knots—about 28 mph. Current rules would allow racing with winds of 33 knots—about 38 mph—during the final round in September. Bertelli also called for improved safety equipment for the AC72 crews, including body armor and stronger helmets for crewmen.

"We want to increase the safety of the sailors and look at any technology and tools to make us safer," Bertelli said through an interpreter Friday at the team's base in Alameda.

Flanked by his entire 50-person team, Bertelli also said his team is comfortable sailing its AC72 and intends to continue to do so. "In order for the boat to be safe, sailors need to feel safe," he said. "Our sailors have told me they trust the boat and can sail on it."

America's Cup organizers later issued a statement welcoming Bertelli's "vote of confidence," but suggesting that Luna Rossa hold off on sailing until at least next Thursday, when the committee reviewing the Artemis accident may make new safety recommendations.

***

As Bertelli expressed support for tweaking safety rules and continuing in the 72-foot America's Cup catamarans—which are capable of running on hydrofoils at speeds topping 40 mph—one media voice in the race's host city suggested a more drastic change in the planned competition.

The San Francisco Chronicle's C.W. Nevius took up a suggestion made by some in the sailing community that the race would be safer with the scaled-down 45-foot catamarans used in last year's America's Cup World Series races in San Francisco and several other cities.

Nevius acknowledged the race will happen one way or the other—too much time, effort, and money has gone into the thing to have it canceled. But he went on:

The 72-foot catamarans are too much, too big, too powerful. Most of all, they are too dangerous. We haven't fired a starting gun yet and two of the seven boats have crashed in spectacular, boat-breaking fashion. A crew member has died.

Someone needs to make a hard choice and say the race will go back to the 45-foot catamarans that raced last summer. There would still be hull-raising action, a stunning bay background, and excellent spectator and television viewing.

And it would be far safer.

While this week's upbeat news conference was proceeding at the podium with the message that the race goes on regardless, it was impossible not to see that the America's Cup support staff and members of the teams looked absolutely shattered after the death of Andrew "Bart" Simpson. Event organizers should pick up on that and use it to make changes instead of ignoring it.

Not doing so could make the entire enterprise collapse on its own. ...

***

And if you want a little more direct taste of why the AC72s are both exciting and controversial, here's something to watch. It's an AC72 training run by Team Oracle--the Larry Ellison-led group that's defending the Cup and is responsible for the big catamaran format of this year's racing. The imagery is thrilling, and you can't help but share the crew's awe that a boat can do what this one does. Take note of the comment from crewman Shannon Falcone at 2:45 in the video: "You've got a boat, you know, that's over seven ton on what looks like a relatively small surface, screaming at over 40 knots [more than 46 mph]. And you're just saying, 'Hope that thing holds' ... 'cause it could be kind of catastrophic if it didn't."

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California’s unemployment rate dropped 0.4 percent to 9.0 percent in April, according to the state’s Employment Development Department.

The unemployment rate in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties was listed at 5.1 percent, down from 6.8 percent a year ago.

But the overall job picture remains mixed, as there were also signs that new job creation is slowing across almost all sectors, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The main driver behind the state's job growth in April would appear to be the construction industry, as new jobs in construction (7,400) accounted for more than 70 percent of the statewide increase in nonfarm jobs (10,400), according to the EDD.

In the Bay Area, professional and business services reached the highest job level for April on record, with computer systems design accounting for over a third of the job growth during the past year.

When it comes to that end of the job market, the professional staffing firm Robert Half issued a report stating that hiring those with specialized skill sets is becoming more difficult. According to the report, a number of trends are affecting this part of the employment picture in the state:

More Workers Are Quitting Their Jobs – Almost 2.2 million professionals voluntarily left their jobs in March 2013, close to a 19 percent increase from two years ago.

Employee Confidence Is Rising – More job opportunities are making professionals increasingly selective when evaluating offers.

Salaries Are Increasing – Starting salaries for professionals are projected to rise 3.7 percent in 2013, and 72 percent of employers plan to raise salaries for their current workers this year.

Pancho Ramos-Stierle, an Occupy the Farm supporter, held plant starts that survived a UC plow and are ready to be replanted. University of California police arrested four activists Monday for trespassing on UC property and plowed up recently planted crops. But activists have not been deterred and vowed to continue coming back. Activists would like to see the land used for urban agriculture, but UC Berkeley has plans to develop a grocery store on the site. (Emilie Raguso/Berkeleyside)

The Edible Schoolyard at King Middle School in Berkeley held its annual plant sale on Saturday, May 11, a big fundraiser for the Edible Schoolyard. The King garden is funded by the nonprofit and is not facing the same funding problems as other Berkeley school district gardening programs. (Nancy Rubin/Berkeleyside)

Sixty volunteers showed up at McLaren Park on the southeast side of San Francisco Saturday, May 11, to catalog plant and animal species found there. Using iNaturalist’s mobile app, the group canvassed the 300-acre park in three hours, taking smartphone pictures that were tagged with map coordinates. They racked up more than 1,250 sightings that scientists can use in their research. (Tamara Schwarz/KQED)

Just before Mother's Day, protesters rallied in front of West County Detention Center to bring attention to the expense of phone calls for detainees. High fees for phone calls often makes communication with family nearly impossible. (Wendi Jonassen/Richmond Confidential)

Workers are planning a strike at University of California San Francisco and the four other UC medical centers up and down the state Tuesday and Wednesday, May 21 and 22.

California nurses have returned repeatedly to picket lines in front of Sutter Hospitals since September 2011. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, nurses in the East Bay are staging a separate strike at Sutter Hospitals for seven days, starting Friday.

The East Bay walkout will affect more than 3,100 registered nurses, as well as respiratory, X-ray and other technicians at Alta Bates Summit facilities in Berkeley and Oakland, Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley and Sutter Delta in Antioch, the California Nurses Association said.

And a strike May 23 and 24 will affect 1,400 RNs at two HCA-affiliated San Jose hospitals, Good Samaritan and Regional Medical Center, it said.

The university is pushing back on the strike at its medical centers. It persuaded the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to seek a temporary restraining order that would "curtail the number of striking employees," the university announced in a statement on Friday.

On May 10, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, which represents more than 12,500 UC patient care employees, announced it is asking members to strike UC medical centers on May 21–22. AFSCME-represented UC service workers also are expected to strike “in sympathy” with patient care employees.

The University Professional and Technical Employees union, which represents about 3,300 UC health care professionals, is also asking its members to strike UC medical centers in sympathy with AFSCME for one day on Tuesday.

PERB is the state agency that oversees collective bargaining activities for public employers. It announced it would seek a temporary restraining order limiting the number of striking employees in the two unions after UC representatives argued that walkouts by certain essential employees threaten public health.

PERB officials told UC they intend to seek the injunction in Sacramento Superior Court on Monday, the university said.

UC patient care technical employees include technicians responsible for operating equipment for ultrasounds, X-rays, MRIs, CT scans, mammograms and other tests; radiation therapists who prepare and treat cancer patients; pharmacy technicians who deliver medications to patients; respiratory therapists who help patients with breathing and treatment plans; and technicians who sterilize equipment used in surgeries.

The university warned in a press release that diagnoses and treatments for both adults and children might be delayed because laboratory tests, imaging and other work normally performed by patient care employees may not be completed in a timely manner:

Some elective surgeries, including pediatric surgery and neurosurgery, may be postponed. Additionally, critical trauma patients may need to be diverted to other non-UC facilities that provide a lower level of care.

“It is highly inappropriate to threaten services to patients as a tactic in contract negotiations,” said Dwaine Duckett, vice president for systemwide human resources at UC. “We believe our current offer to AFSCME, which includes wage increases and good benefits, is very fair, and our pension reforms are similar to what has been implemented for state employees, some of whom are represented by AFSCME.”

The union says it has a "patient protection task force that will tend to patients' emergency needs during the strike."

On Friday a resolution looked distant as the two sides couldn't even agree about the grounds for their disagreement. Here's how the university characterizes the issues:

The two sides have split over the question of pension reforms.
The university has asked for:

• Increased contributions toward the cost of pension benefits from both UC and employees (currently 10 and 5 percent respectively, increasing to 12 and 6.5 percent respectively July 1, 2013)
• A new category (“tier”) of pension benefits for employees hired on or after July 1, 2013
• Revised eligibility rules for retiree health benefits

But in a conversation with KQED's Francesca Segré, AFSCME Local 3299 president Kathryn Lybarger stressed staffing levels. The union wants the hospital to increase staffing and hire fewer temporary workers.

"What we’re looking for are enforceable safe staffing standards," she said. "We’re looking for an end to contracting out to less experienced workers. We would like to see an end to, honestly, an outrageous difference between what the people at the top of UC are getting compensated and those at the bottom, who can’t even afford to send their own kids to the UC."

Google co-founder and staunch Google Glass defender Sergey Brin wears Glass at the company's annual developer conference on June 27, 2012 in San Francisco. (Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images)

Members of Congress are asking whether Google's Internet-connected glasses "could infringe on the privacy of the average American."

Eight members of the House Bipartisan Privacy Caucus sent a letter to Google co-founder Larry Page yesterday, requesting answers to a number of key questions:

• "What proactive steps is Google taking to protect the privacy of non-users when Google Glass is in use?"
• Will there be "any product capabilities incorporated into the device to ensure that one's personal information remains private and secure?"
•  "(I)s it true that this product would be able to use Facial Recognition Technology to unveil personal information about whomever ... the user is viewing?"

The congressional caucus gave Page until June 14 to provide answers to these and other concerns.

Google's director of product management for Glass, Steve Lee, discussed some of the privacy questions during the company's I/O developers conference Thursday.

Lee pointed out that the glass display lights up from both sides when in use, so others nearby can see that it's active. He also noted that users have to speak to Glass or tap it to begin recording --thus,"taking a picture has clear social cues."

Meanwhile, Google announced at the conference that Glass will soon feature seven new apps, including posts from Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, news alerts from CNN, fashion features from Elle, and reminder notes from Evernote.

These join the New York Times and Path as the first apps available on the wearable computer that features what is known as a "head-mounted display."

Covering the conference for the New York Times, Nick Bilton described the disconcerting sensation of being continuously  surrounded, even in the bathroom, by people wearing the glasses, which include en embedded camera that can snap a picture with the wink of an eye.

“At one point as I climbed the stairs and approached the second floor, I saw a group of five people wearing Google Glass, all silently staring off into space,” Bilton wrote. ”I couldn’t tell if they were wirelessly having a conversation through their eyeballs, or just bored by the presence of real humans in front of them.”

Congress Questions Google Glass Privacy

John Robinson, a Marine Corps veteran, lives at the Salvation Army's Harbor Light Center in San Francisco. (Anna Vignet/Center for Investigative Reporting)

During a recent visit to the agency’s headquarters in Sacramento, the home loan call center was largely silent. Critics, including Democratic Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez, say the program is an anachronism and the money should be redeployed to meet other veteran needs.

Agency officials say they know they need to do better and have used the economic downturn to revamp the program, originally launched in 1921 to help World War I veterans buy homes and farms. The overhead costs, they said, include servicing on the approximately 8,000 loans made in the past three decades.

“We are now staged and poised and ready to go as the housing market comes back,” said Theresa Gunn, the newly appointed deputy secretary in charge of the program.

Part of the issue in recent years has been the low interest rates available on the open market, which often made the program’s rates unattractive.

In October 2011, when it was possible to get a private home loan with an interest rate approaching 2 percent, the state offered loans to veterans at 5.5 percent. That gap apparently outweighed the program’s benefits, which include the ability to buy a house with little or no money down.

The agency lowered its interest rate this month to 3.9 percent. Gunn predicted the number of loans issued would grow this year but, when pressed, would not give an estimate, saying, “I’m not in a position right now to share something with you.”

The agency is budgeted for $13 million in overhead costs this fiscal year and so far has granted 59 home loans, valued at $5.5 million.

Since 1998, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended that the agency phase out the program. In a report that year, the analyst’s office said use of the program, which that year made 1,600 loans, was likely to “continue to dwindle” as credit-worthy veterans turned to the private sector and other government programs.

“Veterans do have other growing needs,” the report said.

Today, the state Department of Veterans Affairs has $230 million in uninsured borrowing authority from a bond measure that voters passed in 2000, along with $900 million more from a 2008 initiative that the agency hasn’t yet touched.

Pérez has proposed reallocating $600 million of the agency’s bond funding to build affordable housing for homeless veterans. On April 30, a bill to put that change before voters in 2014 passed unanimously out of its first legislative committee, backed by a host of veterans groups, trade unions and law enforcement.

Gunn said the California Department of Veterans Affairs is not opposed to the bill and would welcome the reappropriation of some of its unused funding to build affordable housing.

California has about 16,000 homeless veterans, according to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Los Angeles, with about 6,400 homeless vets, has the most in the nation.

“We want to do something to eliminate the suffering right now,” said Michael Blecker, executive director of Swords to Plowshares, a veterans service organization in San Francisco, where the most recent HUD-mandated homeless count identified 344 veterans in shelters and 430 on the streets.

In interviews, homeless veterans said the tight rental market has made private landlords so choosy that it’s nearly impossible to find housing – even after vets have found work and gotten off drugs.

“I have back child support and horrible credit,” said John Robinson, a Marine Corps veteran.

Robinson makes minimum wage working for a subcontractor of SamTrans, the transportation agency serving San Mateo County. But he continues to live at a SoMa drug rehab center run by the Salvation Army – his home for the past 21 months – because he can’t find private housing.

“If a veteran has a place to start, then he has a chance,” he said.

The independent, nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting is the country’s largest investigative reporting team. For more, visit www.cironline.org. The reporter can be reached at aglantz@cironline.org.

The Sacramento Kings' unsteady future finally seems to be settled.

A person familiar with the deal says the Maloof family has reached an agreement with a Sacramento group headed by TIBCO software tycoon Vivek Ranadivé to sell a 65 percent controlling interest in the Kings at a total franchise valuation of $535 million.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity to The Associated Press late Thursday night because they weren't authorized to talk publicly, said there are about 30 investors in the group put together by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a former All-Star guard.

An official announcement is expected Friday.

"It's the start of a new era," Ranadivé told reporters after the Golden State Warriors lost 94-82 to the San Antonio Spurs in Oakland late Thursday night.

Ranadivé, who will have to sell his minority stake in the Warriors, said there was still some paperwork to finalize. He declined to give the purchase price.

The NBA is expected to officially approve the agreement next week. The deal has to be closed by May 31, according to the agreement, the person said.

"I really wish him well. I think he'll do great," Warriors owner Joe Lacob said about Ranadivé. "He's a very smart guy. He'll do the most important thing, which is hire great people around him."

On Wednesday, the NBA Board of Governors rejected a bid from a Seattle group that wanted to buy and move the franchise to the Pacific Northwest.

The 22-8 vote killed a deal that would have sold a 65 percent controlling interest at a total franchise valuation of $625 million to a Seattle group led by investor Chris Hansen, who boosted the offer twice after the NBA showed an unwillingness to relocate.

The vote ended an emotional saga that has dragged on for nearly three years. Hansen wanted to move the franchise and rename it the SuperSonics, for the team who left Seattle for Oklahoma City in 2008 and were renamed the Thunder. NBA Commissioner David Stern praised Hansen's proposal and said the NBA might consider expansion once a new TV deal is in place.

The plan includes a new downtown arena after Johnson got the Sacramento City Council to approve a non-binding financing plan for a $447 million facility with a $258 million public subsidy.

The Sacramento ownership group also includes 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov, former Facebook senior executive Chris Kelly and the Jacobs family that owns communications giant Qualcomm.

Stephen Curry #30 and David Lee #10 of the Golden State Warriors embrace after losing to the San Antonio Spurs in Game 6 of the Western Conference Semifinals during the 2013 NBA Playoffs on May 16, 2013 at Oracle Arena in Oakland. (Stephen Dunn/Getty Images)

The bruised but gutsy Golden State Warriors were eliminated in the second round of the NBA playoffs last night by the San Antonio Spurs, 92-84.

Playing through injuries that have limited them during the postseason, Stephen Curry and David Lee led a late charge that brought the Warriors within two points, 77-75, with just under five minutes left in the game.

But the Spurs responded and pulled away to claim victory at the end.

This ended Golden State's second trip to the playoffs in the past 19 seasons.

In the final game, injuries continued to have an impact on the Warrior lineup. Freshman Harrison Barnes was hurt in the first quarter, requiring six stitches for a cut above his right eye. He returned in the second half but was unable to play in the fourth quarter.

And Andrew Bogut reinjured his left ankle in the second quarter, returned briefly in the third, but could not play in the fourth either.

The loss ended a surprising run by a young Warriors team that might bode well for the future.

"I talked about this being a group that, at the end of the day, our tank will be on empty and the light will be beaming bright," coach Mark Jackson said. "I truly believed that's exactly what took place. Guys battled. Guys gave me everything they had. We fought. I could not be prouder of any group.”

The Warriors saluted their fans after the game in the Oracle Arena, which has emerged as one of the loudest and most exciting venues for any professional sports team during the team’s magical run this season.

Great Year! So Proud of my Guys! #2GodBeTheGlory

— Mark Jackson (@JacksonMark13) May 17, 2013

The Warriors have a bright future ahead of them. They showed a lot of potential in this year's playoffs.

— Pau Gasol (@paugasol) May 17, 2013

Congrats to the @warriors on an amazing season - You made #DubNation proud

— San Francisco Giants (@SFGiants) May 17, 2013

Thank you God. Thank you #dubnation. Thank you 2 all my teammates & coaches. Thanks to everyone apart of this year and the run...next year!

— Stephen Curry (@StephenCurry30) May 17, 2013

Stephen Curry finishes postseason w/averages of 23.4 pts and 8.1 asts, first Warrior to average 23/8 in playoffs since Tim Hardaway (1991)

— #GSWStats (@gswstats) May 17, 2013

35 photos from last night, including many displaying the team's love for #DubNation: ow.ly/l8WcL | twitter.com/warriors/statu…

— Golden St. Warriors (@warriors) May 17, 2013

On a recent afternoon at California State University, Northridge, Nancy Prosenjak was attempting to quiet the graduate students spread out across conference tables in the back of her classroom. She was still missing nearly a third of the class, but she was eager to debrief with her students about their first day of student teaching.

Nancy Prosenjak, a professor at California State University, Northridge. (Jackie Mader / The Hechinger Report

“You’re still smiling, this is good!” she told her students as the chatter died down. A few stragglers trickled in, wearily making their way to their seats.

The 17 students had spent the morning in classrooms across North Los Angeles and would devote the rest of the afternoon to discussing their experiences in Prosenjak’s supervised fieldwork course, a class dedicated to student teaching. The class is a requirement in the university’s post-baccalaureate teacher preparation program.

“Who taught for one hour?” Prosenjak asked.

Nearly all the students raised their hand.

“Who was in charge for more than an hour?”

Five hands remained.

“How did that feel?” Prosenjak asked.

“It went quickly,” responded one student. “I liked it.”

For the rest of the semester, the students will gradually take over more responsibilities in local classrooms, many of which are in low-performing schools in high-poverty districts. Then, after a year of coursework, including an average of nearly 500 hours of practice in schools, most can seek out jobs running their own classrooms by this fall.

A high-quality teacher can make all the difference to a student who is struggling, according to a growing body of research that has found teachers are the largest in-school factor affecting student achievement. And there’s an emerging consensus that how teacher candidates are chosen and trained can make all the difference in developing teachers with the knowledge and skills to propel their students ahead.

But after students leave schools of education, and after years of reforms, the institutions often have no way of ascertaining if their programs produced strong teachers.

In 1998, when 20 percent of the California’s fourth-graders tested at or above proficient in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, lawmakers in California passed ambitious legislation meant to strengthen teacher preparation programs. The legislation allowed for multiple routes to the classroom and introduced uniform design standards for those programs. It also created new tests to ensure aspiring teachers were ready for the classroom.

Schools of education adopted the reforms and adapted their programs beginning in 2002. In California, there are various routes to becoming a teacher, all of which require attaining a bachelor’s degree, passing several competency exams and spending time in a classroom.

Yet about 10 years after the reforms, there is little more than anecdotal evidence – and no hard data – to show whether teachers graduating from these programs are better than those who graduated before the reforms. Student test scores, which are increasingly used to assess teacher performance, have shown little improvement. By 2011, the number of California students proficient on the national reading exam had increased 5 percentage points, to 25 percent.

The need for quality teachers is especially urgent in California, where experts anticipate that thousands of teachers will retire in the next few years even as fewer people are attracted to the profession. (Between 2006 and 2011, enrollment in the state’s teacher training programs fell by 33 percent, most likely due to lack of job certainty, educators say.)

The retirement figures ­– combined with a large number of teachers currently teaching in subjects for which they are not certified and an ongoing shortage of teachers in areas like math, science and special education – have researchers estimating that California could lack nearly 33,000 teachers by 2015.

The declining number of students studying to become teachers has forced programs to try new recruiting tactics, including expanding to online programs that can draw students from rural areas or distant parts of the state.

More new teachers also are earning their degree through district-run programs where education students start teaching in classrooms almost right away and take classes at a local university in the evening. But for aspiring teachers in California, enrolling in a traditional teacher preparation program through a private or public university is still the most popular route to the classroom.

At CSU Northridge, Michael Spagna, dean of the college of education, says the school of education underwent extensive changes after the reforms were passed in 1998. He says it was a “seismic shift” for California.

Many say the biggest change to teacher preparation was the introduction of a mandatory performance assessment, a multipart exam meant to assess how prepared teachers are for the classroom. The exam is required for certification and is taken at the end of the program or at certain points during the program, depending on the version of the test the training program uses.

Schools of education created classes solely focused on preparing students to pass the exam, which centers on the “teaching event” where teacher candidates videotape a lesson and analyze it in a series of lengthy essays.

In education classrooms across California, the mention of the performance assessment elicits groans. “They think it’s this giant, big thing that they’re writing,” said Prosenjak of CSU Northridge. “Actually, it’s what teachers do every day,” she added. “But they just don’t write down 50 pages about it.”

Programs also were asked to make uncomfortable changes. After the passage of legislation in 1970, students could no longer become teachers after only completing an undergraduate program. Schools of education had to shrink what had been multiple-year courses of undergraduate study into a yearlong post-baccalaureate offering. And while aspiring teachers still could begin taking education courses in their undergraduate years, they now had to stay for a fifth year.

When the 1998 reforms were passed, schools suddenly had to fit even more required coursework, such as health and technology education, into the year. The reforms brought a new emphasis on teaching English-language learners, which meant programs had to infuse strategies to reach these students throughout their courses.

“We were struggling,” said David Kretschmer, professor and chairman of the Department of Elementary Education at CSU Northridge. “It was a matter of squeezing other things out.”

The school discarded courses focusing on generic methods of teaching, instead offering methods courses specific to subject areas. Kretschmer said many courses improved, and the emphasis on English learners has mostly been seen as a success. But other courses didn’t drill down as deeply as they once did. “That was just an untenable position because we couldn’t do what we needed to do,” he said.

Graduate students in the teacher preparation program at California State University, Northridge. (Jackie Mader / The Hechinger Report)

As schools of education tinkered with their courses and focused on preparing teachers for the new test, experts began to realize that there was no accountability system to make sure the reforms were working.

In 2006, Sharon E. Russell, a professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills, published one of several reports that highlighted the difficulties in tracking the impact of the teacher preparation reforms and argued for creating a system to connect teacher performance with student achievement as a way to see if they were working.

Officials at teacher preparation programs say they are eager for guidance, and they point to flaws in the state’s current accountability system for teaching programs, which looks at factors like admissions requirements and class offerings before approving programs.

Julie Gainsburg, associate professor at CSU Northridge, was part of a research team that in 2009 attempted to study the classroom performance of recent graduates. The team found that it was hard to disaggregate the teacher preparation program’s impact from other factors, like a teacher’s own philosophies about teaching or professional development he or she received while teaching at the school.

“Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about what happens to our graduates when they go out,” Gainsburg said.

Several other researchers from CSU Northridge have attempted to study the performance of their teachers after graduation by using student test scores from the classrooms of recent graduates, however. In 2007, David Wright, the director of the California State University system’s Center for Teacher Quality analyzed how graduates from CSU Northridge compared with those from other teacher preparation programs in the state by looking at student achievement data.

Wright reported that in reading, graduates from other programs tended to slightly outperform CSU Northridge graduates. But another study found that teachers trained by California State University programs appeared to be more effective at teaching math to English language learners than teachers trained elsewhere.

The Center for Teacher Quality has produced annual reports since 2010 that compare student test scores of teachers within various California State University campuses against those from other programs. But the center cautions that test scores must be supplemented with other data because California’s tests don’t completely measure all aspects of what a student has learned.

Debating the use of student data

Spagna argues that student test score data is the key to helping teacher programs – and the state – figure out whether they are succeeding. “No institution of higher education, no teacher preparation program, is ultimately going to be able to tell how successful they were without pupil learning (data),” the CSU Northridge college of education dean said.

The problem is that while the college sends out surveys to graduates and employers, Spagna says it does not receive information from local school districts about how effective graduates are in their classrooms. “The right side of the equation is still missing,” he added.

Besides the surveys, programs can also look at the results of the performance assessments, which candidates take before receiving their credential. Teacher educators mostly praise the test because they say it helps them develop thoughtful teachers, but some question the rigor and credibility of the tests, which can be taken twice in California and which are scored by the institutions training the candidates. One of the performance assessments, taken by about 30 percent of all teacher candidates in the state, has a 94 percent pass rate for first-time takers.

And some say success on that exam does not guarantee a teacher will be strong. “It’s problematic,” said Gainsburg. “To imagine that this test given at (this) time … in their teaching career should correlate to what their kids are doing five years later, it’s so indirect,” she added.

California is not alone in grappling with how best to improve the development of new teachers. Elsewhere, education schools are under fire and also dealing with new competition, as online programs and alternative pathways vie for a shrinking population of people interested in becoming teachers.

In 2006, Arthur Levine, the former president of Teachers College, Columbia University, published a lengthy report on the state of teacher education, calling it a “troubled field” and criticizing schools of education for having low admission and graduation standards, and “wide disparities in institutional quality.”

A national debate has raged for the past few years about whether student test scores can provide a reliable and fair measure of teacher performance. Using those scores to examine a teacher’s academic training is also complicated.

In California, experts say it is difficult to tie a teacher’s performance directly back to the school they attended, in part, because another aspect of the 1998 reforms required teachers to receive additional training on the job. “There are a lot of factors that go into a teacher’s performance in the classroom, and certainly some of those do happen after teachers leave the preparation program,” said Sarah Almy, director of teacher quality at the Education Trust, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group that pushes for more accountability in education.

James Wyckoff, director of the Center on Education Policy and Workforce Competitiveness at the University of Virginia, agrees that it can be complex. But he says that some researchers have found that it is helpful to compare the success of teachers from different programs. “The information we’re getting from this is better than nothing, which is sort of what we’ve had before,” he said.

Other states have increasingly embraced the use of student test scores for measuring teacher programs. Louisiana has used student test score data since 2006 to determine which teacher training programs are most effective. While some say it has raised accountability for schools of education, some education schools have pointed to flaws and called the systems unfair.

The federal government has also tried to regulate quality in teacher training. In 1998, the same year California passed its reforms, Congress passed a new version of the federal Higher Education Act that required states to identify, report and help low-performing teacher preparation programs.

But like California’s law, the impact of the requirements still isn’t clear more than a decade later. Each state can determine its own criteria for evaluating programs, and in the past decade, 25 states have identified a program as “at-risk” or “low-performing.” And among the 42 states and the District of Columbia that provided a detailed description of their criteria to the federal government, 17 states and the district used a single criterion to evaluate teacher preparation programs, such as the program’s completion rate or its pass rate on state certification assessments.

Recruiting the best and brightest

At 12:15 on a recent Tuesday afternoon, Lynne Goldfarb began the last day of the semester for her master’s level humanities class in the University of Southern California’s education program. This was not a typical USC classroom; Goldfarb’s class is held weekly online, with two students logging on from Los Angeles and Phoenix.

“Today we’re going to look at how the two of you, in your own individual ways, in your own individual classes, have applied what you’ve learned in this class,” Goldfarb said, looking into her laptop’s camera.

With a few quick clicks, Goldfarb made of one her students the host of the online classroom, which would allow the student to share what was on her computer desktop with the class.

“This is sort of a game changer,” Goldfarb said, referring to the platform that USC uses for its online program, which allows students to see each other, share their computer screens and chat live during class. She says that one of the benefits of the online program is the ability for students from across the country to share experiences and strategies with each other. “It’s a cross- pollination of sorts,” she said.

The online class is the product of USC’s evolving college of education, and a distant byproduct of the 1998 reforms. With fewer students enrolling in schools of education, an increasing number of traditional programs have started online components to draw in students who may find distance learning more convenient. The programs with the biggest enrollment numbers in California are now institutions with extensive online offerings, according to federal data.

But Karen Gallagher, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education, says that although the online program has high enrollment rates, there’s no data to show if the teachers trained online are better – or worse – than those trained in brick-and-mortar classrooms.

Both education schools and would-be reformers of teacher training have embraced the idea of reaching out to a new population of potential teachers, because critics of teacher preparation programs say their biggest problem may be the kinds of people they recruit to become teachers in the first place. For years, colleges of education have battled reputations of attracting students with low test scores and grade-point averages.

According to a 2011 College Board report, SAT takers planning to major in education scored an average of 480 in reading – below most disciplines, including law, engineering and psychology. And among teacher preparation programs, admissions requirements vary greatly.

California requires a minimum score on the entrance exam students must take before they enroll in any teacher preparation program, but it is low. The cut score on the California Basic Educational Skills Test is 123 out of a top score of 240, or 51 percent – a percentage that would be considered a failing grade in most classrooms.

The test is split into three sections, which can be retaken as many times as needed, and scores from individual sections can be cobbled together to make a passing score. “If you are an intelligent ninth-grader, you can probably complete it with very little problem,” said Kretschmer, the CSU Northridge professor.

And while some schools have chosen to raise the cut scores or GPA required for admission, not everyone agrees that tougher admission requirements will result in a better teacher. “People say that’s a no brainer; you’re going to get better teachers if you increase the GPA,” said Spagna, a dean at CSU Northridge. “I would say that’s not a no brainer.” Spagna said some traits, such as having a cultural connection with students, may also have a positive effect on a person’s ability to be a good teacher.

At CSU Northridge, students say the many requirements needed to graduate, and the packed programs that often require long days of student teaching followed by evening classes, have served them well.

Austin Trujillo quit his job in entertainment to enter the program and says the program takes dedication and self-discipline – and that he is more confident about his job prospects than if he had chosen a newer, alternative program. “If you’re in competition and you have a degree from Northridge’s teaching credential program versus someone with an online degree, I think they’re going to assume you have a better-hands on experience,” he said. “It will be more respectable.”

Nancy Prosenjak’s class is filled with others like him, students who were attracted to the program because they said it has a strong reputation among area principals. For these future teachers, it was all the data they needed to judge whether the program was working or not.

This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University.