Louis Freedberg, Ph.D., and Stephanie Rice, via a kind email (PDF):

Despite the fundamentally important role of teachers in our public school system, how they are prepared is receiving far less attention than other current reforms, such as the Common Core State Standards, the Local Control Funding Formula, and new ways to assess and hold schools accountable for student performance.

Teachers are routinely blamed for almost every underperforming child and every short- coming of the nation’s public school system. The length of time it takes them to get tenure, seniority protections in the layoff process, and the regulations protecting them from dismissal have all come under attack.

In addition, teachers were laid off in large numbers during the Great Recession. Paralleling these developments, enrollments in teacher preparation programs plummeted to less than 20,000 in the 2012-13 school year, according to latest figures—a decline of 74 percent since 2001-02.
It has been more than 15 years since the last major reform of California’s system of teacher preparation and credentialing (with the passage of Senate Bill 2042 in 1998). Fortuitously, numerous groups have carried out a substantial amount of work that focuses on this crucial element of the state’s education system.

Most influential have been the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, which issues credentials and oversees preparation programs; the Task Force on Educator Excellence, which released its influential “Greatness by Design” report in 2012; and the Teacher Prepara- tion Advisory Panel, which concluded its work in 2013.