INDIANAPOLIS — Low salaries and an ever increasing focus on standardized testing have contributed to the state’s teacher shortage, teaching professionals told state legislators in a hearing at the Statehouse Monday.
Among the multitude of reasons that teachers — and those who prepare students to become teachers — listed as causes of the shortage, one message repeatedly reverberated through the meeting hall: Treat teachers with more respect.
Joshua Francis, interim dean of Indiana Institute of Technology’s College of General Studies and director of teacher preparation, said that he frequently hears students and teachers cite too little pay, too much testing and lack of respect for abandoning the profession.
Suzanne Ehst, director of secondary education at Goshen College, said teachers and students she surveyed also blamed an emphasis on standardized tests and a general lack of respect toward teachers among reasons that might discourage people from getting into teaching.
The Indiana General Assembly’s Interim Study Committee on Education listened to hours of testimony Monday to determine the extent of the state’s teacher shortage and to find possible solutions that legislators might propose during the next legislative session.
State lawmakers had pushed for a study on the teacher shortage after the Daily News reported this summer that the number of novice teacher licenses by the state has declined in the last few years. Figures released since then by the Indiana Department of Education show that licenses issued by the state to novice teachers has fallen by 30 percent between 2009/10 and 2014/15.
Licenses issued to more experienced teachers declined by about 90 percent between 2009/10 and 2013/14. Data for the last year are not yet available.
Glenda Ritz, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, also has created a Blue Ribbon Commission to figure out ways to better recruit and retain teachers.
Ritz told legislators on Monday that she and the more than 40 members of the commission are looking for systemic change and have identified potential strategies for improvement, including a mentoring program, increases in compensation, a media campaign to recognize teachers, streamlining standardized tests and revising teacher evaluations.
The commission will meet twice more before issuing recommendations for action.
Sen. Mark Stoops, D-Bloomington, said that some of the presenters have failed to address the fundamental problem: people’s attitudes toward the teaching profession.
Legislators and others have so harshly criticized teachers that prospective teachers are losing interest in the profession, Stoops said.
“That is the reason that we have a teacher shortage,” he said.
Teacher shortage?
However, Michael Hicks, an economist with Ball State University, said that far from a teacher shortage, “Indiana has an excess supply of teachers.”
While some areas of the state may see some shortages of teachers in certain subject areas, Hicks said that any enrollment decline in teacher preparation programs at universities is being caused by teachers not being able to find jobs.
And while teacher preparation programs may be seeing an enrollment declined, the graduation rate could remain steady, said Hicks, the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics and the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research.
And, Hicks said, for the last three decades, the number of teaching major graduates has been flat relative to the number of school age children.
Hicks’ comments prompted Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, the ranking minority member on the Senate Education & Career Development Committee, to ask that subsequent speakers indicate whether they believe the state is dealing with a teaching shortage.
The four speakers who followed Hicks all said the state was, indeed, dealing with a teacher shortage.
Richard Ludwick, president of the Independent Colleges of Indiana, also refuted Hick’s notion that graduation rates may be holding steady while enrollment rates are declining.
Undergraduate degrees conferred in teacher preparation programs at the state’s private nonprofit colleges have fallen 44 percent in the last decade, Ludwick said. Degrees conferred in graduate programs have fallen 48 percent.
Ludwick said that many teachers are telling their children not to pursue careers in education.
“We are very concerned about education in our state,” Ludwick said.
Janet Clark, vice president for academic affairs at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, said that the number of education enrollees and graduates “has been declining at an alarming rate.”
Education programs have seen participation decline by 60 percent, Clark said, while others had seen a significant growth.
The educators also testified that they frequently field calls from school superintendents who still have open teaching positions and are desperately looking for applicants. Many soon-to-be graduates of the teacher preparation schools already have jobs lined up, the educators said.
Ehst, of Goshen College, told the committee that teachers and would-be-teachers also have said that the career seems too unstable to them, in part because their pay is tied to student performance, which reflects many aspects beyond teacher performance, including home life and a student’s parental support.
Other speakers told the commission that the state should focus on teacher quality — rather than quantity — and that it should make it easier for teachers who are licensed in other states to obtain teaching licenses in Indiana.
Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, suggested that students interested in becoming teachers may be swayed to study math or science education or other areas with significant shortages if they are told about job prospects in areas where the state has enough teachers.
She also said that Indiana could follow other states’ models to try to entice people to become teachers in certain fields and geographic areas. Georgia, for example, gives new high school math and science teachers a starting salary equivalent to a teacher with six years of experience. New Mexico pays teachers a $5,000 stipend if they teach in science, technology, math and engineering or if they teach in hard-to-staff schools.
Jacobs and other speakers also encouraged the state to collect more detailed data to better be able to analyze the state’s specific challenges that are contributing to the teacher shortage.
Dual credit complication
Teresa Lubbers, commissioner of the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, told legislators that another challenge likely will complicate Indiana’s efforts to address its teacher shortage: More stringent academic requirements for teachers of dual credit courses.
Dual credit programs allow high school students to earn college credits through classes they take while in high school. When they transfer those credits to college, it lowers their tuition expenses.
Participation in the programs statewide has more than doubled in the last three years: In 2011, 31,000 Indiana high school students earned 150,000 credit hours. By 2014, 66,500 students earned 360,000 credits.
But more stringent qualifications for university professors and high school teachers who teach dual credit courses threaten to hollow out large portions of dual credit programs in Indiana and other states.
The Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission adopted new policies this summer that demand that people who teach general education courses have a master’s degree in their subject area or a master’s degree in another area plus 18 graduate hours in the subject they are teaching. The HLC is a private organization funded by its members, about 1,000 colleges and universities in 19 states including Indiana.
Lubbers said Monday that the Indiana Commission for Higher Education estimates that 70 percent of the state’s dual credit teachers do not meet the new guidelines.
The Monday hearing began at 1 p.m. Sen. Dennis Kruse, R- suspended testimony at 8:38 p.m. and said the meeting would continue.