An education panel meeting in Fort Wayne found that there are two reasons for the state teacher shortage: Indiana Senate bills 1 and 575.
One ties teacher evaluations to teacher pay; the other took away collective bargaining rights.
Shortly after the bills passed in 2011, would-be education students asked questions and started getting cold feet, the panel said.
The students asked questions such as: What’s my salary going to look like five years down the road? Why would my pay be tied to students living in poverty, who don’t have a traditional family unit, whose family might be incarcerated, or who may do poorly on the state standardized tests that are the major component in a teacher’s evaluation?
“There are massive amounts of variables,” said Joe D. Nichols, professor and former chairman of the Department of Education Studies at IPFW who was one expert on the panel of four Saturday who spoke on the teacher shortage. Students showed “real concern about why are they being evaluated on things they can’t control.”
The result of asking those questions that also made the rounds on social media has been a plunge in the number of students enrolled in education. Currently, there are 42 IPFW students involved in student teaching, a step on their way to becoming a state-certified teacher.
“That’s half of what they would normally be,” Nichols said.