If there's a teacher shortage in Indiana, what's causing it?

Northwestern School Superintendent Ryan Snoddy said he received 30 applications this summer for an elementary teaching position that would have drawn 100 applicants in the past.

“That’s where the change has come,” Snoddy said. “We have not had as deep of an applicant pool.”

While all Northwestern’s open positions were filled before the start of the school year, Snoddy said it’s typically more difficult to hire for science, math and foreign language positions. Northwestern belongs to the Wabash Valley Consortium, which allows schools to share job openings and applicants. If the corporation is looking for someone with a specific credential, administrators will call universities’ colleges of education and ask for candidates.

Eastern Howard School Corp. Superintendent Tracy Caddell said he’s gotten a good response from posting job listings on social media, and Kokomo School Corp. administrators frequent career fairs at universities to recruit potential candidates. They listed math, science, special education, foreign languages and arts as some hard-to-hire subject areas.

Like Snoddy, Caddell said he received fewer than 30 applications this year for an open elementary position that would have drawn more than 100 applicants in the past. Mike Sargent, assistant superintendent of Kokomo Schools, who also is the director of human resources, has seen a similar drop in applicants – down to 60 to 80 candidates for elementary positions that previously received 150 to 200 applications, and only 10 to 15 people applying for secondary level teaching positions.

As local educators discussed the potential reasons fewer people seem to be going into teaching, several theories came up repeatedly:

• Relatively low pay: Teachers often can make more money with their skill sets and level of education in other professions. Cuts in state funding have made it difficult for school corporations to offer regular raises, and small, rural districts have an especially hard time competing with the pay offered at larger, more affluent school corporations.

Taylor Community Schools Superintendent Chris Smith saw two of Taylor High School’s teacher candidates scooped up this summer by larger districts that offered higher salaries. He would like to have more state funding available for salaries, as well as incentives for high-performing teachers, especially with the high-stakes student testing that is now tied to teachers’ evaluations and pay. Taylor Schools teachers took a pay freeze this school year, while Northwestern, Eastern and Kokomo schools all granted raises for teachers in their most recent contracts. 

Caddell also thinks differentiated pay for teachers in different subject areas could help with hiring for in-demand positions. But he knows that would be a drastic change from the current way teacher contracts are bargained.

“I respect teachers unions and I respect what the associations do, but math [teachers] should make more than social studies teachers,” he said. “There should be an aspect of supply and demand with teaching. … But I think you would get pushback from associations across the state because that’s different from how it’s been done.”

Eastern's master agreement allows Caddell to hire for two positions at whatever salary is in the best interest of the corporation, and he also is allowed a $5,000 swing from the corporation’s average teacher salary when negotiating contracts for new hires.

• Accountability measures based on student test data: The growing emphasis on standardized testing has some educators worried because they say test results do not reveal students’ full abilities. Teacher evaluation reform now requires student performance data to be factored into teachers’ ratings, which affects whether they qualify for raises. Also, Indiana has changed academic standards, the ISTEP and how school letter grades are calculated in recent years, so teachers feel they are constantly trying to hit a moving target to prove they are doing their jobs well.

Snoddy thinks the focus on testing has shifted teachers’ attention away from encouraging student learning in other forms.

“We’ve got to provide opportunities for teachers to teach and not deal with external demands like testing or record keeping,” he said.

“I see a lot of teachers who really have lost their passion,” he said. “You get into teaching for a reason – for the kids, and there’s something about English or math or science that they really enjoyed and really wanted to share with kids and help them. We’re now forced to do so much standardized testing. I can teach kids how to take a multiple choice test. … But that’s nobody’s passion.”

• Sense of disrespect for teachers from legislators, media and the general public.

Tica Rogers, vice president of the Northwestern Corporation Education Association, feels the biggest deterrent for potential new teachers is the general lack of respect for the profession, which has changed drastically from when she began teaching 23 years ago.

“When I [started], I feel like everyone thought it was a noble pursuit. I think now that view is very different,” Rogers said. “You hear the word ‘public school’ and it’s very negative.”

Burns thinks much of the negative feeling toward public school teachers has come from the movement to privatize education, in the form of charter schools and state-funded vouchers for private schools.

“If you look at what’s been going on there’s a concerted effort to take tax dollars and put them in the hands of private companies,” Burns said. “In order to do that, you’ve got to beat up the [public] schools, you’ve got to beat up the teachers and you’ve got to beat up the teacher unions.”

Snoddy noted the pendulum of public opinion on teaching tends to swing from one extreme to the other over time.

“That falls on us as educators to some extent,” he said. “We’ve got to do more to say education is a good career. The key is to have a passion for working with kids. As long as you have that, it doesn’t matter what people are saying about teaching.”

• Not allowing for more input from teachers in policy decisions.

Rogers would like to see more input from teachers in Indiana’s education policy and less political influence in the decision-making process. She said the increased focus on standardized testing affecting schools across the country is restricting what teachers are able to do in their classrooms.

“I still want to make a difference. I still find my opportunities,” she said. “Most of us want to be creative and want to be lifelong learners, and we want our students to do the same.”

Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana Teachers Association, agreed that giving teachers more voice in the political process would improve the state of the profession.

“I think we need to add the teacher voice back into decision making,” she said. “It’s been building [to a teacher shortage]. I would say it began around 2008 and 2009, and it’s been slowly growing as legislators have made what feel like punitive decisions about teachers.”

Burns also feels teachers have been pushed out of the political process that impacts their profession.

“I feel like the legislators, especially now, are just not listening to teachers. I feel like they have an agenda and they’re going to get it through,” he said.  “They have an agenda and it doesn’t include what teachers want.”