(Fort Wayne) News-Sentinel
The number of new teachers went up some this year, but that increase follows a two-year decline, so there is still a shortage severe enough to be worrisome. According to a recent study, only three states do worse than Indiana in recruiting and retaining teachers.
So it is good news that the state has created a scholarship program designed to get some of the best and brightest into Hoosier classrooms. It will give students money to attend college if they commit to teaching in Indiana for five years after completing their degrees.
The Indiana Commission for Higher Education’s Next Generation Hoosier Educators Scholarship provides up to $7,500 for each year of college. As many as 200 scholarships will be awarded based on academic achievement, a teacher nomination and an interview.
But that won’t solve the whole problem, and it doesn’t address a core issue, so the state must do more.
One big reason Indiana has a teacher shortage is that in the past few years, teachers have not felt appreciated for what they do.
The state changed the way teachers are paid, along with the way it judges schools and districts, tying them all to student performance. And it hasn’t always been smart about the way the incentives are used. Special ed and English-as-a-second-language students, for example, take the same tests as everybody else, and schools and teachers lose points when those students predictably don’t do as well. Such students need the best teachers, but the state makes it difficult for them to earn a raise.
It’s not that the state should scrap accountability from its education list. It just needs to find a way to do it that still lets teachers know they are valuable and appreciated for what they do.
Outgoing Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz was well aware of this problem. But the political fights between her and the Republican governor and legislators made solving it impossible. (It made a lot of other things more difficult than they should have been, as well.)
We’ve talked to incoming Republican Superintendent Jennifer McCormick, so we know that she, too, understands the situation. Perhaps she and her fellow Republicans will get along well enough that they are able to do something about it.
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