The Kokomo Tribune
A shortage of qualified K-12 teachers continues here in Indiana, so says an annual survey of school superintendents by Indiana State University.
The inquiry of 115 Indiana school districts, released in September, found:
92% of participating districts reported a shortage of teachers in 2019.
32% reported elementary teacher shortages, up eight percentage points from 2018.
52% reported hiring teachers outside their licensed areas of certification, and 28% employed substitute teachers as full-time instructors.
“The same patterns have held true for the past five years,” said Terry McDaniel, an ISU professor in the department of educational leadership. Yet state lawmakers have done nothing to address the problem.
Here in the Hoosier State, McDaniel says many first-time teachers are quitting the profession within five years, and many with more than 20 years of classroom experience are leaving as well. The younger educators left teaching for a number of personal reasons. McDaniel says the most cited is the inability to support a family on an Indiana teacher’s salary.
In the 2016-17 school year, Hoosier teachers made an average salary of $50,554, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, compared to $61,602 in Illinois and $57,000 in Ohio. Gov. Eric Holcomb already has said he wants the state to be among the three highest in the Midwest in teacher pay, but he first wants a report from his Blue Ribbon Commission on Teacher Compensation, which isn’t due until August 2021.
State Rep. Ed DeLaney, D-Indianapolis, is planning to submit legislation increasing teacher pay this session, though it surely will go nowhere. A focus on state-financed incentives for hard-to-hire teachers, however, would be a worthwhile reform endeavor.
Schools in urban areas with pockets of high poverty find it difficult to keep teachers. Others in rural areas with few employment opportunities also struggle to hire and retain qualified instructors in math, science and special education.
These children often come to school without having had enough sleep and without having eaten breakfast. They often experience family violence, secondhand smoke and neglect. Yet our legislators expect every student to be “at grade level” and make no allowances for the teachers and schools fighting society’s ills in the classroom.
The governor has called on the General Assembly to “hold harmless” teachers and schools for low scores on the state’s new standardized test, ILEARN, which was used for the first time this past spring. Yet the real measuring stick for a school or teacher shouldn’t be the overall passing percentage on a statewide exam, but to make certain every student gains the knowledge needed to achieve his or her potential.
In this legislative session, lawmakers should explore pay premiums or student loan forgiveness for teachers working in schools with high percentages of low-income students, and find a fairer way to evaluate state teachers than tying their income to their students’ performance on a standardized test.
