Indiana faces shortage of first-time teachers

The crop of first-year teachers across Indiana decreased by almost a fifth in the past five years, leaving school districts hard-pressed to find educators as a new school year begins.

School officials said it’s been increasingly difficult to fill open positions with newly minted teachers — particularly for special education, math and science.

In some cases, schools will have to start the year with substitute teachers to temporarily fill vacancies until they find a suitable candidate. In many other instances, experts say, schools have to be less choosy when hiring teachers — and that can affect the quality of instruction.

Schools, even those located in affluent areas, struggled to increase teacher salaries and people considering going into education took note, said Dennis Costerison, executive director of the Indiana Association of School Business Officials, which lobbies on behalf of public schools.

That has led to a more than 18 percent decrease in the number of newly licensed teachers across the state, according to data from the Indiana Department of Education. From 2009 to 2013, the number of first-year teachers dropped to 4,565 from 5,599.

“One of the things that is an issue now is we went for four years with meager (funding) increases after the Great Recession,” Costerison said. “There wasn’t much money there, and young people looked and saw teachers weren’t getting any raises.”

Poor pay, reputation

Fewer people are enrolling in education programs at colleges across the country.

At Ball State University, enrollment in elementary and kindergarten teacher-preparation programs has fallen 45 percent in the past decade. Purdue University also reported a decrease in teaching majors.

Multiple factors, including poor starting salaries and a hostile teaching climate, have driven people away from the profession, said Teresa Taber Doughty, associate dean for learning in Purdue’s College of Education.

“The pervasive negativity in public forums has resulted in teachers and family members actively dissuading high school students from pursuing careers in teaching,” she said. “Additionally, starting salaries are not competitive when compared to other professions.”

In Indiana, the average starting salary for a new teacher graduating from Purdue with a bachelor’s degree is $32,596 per year.

The problem is also garnering attention from the state legislature. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate education committees have asked General Assembly leaders to approve having the legislative education study committee review what is causing the drop and how the state could respond.

House education committee Chairman Robert Behning, R-Indianapolis, and Senate education committee Chairman Sen. Dennis Kruse, R-Auburn, said in their letter dated Thursday they “think it would be wise for the Indiana General Assembly to proactively address this issue.”

The rhetoric used by legislators to push through school overhaul proposals has hurt the teaching profession’s reputation, said Teresa Meredith, president of the 45,000-member Indiana State Teachers Association. State school funding constraints and standardized testing pressures also show a lack of support from governmental leaders for the profession, she said.

The head of the state’s largest teachers union, meanwhile, said Republican-backed changes imposed on schools in the last several years have contributed to making teaching careers less appealing.

National education expert Paul Bruno said the number of first-year teachers in California has dropped 53 percent since 2004. As the teaching population dwindles, administrators can’t be as choosy about educators, he said. And that can impact the quality of a child’s education, he said.

“The drops have been so substantial,” said Bruno, a former middle school science teacher who is pursuing a doctorate at the University of Southern California. “It cannot just be because we have shrinking (numbers of) college-age students. It has to be partly because people are not interested in becoming teachers.”

Jim Snapp, superintendent of the Brownsburg Community School Corporation, said he’s seen teaching applications drop by about 25 percent within his district. For positions like special education, it’s even worse: Now the district only receives about six applications for those positions, when it used to garner about 20.

“Beginning wages for teachers are not as competitive if you have a bachelor’s degree from a university as if you go into the private sector,” he said. “When people have options, they are not going to go into a profession that is as criticized as teaching is for the woes that plague our society.”

A buyer’s market

Indianapolis Public Schools is trying to attract math, science and special education teachers with priority pay incentives, some of which begin at $40,000 or more a year.

Ten to 15 years ago, people were clamoring to become teachers, Costerison said.

“Folks just aren’t really going into the teaching profession the way they did,” he said. “It’s a financial issue. Those folks that have the calling — and teaching is a calling — those folks are still going to be there.”

One of those people who feel teaching is a calling is Sarah White, a first-year kindergarten teacher at Hornet Park Elementary School in Beech Grove City Schools. White said her mother is a teacher and she’s been around education all her life.

“It comes naturally to me to work with children and be around children,” she said. “That’s my true passion, so I wanted to make it a career because I really enjoy the work that comes along with it.”

White wasn’t dissuaded by the financial, social or political issues that teachers face. She said she loves her work because she wants to make a difference.

Still, finding teachers like White is difficult.

Beech Grove Superintendent Paul Kaiser said it’s a buyer’s market for teachers because there are so few applying for positions.

“The biggest change is, for example, we have two English positions open at our middle school and seven or eight years ago, we’d have 15 candidates for those positions. This year, we have four,” he said. “I have a math position open today, and I have no candidates.”

Even when the district finds a teacher it wants to hire, that person might be entertaining two to three different offers, Kaiser said. Beech Grove cannot always keep up with what other districts can pay educators, he said.

“We’re not as high as other districts, so we lost teachers,” Kaiser said. “We had two teachers leave us this year because they got a $3,000 to $4,000 pay raise.”

It’s not just movement from school to school that creates teaching vacancies.

Starting salaries close to or above $40,000 in the private sector also are a draw for people who might have become teachers, Bruno said. People who would have made excellent teachers are now pursuing more-lucrative careers in areas such as math and science.

Shoring up the supply of teachers will depend on how much value society places on the teaching profession, Taber Doughty said. If the financial and social issues that plague the profession continue to be a problem, the population of teachers will remain at a critical point.

“Sadly, current teachers don’t feel valued for the work they do,” Taber Doughty said. “To reverse this national trend, we need to recognize the value of teachers and raise the profile of the profession.”

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Call Star reporter Kris Turner at (317) 444-6047. Follow him on Twitter: @krisnturner.