Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat.
While Illinois’ educator workforce is larger generally and per student than it has been in the last decade and the supply of new teachers and principals has increased in recent years, shortages persist, especially for special education and bilingual teachers as well as paraprofessionals who assist licensed teachers in the classroom. Additionally, teacher diversity — despite some progress — continues to significantly lag student diversity.
These are some of the main findings of a recent report that was the topic of discussion at a Collinsville event last Tuesday morning.
Advance Illinois, a bipartisan education policy and advocacy organization, produced the report and hosted the event in partnership with Collinsville District 10, the Illinois Education Association and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to foster conversation at the local level.
“We need to be creative, diligent and honest in looking for the reasons why people are not filling the ranks of educators at the pace they need to be to keep up with demand,” Madison County Regional Superintendent Rob Werden said at the beginning of the event.
“The State of our Educator Pipeline 2023” report looks at educator supply and demand, retention, shortages and diversity over the past 5 to 10 years with a particular focus of understanding the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by analyzing data from the Illinois State Board of Education.
“The issue of the pipeline is a pipeline. If there were a magic bullet answer of what we could do to make sure we’ve got fabulous, effective educators in every slot we need, if there was just one thing, we would have done it. It’s not. It’s complex,” Advance Illinois President Robin Steans, a former high school teacher, said at the beginning of her presentation of the report.
Among the takeaways from the report was that the number of teachers, paraprofessionals and school leaders in the state was higher in the 2021-22 school year than it has been in the last decade. The number of teachers has been significantly increasing since the 2017-18 school year, which was when the state’s revamped education funding formula prioritizing schools with the most need went into effect.
Just under $2 billion dollars have gone out to school districts in the last seven years under the new “evidence-based formula,” Steans said, which has allowed districts to employ more teachers.
In terms of retention, the mass exodus of educators that many anticipated would occur during and immediately after the pandemic did not happen, according to the report. In fact, more teachers, principals, assistant principals and paraprofessionals were as or more likely to stay in their position during the first two years of the pandemic than before the pandemic, but it’s unclear whether this trend will continue.
“During the pandemic and after the pandemic, culture and climate, as teachers are experiencing it, worsened,” Steans said, as teachers are dealing with new issues like behavioral problems in students that take a toll in the classroom.
“As long as that climate and culture piece is not strong, we worry that that could be a reason people leave,” she said.
The statewide teacher vacancy rate — the percentage of positions that were unfilled — was 2.6% for the 2022-23 school year, which is slightly higher than prior years, but changes in the way the state calculates vacancy rates may have contributed to that rise, the report says. The rate was significantly higher for certain positions at 5% for special education teachers, 3.9% for bilingual teachers and 7.2% for paraprofessionals.
The teacher shortage is also scattered geographically across the state and half of districts don’t have vacancies, but “just because you don’t have an actual vacancy this year doesn’t mean the shortage isn’t affecting you,” Steans said.
It could be affecting the number of applicants districts get for open positions and other important staffing decisions, she added.
The educator shortage disproportionately impacts urban and rural schools as well as schools serving Black and Latinx students and students from low-income households, the report shows. Black students are more than three times more likely to be in a district with a vacancy rate that’s at or above 5%.
“If you are of color, if you are low-income, you are dramatically more likely to be in a district with severe shortages that is disrupting your learning, that is disrupting the way the school works,” Steans said.
English learners and students with disabilities are also disproportionately impacted by the shortage, the report says.
Following Stean’s presentation, a panel with Collinsville 10 Superintendent Brad Skertich, Bethalto 8 Superintendent Jill Griffin, SIUE faculty member Nate Williams and Collinsville High School social studies teacher Dakota Tostado discussed the report’s findings from a local perspective, including the challenges facing teachers in the post-pandemic climate and administrators as they grapple with the educator shortage.
During the panel, Skertich — who was in the advisory group for the Advance Illinois report — said one of the reasons for the ongoing shortage is the emphasis on proficiency over growth when talking about education.
Proficiency, he explained in an interview after the panel, is the set of skills all students are expected to reach at each grade level, and proficiency levels are set by the Illinois State Board of Education.
Often, schools are ranked and assessed according to their proficiency, but whether a student meets proficiency has more to do with their background and home environment than a school or teacher’s impact, Skertich said.
The true measure of a teacher’s impact, he said, is how much progress their students make from when they enter the classroom at the beginning of the year to when they leave at the end.
“If our teachers are causing those students to have significant growth and improve, then they’re being successful,” he said.
When a student has made growth but is not proficient, however, the school and its teachers are still often framed as underperforming, Skertich said.
“It’s a huge morale deflator for our students and our staff, especially when they’re working as hard as possible and they’re making great strides,” he said. “That needs to be celebrated as much as anything.”
Teacher initiatives
At the state level, Illinois has in recent years been increasing the availability of short-term credentials to help teachers who are licensed in one grade or subject to teach in a different grade or subject and to help those who are not yet fully licensed get into the classroom quicker.
There are also a variety of state and federal grants available with the goal of improving teacher recruitment and retention, and during the 2023-24 school year, the state board will launch its new three-year Teacher Vacancy Grant pilot program.
Many school districts, like both Collinsville 10 and Bethalto 8 as well as others in the Metro East and across the country, have “grow-your-own” initiatives to recruit and support future teachers from within the community and improve teacher diversity. These programs are often partnerships between high schools and community colleges or universities to help high school students to start getting credit toward their teacher certification.
Local universities have other initiatives, too. This fall, for example, McKendree University in Lebanon launched its Paraprofessional+ Pathway program to help paraprofessionals become licensed elementary teachers in two years, according to a university press release. The program is online, allowing students to complete it at their own pace while continuing to work in their current positions at local schools. Students can also get an add-on special education license through the program. The program is supported in part by a state grant that helps reduce the tuition rate for the university’s paraprofessional students.
O’Fallon District 90 — which has a pre-K, five elementary schools and two junior high schools — recently launched its TeachD90 program in partnership with McKendree, according to a press release from the district. The program allows eight paraprofessionals in the district to get their teaching licenses through the Paraprofessional+ Pathway program.
Kelly Smits is a reporter with the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
