Benton Harbor turns to virtual teachers amid shortage. Parents aren’t happy

Benton Harbor schools is temporarily using virtual teachers in its district to address numerous vacancies
The district, one of the poorest and lowest-performing in the state, is evaluating three companies providing virtual instruction in a pilot year
Opponents say students need teachers physically in the classroom; proponents counter that all students deserve certified teachers — even virtual ones —to thrive

Benton Harbor is so hard-pressed to find teachers at one of the poorest districts in Michigan that it’s turning to certified instructors who teach classes over the internet.

School officials say that’s the best possible solution because the virtual teachers are well qualified and keep students on track with their education. But some parents are outraged, saying their children deserve better.

“They don’t need someone on a TV screen; they need hands-on help because each individual kid learns differently,” said Vallen Johnson, 44, whose son is a Benton High senior who completed half his junior year in a remote environment after an expulsion.

“If you have a person on the computer screen, how is that teacher going to help a kid who can’t read too well?”

The situation is temporary until permanent teachers can be found, but the alternative would be students falling behind in classrooms with substitute teachers who are not trained and often do little more than watch the class, said Superintendent Simone Griffin.

“All kids deserve a qualified, empathetic teacher in the room … even if it’s remote,” Griffin said.

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The debate comes amid a nationwide shortage of some kinds of teachers that has increased the use of remote learning, a phenomenon that exploded during the pandemic. The shortage is more acute in poorer, rural and urban school districts including Gary, Indiana, and Chicago, which have turned to virtual teachers in recent years,

Benton Harbor – where nearly 95% of students are impoverished and teachers are not only limited but underpaid – has embarked on a year-long pilot project with three companies to temporarily provide students across all grade levels with virtual teachers. The new instruction comes a few years after Benton Harbor faced but survived threats by state officials to close its only high school. The virtual teachers are certified, unlike some substitute teachers, and are employed until Benton Harbor schools can fill vacant positions through new hires or teachers they are growing in the district, officials say.

But exactly how much the pilot project costs is unclear. The Benton Harbor school board in October approved a $1.1 million contract with Proximity Learning, one of the three companies with which the district is working. But during an interview with Bridge in early December, Griffin said that needs changed with district vacancies and that school officials instead planned to hire Proximity Learning for a few special education teachers and would evaluate the companies at the end of the school year.

She said she did not know the cost for the three companies. Bridge Michigan’s follow-up questions to the district asking about total costs and other issues did not get answered.

‘One-on-one connection’

For Johnson, the issue is not about cost. After her son completed half of his junior year in a remote learning environment, he fell behind and is now catching up as a senior after returning to the high school. That’s why she is opposed to virtual teachers.

“There is going to be too much going on in the classroom, and there isn’t a person in there to direct them. They are on the screen,” Johnson said. “Who’s going to be in the classroom to watch the kids? Make sure that they are learning? Make sure that they are paying attention? Just giving them overall guidance?”

Griffin said there is an adult physically in virtual teacher classrooms to keep students on task.

She also said that if the district did not hire certified teachers for the classrooms where there are vacancies, students would be with substitute teachers, which is “unacceptable because it puts kids at a deficit for being prepared for a college career.”

The Michigan Education Association is opposed to third parties providing virtual teachers, said spokesman Thomas Morgan.

“We believe that every student throughout the state, no matter where they live, no matter their ZIP code, deserves a great teacher leading a classroom and has the same opportunities as any student anywhere else,” said Morgan. “This is clearly an example of a district that is woefully underfunded. They are not getting the resources they need to meet the needs of their students, and as a result they are unable to attract or retain high quality educators those kids deserve. So they are forced to outsource teaching to a third party behind a computer screen.”

“A face behind a computer screen is not a substitute in most cases for a trained, qualified teacher leading a classroom.” Morgan continued. “You miss that one-on-one connection, you miss that socialization, all these things are they are missing out on when a school district has to do this.”

Financial challenges

Benton Harbor, located 50 miles southwest of Kalamazoo close to Lake Michigan, is home to 8,848 residents, according to Census data. Between 2019-2023, the median household income in Benton Harbor was $29,652, far below the $78,538 national average.

Among the state’s traditional schools, more than 93% of Benton Harbor students are economically disadvantaged, according to data from the state’s Center for Educational Performance and Information (CEPI). That’s the fourth highest fourth-highest rate of impoverished students, eclipsed only by school districts in Baldwin, Beecher and Bridgeport-Spaulding.

Only 11.7% of third through eighth graders in Benton Harbor schools are proficient in English Language Arts, according to CEPI, ranking 737 out of 743 comparable traditional public school districts. Statewide, 45.1% of students are proficient in reading; 36% in math.

Meanwhile, the district pays its teachers $46,011, far below the state average of $69,068, according to 2023-24 financial education data posted by the state.

Evan Erdberg, who in 2009 founded Proximity Learning, one of the companies providing teachers in Benton Harbor, acknowledged that virtual teachers are controversial. His company is often tapped by low-income, urban and rural school districts that struggle to find certified teachers, not affluent districts. Once parents and teachers see the difference in having a certified teacher in the classroom, even if they are virtual and temporary, Erdberg said, they realize that kids in struggling districts deserve the best teachers too.

“The best thing is to have a certified teacher in front of a student, not a substitute or a paraprofessional,” said Erdberg. “Is it really better to have kids with a babysitter in front of them, just making sure that they don’t act up? A certified teacher understands how to teach. Kind of like going for surgery. Do you want someone who never went to medical school to do your surgery? Or do you want a surgeon?”

Real time versus own time

It is not clear how many Michigan school districts have hired companies to provide virtual teachers to teach core content live in classrooms amid the teacher shortage. State officials said they don’t track the information. The Digital Learning Collaborative, a national organization advancing digital learning, doesn’t track it either.

Virtual classes fall into two broad categories, asynchronous and synchronous. In an asynchronous model, students learn and work virtually on their own time. Benton Harbor students are being taught virtually in a synchronous model, meaning they are learning in real time.

Proximity Learning is one of the companies offering real-time virtual learning in Benton Harbor schools. Once a school district that is working with Proximity Learning finds a teacher to fill a position, the virtual teacher will depart after a 30-day overlap so there’s a smooth transition between the virtual and new teacher, Erdberg said.

“Think of us as a guest educator, that’s really what we are,” he said.

When school districts are down on teachers, Erdberg added, “education is not really happening in that classroom. The substitute or paraprofessional is doing their best but they are not a certified teacher. They don’t understand how to teach. And those kids are falling behind every day.”

He added that the pandemic created a more virtual world, so students learning from virtual teachers are being prepared for the future.

handout photo of a teacher leading a Spanish class on a screen. — A sample Proximity Learning classroom setup. Proximity was founded in 2009. (Courtesy of Proximity Learning)

Erdberg said that Proximity Learning has provided virtual teachers to nearly 300 school districts across the country, including Milwaukee and Chicago public schools, along with many rural school districts. It came to a Michigan school district about six years ago, Erdberg said, and provided virtual teachers to Huron Valley Schools and four other districts since but declined to name them until he sought their permission.

Huron Valley Schools, which includes the communities of Milford, White Lake, Highland and Commerce townships, has used Proximity Learning for 10 years to provide teachers at Harbor High School, an alternative school in Commerce Township, said district spokesperson Barb Roethler.

“This partnership allows us to offer a single Spanish class by contracting with a Proximity virtual teacher, which meets our limited enrollment needs,” Roethler said. “Proximity Learning has proven to be an effective way to access highly qualified educators from across the country, particularly for schools that require only one section of a course. According to Harbor High Principal Ben Dowker, the quality of instruction and service has been very strong, and he has been highly satisfied with the program.”

A study by Chicago State University showed some higher test scores in 2022 among Tennessee students with Proximity Learning virtual teachers.

Michigan Virtual University is a nonprofit organization that has offered virtual courses to students in the state for 25 years if they want courses not offered in the school district, such as Mandarin Chinese. But students take Michigan Virtual classes on their own time.

It’s rare for a school district to ask Michigan Virtual to teach a live class virtually, said founder and CEO Jamey Fitzpatrick.

“We try to avoid those circumstances because when the kid has an interest in taking a course and expresses a preference for a learning style that is online, they tend to do better than kids who are told this is your option,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s a social dimension to being in school and if we want to listen to student voice, I’d rather have a kid sign up for an online course as opposed to their being forced into that solution without any option.”

The Michigan Department of Education stands behind online learning in certain instances but also “has advocated for students to have more face-to-face instructional time with teachers, which is particularly important for younger students,” spokesperson Ken Coleman said.

“It is essential that every student has access to a prepared teacher to support content-specific learning,” Coleman said in a statement. “The Michigan Department of Education supports virtual learning when it is the most effective way for students to access needed courses or support or best suits student needs. Virtual learning with a certified teacher can be one way to address local staffing needs or to offer programming to small numbers of students.”

Virtual learning can be a viable option, Coleman added, in the absence or availability of certified teachers for certain courses such as advanced placement courses, alternative education programs, and credit recovery.

“While it is important for students to be in school and learning face-to-face from a teacher, especially at the early elementary level, virtual learning could be a better fit for students who are unable to come to school or find that online learning is better suited to their needs,” Coleman said.

Overcoming past barriers

In 2019, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer proposed closing Benton Harbor’s only high school due to a multimillion dollar debt, less than 5% of third graders reading at grade level and no 11th graders college-ready. Students would have had to attend surrounding high schools. But public outcry kept the proposal from going forward.

Benton Harbor’s decision to hire virtual teachers came after the school board in July hired a new superintendent, Griffin. She joined the district from Chicago after serving for 15 years as an educator and school administrator and most recently as regional director of Learnwell Education Services, a company providing virtual and in-person academic support and mental health care to students in treatment facilities.

Griffin arrived July 28 facing a high teacher vacancy rate in the district – about 15 to 20 teachers in core content areas serving about 1,200 kids in K-5. Meanwhile, of all the teachers in the district, over 40% are not certified, she said. Most are in the district’s future teacher pipeline as they seek professional development and certification while teaching.

Griffin said she was looking for a way to fill the teacher vacancies which otherwise would have been covered by substitute teachers, “so that kids can still have access to high-quality learning.”

Virtual teachers came up as an option through a colleague who successfully used them in another state, Griffin said, because they’re interactive, fit into a school’s schedule and give feedback to students.

“They’re just not in the room,” Griffin said. “(They’re) really beneficial to districts like ours, where there’s a high poverty rate, low test scores … We are in the bottom fifth percentile for the state of Michigan, so there’s a high need for closing those academic gaps.”

Benton Harbor students are left without teachers they need while also often facing trauma that often accompanies poverty, Griffin said, such as abuse, neglect, parents struggling to make ends meet which can lead to a lack of support, chronic absenteeism and academic struggles.

“In high poverty areas, we don’t really get the pick of high quality teachers … we have to coach our teachers up,” said Griffin. “We have made teachers that are very hard working and dedicated. They live in the community, they are graduates of the schools and want what’s best.”

There are Benton Harbor teachers who are working on getting certification but until then the district has opted to bring in virtual certified teachers, Griffin said.

Benton Harbor has hired some teachers to fill the 18 vacant spots and hired companies Subject and Centric to provide virtual teaching, but Griffin wasn’t exactly sure how many from each company. They are sprinkled across the district, Griffin said, and teach subjects like biology and algebra in the high school; and a few across the grade levels K-8.

She said she was glad that “not as many” virtual teachers are in K-5 levels, “because those are the formative years.”

Some students like it, others are getting used to it, Griffin said. Some teachers appreciate their load not being as heavy. Not too many parents are providing feedback.

“Even if a teacher is not in the room,” Griffin said, “learning can still happen.”

Bridge Michigan reporter Mike Wilkinson contributed to this report