Who’s leading classes? Uncertified teachers for thousands of Michigan kids

Michigan’s public schools are continuing to turn classrooms over to long-term substitute teachers who can have as little as two years of college, according to new state data.

Permits issued this year show the use of long-term subs is on pace to match and most likely exceed last year, when districts used more than 2,500 long-term subs. That was a tenfold increase from four years earlier, a trend that has angered education advocates.

It means another year in which thousands of students will get their math, English and science instruction from non-certified teachers.

“How can you have a quality education when you have people without the tools and background to teach properly?” asked LouAnn Vidmar, a teachers’ union representative in Berrien and Cass counties in southwest Michigan.

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So far this year, districts have asked for 1,138 permits for long-term subs. Last year at the same time, districts had requested about 1,000 permits, according to the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, a Livonia-based nonpartisan research firm.

By the end of last school year (2018-19), more than 2,500 long-term subs were used, Bridge reported in August.

Educators and politicians have lamented the use of the subs because most do not have the skills or knowledge that a certified teacher would have.

Students from two Detroit charter schools told Bridge that they turned to the Internet to teach themselves or had lost interest in some subjects because of the poor quality of their long-term subs.

“(T)here remains an existential teacher shortage dilemma in Michigan and too many long-term substitute teachers are serving in place of trained and effective educators,” state education spokesman Martin Ackley wrote in an email to Bridge. 

“We all need to work together to attract and retain educators to the profession and ensure every child in Michigan has access to a quality education.”

Many long-term subs have four-year college degrees, though not education degrees. But state rules allow districts to hire people with as few as 60 college credits, or two years of school.

Data show that enrollment in Michigan’s teacher-prep programs fell 66 percent between 2009 and 2016 and while there are enough students graduating from Michigan’s university-based teaching programs to replace teachers who retire and quit, they are not evenly distributed geographically or by teaching specialty, according to a report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan.

And a number of certified teachers have simply left the profession, many frustrated by the high stress and declines in pay and benefits.

Molly Sweeney, organizing director for 482Forward, a Detroit-based nonprofit that works to empower student leaders, said most of the applicants for recent jobs at her nonprofit have been teachers early in their careers who wanted to get out because it was “too chaotic.”

The result has been a shrinking teacher talent pool that in many areas, like Detroit, is forcing districts to turn to non-teachers to teach. Facing its own hiring crisis, the Detroit Community Schools boosted pay and offered $3,000 hiring bonuses to gain certified teachers. 

But many of those new hires came from Detroit-area charter schools, where pay is typically lower, forcing many of those schools to turn to long-term subs: Although charters educate roughly 10 percent of state students, over half of all long-term subs worked in charter schools.

The Michigan Association of Public School Academies has been well aware of the growing problem with hiring and retaining teachers for a number of years, said Angi Beland, a former MAPSA employee who is program director of its alternative-certification program.

Through the program, would-be teachers who already have a college degree take 13 months of education-related classes. The program, like others around the state and approved by the Michigan Department of Education, targets those already working in charters, like classroom aides, who would want to become teachers.

MAPSA’s “professional innovators and teachers” program currently has 45 people enrolled –  charter schools typically cover the cost – and Beland expects 30 more applications.

That’s not enough to solve the problem statewide, but it is helping. “The ideal would be we would have all certified teachers,” she said. “It’s how do we make the best of a bad situation.”

Some traditional public schools also turn to long-term subs: Detroit schools, which made hiring certified teachers a priority, has pulled permits for 117 full-year long-term subs so far in the 2019-20 school year, up from 92 for all of 2018-19. 

Overall the district has over 3,500 teachers and is the largest district in Michigan.

In West Michigan, the troubled Benton Harbor schools are facing budget and academic woes that caused Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to consider shutting down the high school there.

Last year the district hired 41 long-term subs, equal to over 40 percent of its staff. So far this year, the district has asked for 19 permits –  and still has seven teaching openings.

The long-term solution, Sweeney, Vidmar and others said, requires more support for the teaching profession to encourage more people to go into the profession. Over the years, teachers have seen salaries stagnate and pension and health-care benefits trimmed as Michigan struggled with the fallout of the Great Recession as incomes –  and taxes – fell precipitously.