INDIANAPOLIS – In the last 5 years, Indiana has seen an 33-percent drop in the number of people trying to get their teaching license. Fewer applicants mean fewer teachers – but at the Statehouse, lawmakers are trying to come up with a solution.
Monday, nearly 50 teachers, professors and educators from Indiana gathered to discuss the problem and help come up with solutions.
There’s now a list of recommendations that will be handed off to lawmakers to help shape the upcoming legislative agenda.
This group of educators – called the Blue Ribbon Commission – is helping work on the recruitment and retention of excellent educators.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz is the co-chair of the group, which has been meeting regularly for the past few months.
As we listened in on Monday, we noticed some very in-depth conversations about what works and what doesn’t in the classroom – and also what keeps teachers around, and what pushes them away.
That list includes dozens of proposals, including: incentives for teachers who work in high-need schools, scholarship opportunities to minority teachers as a way of promoting diversity, and encouragement of specific types of professional development for teachers.
We plan on posting that full list once we get our hands on it.
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