IU fighting shortage of math teachers

Indiana universities are encouraging students to fill the gap many secondary math and science teachers will leave behind when they retire, said Charles Barman, professor of education and adjunct professor of public health at IU Purdue University-Indianapolis. He cited U.S. Department of Education statistics that point to retirement as a main cause of the lack of math and science teachers. Thirty percent of science teachers and 31 percent of math teachers will be up for retirement within the next five years. \nBarman is the director of two programs at IUPUI that are working against the possible shortage. \nMany of the retiring baby boomers were recruited into math and science teaching jobs during a shortage in the 1960s, Barman said. Funding from the National Science Foundations stopped in the 1970s after a sufficient number of teachers came on board.\nOne of the programs that Barman heads at IUPUI is Transition to Teaching. The program, which many Indiana colleges, including IU-Bloomington, have implemented, provides an incentive for professionals who have already earned a college degree to go back to school for a teaching license. Transition to Teaching is open to all fields and professions but plays a key role in attracting more math and science teachers to secondary schools. About four math majors and eight science majors each year are recruited by IU’s Transition to Teaching, according to a press release.\nBarman said reasons other than retirement might be responsible for the possible shortage. \n“There are shifts in demographics, and teachers make less money,” Barman said. “There are many factors.”\nNot many math and science majors would pick teaching as their first choice, Barman said, but schools are becoming desperate enough to consider other options.\n“If we can’t get teachers, there will be a shortage,” Barman said. “There’s even been talk of lowering standards for getting teaching licenses, but we know that’s unsuccessful.”\nBarman noted that people who are pushed through the licensing process with lower standards don’t stay in the teaching profession for very long.\n“You have to have people who are committed and who want to be teachers,” he said.\nDiana Lambdin, associate dean for teacher education, agreed with Barman, saying that lowering licensing standards is “not a solution” but is sometimes done on a temporary basis when teachers are badly needed. The licenses are called “emergency permits.” \n“Sometimes hiring teachers who are not highly qualified needs to be done,” she said. “But it takes more than knowing content to be an effective teacher.”\nLambdin, who is also co-director of the Elementary Transition to Teaching Program, said there has not been a decrease in interest in the areas of math and science, but rather an increased demand in today’s economy for professionals in those fields.\n“Our whole world has become more math- and science-oriented,” she said, noting the change in business and industry from labor-based to science-based.\nThe National Science Foundation’s Robert Noyce Scholarship provides a monetary incentive for professionals and undergraduates in mathematics to go into teaching, according to a press release. The scholarship goes hand-in-hand with Transition to Teaching. It awards graduate students at IU up to $10,000 and undergraduates around $9,150 to learn math instruction in the year-long Transition to Teaching program. For each year students are granted the scholarship, they must teach math for two years. \nLambdin prefers the programs already in place in universities over lowering standards for licensing. She also mentioned that higher “incentive” pay for teachers in high-need areas of study as well as high-need geographical locations might work.\nUltimately, though, Lambdin believes that the situation boils down to the treatment of teachers in general. \n“We need more respect for teachers overall – better pay, better working conditions – in many schools,” Lambdin said. “Conditions are less than ideal.”\nThough there are many ways to attack the problem, Barman has high hopes for the government-funded programs.\n“We need to think of creative ways (to get teachers),” he said. “Hopefully that can happen through government funding.”