Earlier this spring, the Ohio Department of Education published in-depth data insights into Ohio’s teacher workforce. The data offered some tantalizing clues about teacher shortages, including that Ohio has seen a troublesome decline of newly licensed teachers statewide at the same time that Baby Boomers are retiring. Anecdotal evidence from districts already pointed to hiring difficulties and worrisome teacher pipeline shortfalls. But confirmation via state data that fewer young people are entering the profession, that teacher attrition rates have risen, and that troubling shortages exist in specific grades and subject areas hammered home the need for policymakers to do something.
Many advocates—including Fordham—hoped that state legislators would take advantage of the budget cycle to address teacher pipeline issues. Fortunately, they did. Here’s an overview of the four ways the state budget aims to bolster Ohio’s teacher workforce.
1. Improving teacher pay
In school districts, teacher salaries are determined via negotiations between school boards and the teachers union. This makes it difficult for state policymakers to directly influence teacher pay. But there are a few steps that lawmakers can take to encourage districts to raise salaries, and they took several of them in this year’s budget.
First, they increased the amount of state aid that districts (and charter schools) receive by 12 percent from FY 2023 to FY 2025. This overall increase in state funding could help schools raise teacher pay.
Second, lawmakers boosted the state-mandated minimum starting salary amount for first-year teachers. State law requires districts to adopt teacher salary schedules that increase pay based on years of service and training. Although exact amounts are decided by districts and vary from place to place, lawmakers set baseline amounts that all districts must meet. The state will officially increase the first-year minimum teacher salary from $30,000 to $35,000, and will adjust its minimum salary schedule for teachers with more experience in accordance with the change. This bump will impact a relatively small number of teachers—just 3,400 are currently under the new state minimums—but ensuring a higher floor could push salaries upward in some districts.
Third, increases in charter school funding should lead to increased salaries for charter school teachers. Despite being public schools that outperform comparable districts on state tests, charters have long been underfunded. Charters in Ohio’s largest cities receive approximately 75 cents on the dollar compared to districts. This funding shortfall prevents charters from paying their teachers competitive salaries, making recruitment and retention efforts difficult. This year’s budget should ease the pain, as lawmakers boosted charter funding via the Quality Community School Support Fund, a brand-new equity supplement, and increased facilities funding. Taken together, these increases (along with higher amounts in foundation aid) mean that the average high-quality charter school will receive roughly $4,000 more per student in FY 2025. That’s a huge boost, and it’s likely that charters will use a good portion of those funds to increase pay for the teachers who are the backbone of their success.
2. Expanding the pool of substitute teachers
Last year, a piece in The Atlantic argued that America is desperate for substitute teachers. A few months later, NPR covered a story about schools in Illinois that were holding one-day trainings just to get short-term subs into classrooms. Ohio isn’t immune to these struggles. In fact, the Buckeye State’s most significant teacher shortage might actually be with substitutes, not full-time staff. Ohio lawmakers used the budget to address the substitute teacher shortage in two ways.
First, the state board of education has been tasked with establishing a new pre-service teacher permit. Teacher candidates enrolled in Ohio’s educator preparation programs will be required to obtain this three-year permit before they can participate in student teaching or other training experiences involving students. The permit application process requires pre-service teachers to submit to a criminal records check, which the Department of Education and Workforce will then use to enroll the applicant into the fingerprint database. But the permits can be used for more than just clearing candidates for student teaching. Districts and schools can also employ anyone who holds a permit as a substitute teacher, and like traditional substitutes, permit-holders can be paid for their work. As I argued in my initial analysis of the proposal, this policy has the potential to be a win for everyone. Districts, many of which already have relationships with teacher preparation programs thanks to student teaching requirements, can immediately bolster their substitute teacher pipelines. Pre-service teachers can benefit from additional classroom teaching experience and income. And students can benefit from having a substitute teacher who is familiar with state standards, curricula, and up-to-date instructional strategies.
Second, the legislation makes permanent a pandemic-era provision aimed at expanding the substitute teacher pool by allowing schools to hire substitutes who do not hold a post-secondary degree, so long as they also meet other criteria, like passing a background check. The budget also calls for the creation of a one-year temporary substitute teaching license for these individuals, and requires the state board to establish a procedure for renewing that license.
3. Investing in Grow Your Own programs
Grow Your Own (GYO) programs are so named because they focus teacher recruitment efforts on people living in local communities: paraprofessionals and substitute teachers who already work in schools, college graduates who are looking to change careers, and high school students who are interested in education as a future career. Among their many potential benefits, GYO programs can help bolster teacher pipelines by recruiting and training more educators, especially in hard-to-staff subjects or grade levels and rural communities.
Ohio has already dipped its toes in the GYO program pool. But as I argued earlier this year, state leaders can and should be doing more. Fortunately, lawmakers incorporated important provisions from House Bill 667 (which was unveiled last spring but languished in committee) into the budget. Finalized budget language establishes the Grow Your Own Teacher Program, under which eligible high school seniors and certain employees, who commit to teaching in a qualifying school for at least four years after graduating from a teacher training program, can be awarded scholarships of up to $7,500 for up to four years. The bill appropriates $5 million in FY 2024 and $10 million in FY 2025. Assuming every applicant receives the maximum scholarship amount, the program could help pay training costs for over 600 teachers in its first year and double the following year.
4. Making teacher licensure more flexible
Although teacher licensure plays an important gatekeeping role, state licensing policies can also be needlessly complicated and end up keeping good teachers out of classrooms. State lawmakers took a crack at streamlining a few of Ohio’s teacher licensure policies in the following ways:
- Licensure grade bands. Under previous state law, Ohio educators were required to obtain a license to teach in one of three grade bands: pre-K–5, 4–9, and 9–12. In an effort to provide schools with more flexibility, the budget reduces the grade bands from three to two: one for grades pre-K–8 and a second for grades 6–12. The budget also permits public schools to allow educators to teach up to two grade levels outside the grade band designated on their license for up to two years at a time. Relaxing the grade band rules will allow school leaders to more easily deploy teachers to meet classroom needs if they face a shortage in a certain grade.
- Licensure for out-of-state teachers. State law allows out-of-state teachers to obtain an Ohio teaching license if they meet certain criteria. But several of these criteria are unnecessarily burdensome. For example, out-of-state teachers interested in obtaining one of the licenses for early- and middle-childhood grades, as well as those who wish to work as an intervention specialist, have traditionally been required to pass Ohio’s Foundations of Reading exam. They’re also required to complete at least six of the state’s required twelve hours of coursework in the teaching of reading through an accredited college or university before they can be issued a license, and they have to complete the remaining six hours before they can advance or renew that license. Teachers can apply undergraduate coursework toward this requirement. But educators who come from states that don’t emphasize early literacy coursework might not have all the credit hours they need—in which case they would have to pay out of pocket to complete them if they want to teach long-term in Ohio’s schools. The budget addresses this roadblock by exempting teachers who are applying for a one-year nonrenewable out-of-state license and have passed Ohio’s Foundations of Reading exam on the first try from completing at least six of the twelve hours of coursework. There are still several reciprocity issues that were left unaddressed by the legislature (see here for our recommendations), but this is a good start.
- Alternative licensure. Ohio offers two licenses for novice teachers: a resident educator license, which is available for teachers trained in traditional teacher-preparation programs housed at colleges or universities, and the alternative resident educator license, which is available for nontraditional candidates. In the past, both licenses required teachers to complete the Ohio teacher residency program—a four-year, entry-level program that offers mentoring from experienced teachers and requires candidates to pass a performance-based exam—before they move on to a professional license. But in 2021, Governor DeWine signed legislation that reduced the duration of the resident educator license and the residency program from four years to two. This year’s budget made the same change for the alternative resident educator license. This means that nontraditional candidates, like their traditionally-trained peers, only have to teach under their initial license for two years before being permitted to move on to a professional license. The budget also makes the alternative resident educator license renewable without requiring teachers to advance to a professional license to keep teaching (which wasn’t previously the case), and removes a burdensome mandate that required teachers with an alternative resident license to complete at least twelve additional hours of college coursework just to maintain their license. These are hugely important changes that will eliminate barriers for nontraditional candidates and potentially expand the teacher pipeline as a result.
***
Teacher shortages are complex. Their size and scope—and even their very existence—varies widely across Ohio. The policy changes summarized above won’t address every single issue that schools have faced over the last several years, but they are certainly a promising start for efforts to bolster Ohio’s teacher pipeline.
