Enrollment for education programs drop nationwide

In the original version of this article, The Daily News used a set of incorrect numbers that the newspaper received for a November 2014 article. These numbers were present in the "Enrollment by year at Ball State's Teachers College" information box. The numbers have been corrected with accurate information.

Some days, Brittany Mazzola, a Ball State alumna, wants to quit teaching and become a lawyer like her grandmother wanted her to be. Other days, she wouldn’t change what she does for anything.

Mazzola is a journalism teacher at Broad Ripple High School in Indianapolis and has taught there for three years.

“Anyone who wants to be a teacher now, other teachers are like ‘Oh my god no, what are you thinking? Go find another job.’ It's not that we don’t love the job, it’s that we wouldn’t wish this on other people," she said. "You’ve got to really want it to be a teacher right now.”

After becoming a teacher, Mazzola said the profession wasn’t what she thought it was going to be when she was in college.

“People tell you teachers don’t make any money, and that’s true,” Mazzola said. “The money is really low, but it’s still a good profession. A lot of people get upset because we have to do evaluations and professional development, but it’s all to make us more accountable. The days of reading a newspaper at your desk are long gone.”

Students simply aren’t going into education as much as they were in the past.

Enrollment in Ball State's teacher education program has dropped 15 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to the Office of Institutional Effectiveness.

From 2010 to 2013, there was a 28 percent drop in Indiana teacher education programs overall, according to the Title II Higher Education Act. That's much higher than the national drop of 12 percent from 2010-2014.

Gerardo Gonzalez, the dean of Indiana University’s School of Education, said that negative comments about teachers from the press, policy makers and other constituents are some of the things that have created a negative environment in schools.

“It’s very common to pick up a paper and there’ll be some critical comments about how teachers are not performing and how they’re not well prepared,” Gonzalez said. “So I think the negative climate that’s out there is discouraging young people who might be thinking about teaching from going into teaching, especially when they have a lot of other options.”

However, Mazzola thought it was the teachers themselves who were creating the bad environment about the profession.

“We bash the salary, the accountability, and I think we’re scaring the younger people off of it,” she said. “I would never tell an 18-year-old to be a teacher right now.”

Robert Floden, co-director of the education policy center at Michigan State University, said a part of the enrollment drop could be attributed to the increased public pressure on teachers.

“There’s been some bad press about teachers, trying to give them responsibility for what is seen as the inadequate performance of American schools,” Floden said. “They are all for learning and helping kids learn, but there’s being a greater emphasis put on [student] testing, which is a deterrent. There’s increased scrutiny for things they feel like they don’t have control over.”

Derrick Stalbaum, a 2012 Ball State alumnus and math teacher and an instructional coach at Rensselaer Central Middle School, said he didn’t realize how much involvement politics had in the profession.

“I knew about state standards and I knew there were things we had to cover by state statute, but what I didn’t realize that there was going to be [is] this constant fear of student performance on standardized tests,” Stalbaum said.

Stalbaum said his school gets cuts on their funding, and potentially staff members, depending on how they do on tests.

“There’s a lot of things that influence standard scores students get,” he said. “Teachers haven’t been getting large raises, but now they might get no raise at all.”

Gonzalez said knowing that laws can affect a teacher’s pay is discouraging to those looking to go into teaching.

Meghan Cook, a freshman secondary math education major, said one of the things that scares her about the future is that teachers are starting to get paid based off of test scores.

“It shows how corrupt it is that they’re paying teachers off test scores when a teacher can only do so much,” Cook said. “If the student doesn’t want to learn then they’re not going to perform well on tests. It’s scary that your students could affect your salary and if you get a job or not.”

She said some of her education professors at Ball State and in high school brought up the lack of money that teachers make, and are trying to discourage people from going into teaching unless they really love it.

“If you don’t love education going into it, you’re not going to be happy later,” Cook said.

Indiana has cut teachers’ salaries 10 percent from the 1999-00 school year to the 2012-13 school year, the second-highest pay cut in the country according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“They’re [legislators] not making a commitment or investment in recruiting the best and brightest and rewarding and supporting them with salaries that are measured with other professions or teachers in other places,” Gonzalez said. “It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the smart kids that we want and need that had the potential to go into teaching are choosing other careers.”

Mazzola said she hasn’t gotten a raise since she started working at Broad Ripple, but she will get a stipend every so often.

When she was in college, she took out loans whenever she needed to, and ended up with $40,000 in loan debt. While she is able to make monthly payments, she said some of her friends are not able to.

“It depends on what you own,” Mazzola said. “My rent isn’t too expensive … half of [my paycheck] goes to rent, then I start looking at how much I can pay off student loans. I can make it work because I don’t mess with luxuries.”

Gonzalez said another reason enrollment could be dropping is because of alternative ways to become a teacher.

With the career specialist permit, approved by the Indiana State Board of Education last year, high schools can hire teachers from a non-traditional teaching background.

This permit differs from a teaching degree in that it requires 6,000 hours of work experience in a related field and a bachelor’s degree, said Bob Guffin, executive director of the Indiana State Board of Education, in 2014.

“If you don’t go [through a traditional program], you can be licensed in a less rigorous way, which essentially means that you’re lowering standards,” Gonzalez said. “You have these young bright kids who want to go into teaching being told this is a noble profession, but we’re lowering the standards for people to be able to get into teaching.”

He said this discourages students who could meet the higher standards, and is lowering standards for those who aren’t willing to put in the work to become a teacher.

“The critics saying we need all these policies and to tighten up evaluations and create more alternative ways are the same people who say we need the best and brightest in the profession,” Gonzalez said.

Mazzola said teaching currently is a stressful job, and the only way to make it into teaching is to have 100 percent heart for it. She said while the job might be hard at times, when it really comes down to it, she loves it.

“There are days that are so fulfilling,” she said. “You know that you’re needed and you know you’re giving the kids love and affection and you’re teaching the kids something they don’t know. [In college], they say you’ll be influential… but when you work in a high-needs urban school, it’s so fulfilling. It’s way more fulfilling than anything else.”

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