By Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner | Wirepoints
Illinois education officials continuously claim there’s a teacher shortage across the state. The state board of education’s most recent “Educator Shortage Report” says “4,096 teaching positions, 1,095 school support personnel, 162 administrator positions and 2,755 paraprofessional positions” remain unfilled. It also says “91% of school leaders indicated a minor, serious or very serious problem with teacher shortages.”
Yet data from the state’s own Illinois Report Card shows that hiring at schools has been booming over the last 25 years, especially when you consider that student enrollment has been shrinking at the same time.
A Wirepoints analysis of public school data shows staffing statewide of teachers, other certified staff and administrators has jumped by 75,000 – up 55% – since 1998.* Teachers are up by 18,000. Other Certified Staff, among them special ed, bilingual instructors and reading specialists, has jumped by 54,000. And the number of administrators is up by more than 5,000, or 70%.
All that growth has happened despite the fact that enrollment at public schools across the state has fallen by nearly 100,000 during that 25-year period.
Certainly, some districts may be suffering a general staff shortage or problems with specific positions, like in ESL or Special Ed. And small, rural districts may struggle to find educators in more specialized subjects. But the simple fact is that Illinois has far more educators and far fewer students today than it did 25 years ago.
Students per staff details
Students per teacher
The net effect of Illinois’ education hiring and student shrinkage is that there are now far fewer students for every teacher in Illinois compared to 25 years ago. Today there are just 13.8 students for every teacher vs. 16.7 in 1998, an
Students per other certified staff
Other Certified Educational Staff – which excludes teachers – experienced the largest hiring boom among educators, by far. Today there are just 26 students for every non-teacher staff vs. 144 in 1998, an improvement of 77%.
Combine teachers with other staff and it turns out classroom personnel have improved to 9.0 students per staff member, down from 14.6 in 1998, an overall improvement of 38%.
Fewer students per educator is a good thing, everything else equal. But fewer students per administrator is a bad thing. It reflects an increase in bureaucratic bloat that Illinoisans end up paying for, in part, via the nation’s highest property taxes.
Read on here.
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