Teacher education enrollment has dropped and will continue to dip because of changes made to the teacher program’s admission policy, contributing to the current statewide teacher shortage.

From 1998 to 2000, teacher education programs nationwide, including Eastern, were forced to tighten their admission requirements by national criteria to allow more student teaching rather than classroom education, Doug Bower, associate dean of the College of Education and Professional Studies, said.

Eastern’s teacher education program raised admission standards to a 2.5 grade point average requirement and a formula based Test of Achievement and Proficiency (TAP) once the national criteria changed in 1998, Bower said.

Bower said, currently, 2,600 students are enrolled as teacher education majors, a significant drop from the 2,900 students enrolled in 1999.

And Bower said admission standards to the program will be tightened further next year, causing a projected bigger decrease in the amount of educators Eastern can produce.

For the fall semester 2002, he said students applying as a teacher education major must hold a 2.65 GPA. In addition, the state changed the entrance test from the TAP test to the Illinois Basic Skills test.

As the enrollment is decreasing, so to is the amount of teachers graduating from Eastern, the second largest producer of educators in Illinois.

In 2000, 674 students graduated with a teacher education major.

“I anticipate that for 2000-2001 it will be down closer to 600,” he said. “Our target is 600 to 625 students.”

But Bower said with a fewer amount of teacher education students, Eastern will be able to produce better prepared teachers.

If there are less students there will be more time for “intensive experiences” and school-based programs that are based upon knowledge, skills and dispositions, he said.

“That’s still a solid number of completers,” he said, referring to the decreased enrollment.

“Trying to balance the quality and numbers is the issue,” Bower said.

With fewer students in the program, it allows for more student teaching because of the limitations on student teachers in classrooms in the Charleston area.

“Schools can only take in so many,” Bower said. “Our goal is not only to produce numbers but to produce the quality of teachers.”

More than 42,000 Illinois public schools dealt with a state-wide teacher shortage at the start of the 2001-2002 school year. Out of 2,225 unfilled teaching positions, half of those vacancies were in the Chicago public schools, 28 percent were in suburban districts and 22 percent were spread out state-wide, a Board of Education press release said in January.

Illinois public schools will have to hire 55,000 teachers, 33,000 of which will be first-time teachers in the next four years.

The teacher shortage not only surrounds the supply of teachers, but the quality of teachers filling positions. The press release said unless a supply unexpectedly increases there will not be enough high-quality teachers to fit demand.

“We do not want our schools to have to ‘settle’ for a teacher who is only partly qualified or who otherwise might not be the best match for a position just because no one else is available,” State Superintendent of Education Ernest Wish said in the press release.

In the past, Eastern’s admission standards for the teacher education program were a 2.5 GPA and passing the TAP test, which admitted more students than the current standard, allowing less time for the goal of more student teaching, Bower said.

“At that time, the program was too big to do everything we wanted to (do),” Bower said.

The new admissions standard for fall semester 2002 is part of the goal to produce quality teachers not just quantity, Bower said.

“It’s also an issue of students having the skills to be successful,” he said. “We want to produce the very, very best teachers for the state.”

However, because of the slow economy, Bower is still confident more students will choose a teacher education major and the numbers will stay strong.

“Teacher education is cyclical,” he said. “They know there’s a need.”

Bower also said Eastern is trying to introduce and educate students for the shortage areas in teacher specialties, such as special education, for post-graduation.

“We’re trying to inform students of the high-need areas,” he said.

The College of Education and Professional Studies’ goal is to accept 600 to 625 students to the program next fall, but there is not a quota system and Bower said the program will be expanded to let more students in if there is a need.