A program that allows college students to finish STEM degrees and earn teacher certification at the same time aims to address an ongoing shortage of educators in Alabama.
Uteach Alabama, part of a program based out of the University of Texas, allows college students to earn a STEM degree and a teacher certification at the same time. Lawrence Cooper, STEM program manager at the Alabama STEM Council, an executive branch organization, said the program will assist in lessening the STEM teacher shortage.
“Now they can do all that in the same four years, and it doesn’t cost them any more as part of their college education,” he said.
The program aims to address a major teaching shortage in Alabama and around the nation. A Brown University study estimated there were 36,000 teaching vacancies nationwide in August 2022. According to July 2022 report by the Alabama Commission on the Evaluation of Services, Alabama does not track the number of teaching vacancies, and the Alabama State Department of Education’s job board is not an accurate representation of vacancies.
(READ MORE: How to solve Alabama’s teacher shortage? Pay teachers more, officials say)
The commission also said education certificates from Alabama public colleges and universities have been declining in the past decade and a half. The number of certificates granted in elementary education, math, science, English and reading and social studies have all decreased since 2010.
Social studies certificates have increased since 2019. But in 2021, math and science produced the lowest number of certificates at 114 and 101, respectively, among those subjects. The subjects also had more nontraditional certificates than English and reading and social studies.
In Alabama, noncertified instructors can get emergency certificates if a district has a need. Alabama also offers some alternative pathways to certification.
Elementary education had the most nontraditional certificates (1,049) but also produced the most traditional certificates (1,279). Emergency certification grew 1,052% from 2010 to 2021.
The University of Alabama, Montevallo, Troy and Jacksonville State were the only colleges to produce more elementary teaching certificates in 2021 than in 2010.
Expanding program
Uteach is growing from one (University of Alabama at Birmingham) to seven sites (Athens State University, University of West Alabama, Alabama A&M, Auburn University and Auburn University at Montgomery), with money appropriated by the Legislature.
Applicants were asked to submit projections for how many students will graduate with certifications in the next couple of years, Cooper said. He said the state is estimated to gain 250-500 new STEM teachers.
“We know that there’s a national problem. There are not enough people going into the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, so the Uteach model helps to fill those gaps,” he said.
(READ MORE: 10 states mull cross-border rules to tackle teacher shortage)
At a July Alabama State Board of Education work session, State Superintendent Eric Mackey told reporters officials plan to review these sites.
The Legislature appropriated the money for the six sites as a kind of pilot program, he said.
Each site can receive up to $3 million over the course of five years, Cooper said.
“My suspicion is by this time next year, the Legislature will increase that, and we’ll probably add four or five more,” he said.
Cooper said there is not anything specifically tied to Uteach in keeping the graduates in the state, but he pointed to Alabama’s Teams program. In the Teams program, STEM teachers who work in hard-to-staff schools get an extra stipend.
Cooper said 70% of Uteach graduates work in a Title I school — those that receive more federal funding and have high percentages of poverty.
A report released by the Alabama Commission on the Evaluation of Services earlier this month said the Teams program has spent $98.5 million and produced 2,608 teachers.
The report said the program is hard to define as successful or not due to a lack of reporting and clear goals. It pointed to Alabama not effectively tracking teacher shortages as one of its hurdles and also recommended the process to become a Teams teacher be streamlined.
“Although the Teams program had a short window to be implemented and lacks defined measures of success, there is still time to take corrective action to ensure the intended outcomes are being accomplished,” the report said.
The report said the increase in pay was the main driving force behind teachers applying for the program, but the pay raise, and consequent disparity, caused morale issues among other teachers.
Amy Marlowe, the executive director of the Alabama Education Association, a teacher’s organization, said in phone interview that the historic pay raises passed by the Legislature last year led to the lowest teacher retirement rates in 10 years. She also said retired teachers have returned to the profession.
“We didn’t expect people who had been retired — some maybe 10, 15 years — saying, ‘You know what, I’ve got a chance here to permanently raise my retirement for the rest of my life, so I’m going to go back in and take advantage of it,'” she said.
In the 2022 legislative session, the Legislature approved teacher raises of at least 4%, with more experienced teachers getting as much as a 20% raise. This year, lawmakers approved a 2% pay raise.
Marlowe said her association is also advocating for raising the starting salary from $44,226 to $45,000 to encourage graduates to stay in Alabama.
“And I think that’s gonna have a lot to do with keeping them in state,” she said. “And then other than those factors, you know, it comes down to just the same socioeconomic factors that play into anyone moving into a state or out of state — if they’ve got the cost of living, what that looks like, the education opportunities, the business opportunities, all those things that go into an attractive community.”
Mackey said a financial incentive could be implemented in the future and referenced previous incentives. He said in the 1990s, the Legislature was trying to get teachers to use computers and said if teachers took three technology classes, their master’s degree would be paid for.
“You can entice people into what you want them to do if you offer the right incentives,” he said. “I guess that’s the thing: And, so, I think that we could see us in offering some incentives with these Uteach teachers to stay in the state.”
Read more at AlabamaReflector.com.