For Charlie Borgert, substitute teaching is more than a way to make extra money. It’s a chance to connect with students without committing to a career in education.
“I’ve always avoided being a teacher - my parents are both in education,” said Borgert, an MSU family and community services senior. “As a sub you’re not really required to do lesson plans and grade papers - it’s not as serious as teaching. At the same time, you need to have the authority. You have a responsibility to control those kids.”
The lack of people willing to take on that responsibility motivated Rep. Jud Gilbert, R-Algonac, to introduce legislation that would lower the credit requirement from 90 college credit hours to 60. In 1995, the credit requirement was lowered from 120 to 90.
“In 29 states you only need a high school diploma to substitute teach,” Gilbert said. “If there’s no shortage, this won’t apply, but for those that have a shortage, we’re trying to help.”
Problems in his district with teachers having to double up classes or run back and forth from class to class led Gilbert’s urge to ease the shortage.
“Now, to be a sub all you need is three years of college, and none of that in special teaching education,” Gilbert said. “A lot of people make the issue of lowering standards, but once they moved away from requiring a full college degree, I don’t think there’s a lot to argue against lowering the standards.”
By leaving the option open for school districts to use younger students as substitutes, some feel the potential for a drop in quality is too great.
“We do not support any measure that lowers the quality of teachers for our students,” said Margaret Trimer-Hartley, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Education Association. “Support them, pay them better, and that will probably help eliminate the shortage.”
In Ingham County, substitutes are paid less than a quarter of what a full-time teacher earns. For a full day of teaching, a sub is paid $70. After 10 consecutive days, the rate increases to $80 a day. According to the American Federation of Teachers, the average daily rate for substitutes in the 2000-01 school year was $83 nationally. Metropolitan areas such as Detroit and Chicago pay substitutes more than rural areas.
Tom Parsons, a 2001 MSU graduate who has been substitute teaching since last fall, believes the quality of a substitute depends less on credits and more on personality.
“It’s more the screening of who they get rather than how long they’ve been in school,” he said. “If they’re responsible adults and can somewhat teach the subject, I don’t really think that credit hours make a difference.”
But some education students feel differently.
“Your first two years in college are just basic classes,” said Sylvia Hutchinson, an elementary education freshman. “You don’t really get classes that would help you until your junior year.”
Substitute teachers who are students or recent graduates are just as often noneducation majors. Brandon Barefield is a senior history major who has been substitute teaching for two months.
“I applied to the College of Ed but didn’t get accepted, so I decided to do this just to get experience and see if I liked it,” Barefield said. “I think subbing is what made up my mind so I was positive I wanted to be a teacher.”
To be a substitute teacher in Ingham County, anyone with at least 90 credits from a four-year college or university can apply at the Capital Area Substitute System. Subs attend a four-hour training session to prepare them for what they’ll be doing, but Barefield says there’s really no training like the experience itself.
“Some days you come home and doubt your existence,” said Barefield, who usually spends three days a week subbing. “Eighth-grade boys can do that to you.”
The bill to lower the credit requirement for substitute teachers was recently voted out of the House Committee on Education along party lines with Republicans voting for the measure and Democrats voting against it. The bill has now been sent to the House floor. Since schedules are made week to week, it is unknown when the bill will be taken up in the House.
Several legislators have been struggling with balancing the need for more substitutes with the demand for quality. Bills have been introduced that would count 90 credits at a community college as equal to those at a university and allow schools to contract with a private agency to find more substitutes.
“There’s a shortage of subs,” said Don Wortruba, spokesman for the Michigan Association of School Boards. “Sometimes people are removed because you want people who are good to be in with the kids, so by the end of the year it’s hard to find people to fill those positions.”
“If it’s really important to get a good day’s instruction out of every day of school, we’re going to have to pay for that,” Rep. John Hansen, D-Dexter, said. “If we paid (substitutes) more, we’d have people coming in from all over the place.”
Hansen, who is vice chairman of the House Committee on Education, voted against the bill because of the potential for unqualified substitutes to be teaching classes for extended periods of time.
“We could probably all live with a day, but it isn’t necessarily a day,” he said. “You could have people with 60 credit hours in auto body repair teaching a third-grade music class.”
As a former school principal and superintendent, Hansen realizes in many cases the money isn’t there. What’s important to some people isn’t as important to others, he explained.
“We only have one kind of money and we have to decide how we spend that,” he said.
The idea of “lowering” standards for substitutes, as those in opposition have called it, bothers many who feel it’s hypocritical to ask more from students and less from those who are teaching them.
“The more we submit that substitute teaching is just baby-sitting, the more we are seriously eroding the quality of the school experience,” said Cassandra Book, assistant dean of the MSU College of Education.
Book said substitute teaching needs to be held to a higher standard than other temporary work.
“School districts are desperate to find people who would meet the requirements, but I do think it’s dangerous to encourage people who are not well prepared,” she said.
Other options exist for filling the gaps when teachers need time off.
Louise Somalski, legislative coordinator for the Michigan Federation of Teachers and School Related Personnel, offered ideas used in districts that are hard-pressed for substitutes.
“At the high school level, where they have prep hour, teachers can sign up to sub for other teachers on their prep hour,” Somalski said. “Then you have someone in there who is a qualified teacher, knows the kids and the procedures, and knows the personality of the teacher they’re replacing.”
School districts have a general idea of how many substitutes they will need per day. So some smaller districts have hired permanent, qualified teachers who simply “float” on any given day.
“These are teachers who are on salary,” Somalski said. “They know the school and the teacher they’re replacing, and the teachers who leave know what kind of lesson plan they can leave.
“On the odd day when nobody’s gone, they’ll go into a classroom and do individualized instruction.”
Somalski said the federation does not support the bill because of the feeling that qualifications are being lowered.
“You are really knocking out another whole year of education that’s required,” Somalski said. “By lowering the education level, by and large you’re going to lower the amount of work that can be done and what kind of lesson plan you can leave. If they want to increase the pool, they need to improve the working conditions.”
Lindsay Frederickson can be reached at freder69@msu.edu.
