The state has spent more than $20 million in the past decade to develop 1,000 teachers who would work in distressed public schools and boost the number of minority educators in Illinois.
But since the Grow Your Own Teacher program was launched in January 2005 it has produced just 102 college graduates, and only about 80 of those are teaching.
Hundreds of would-be teachers dropped out after borrowing from the program for college tuition, fees and books, and they didn’t have to repay the loans under rules laid out by the state, officials said. Millions of dollars went to colleges and community groups tapped as program administrators, in some cases eclipsing money spent on the teacher candidates, state financial records show.
Teachers who launched their careers through the program say it changed their lives, and lawmakers who support it stress the importance of more minority teachers in a state with one of the biggest gaps in the country between the percentage of minority students and the percentage of minority teachers.
But critics such as state Sen. Matt Murphy, R-Palatine, say Grow Your Own Teacher “hasn’t worked and is terribly inefficient.”
“It is an example of politics still trumping merit, in terms of whether a program warrants continued funding,” Murphy said. “And again, the goal may be laudable, but the implementation of this program has not produced a return on investments that is fair to taxpayers.”
The Grow Your Own Teacher program was designed to help parents, community leaders and nonteaching school staffers become teachers willing to work at public schools in low-income areas.
The program has experienced a host of challenges that have kept it from achieving its initial mission. A Tribune review of more than 1,000 pages of state records shows:
*Organizers recruited candidates who couldn’t pass the basic skills test that is usually required to enter colleges of education. One program coordinator said during a 2009-10 evaluation of the program, “It was just like a free-for-all! Whoever wanted to be a candidate, OK. Come and be a candidate.”
*Many of the 378 candidates who dropped out were “counseled out” because of poor academic performance, illness, family and work issues, failure to follow program rules and other reasons. Those who left for those reasons could have their loans forgiven under the rules of the program. Of those 378 dropouts, 275 left after receiving more than $1,000 in loans, records show.
*Financial audits show administrative costs often ate up more than 40 percent of the grant money given to the networks of community groups and colleges running the program, with jobs created for coordinators, organizers, academic advisers, fiscal support staff and other roles.
The original goal laid out in legislation was to develop 1,000 teachers by 2016, but there were early warning signs about the program’s ability to reach it. Researchers in 2009 said, “It does not appear that the initiative is on track to meet the 2016 goal.”
Last spring, lawmakers deleted the 1,000-teacher goal from the legislation creating the program.
“It was an unrealistic goal for a lot of different reasons,” said Jonathan Lackland, a deputy director at the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which has been overseeing the program since 2010-11. He cited cuts in funding over the years as well as the challenges facing nontraditional adult students trying to become teachers.
Lawmakers have repeatedly earmarked money for the program over the decade over the objections of colleagues who argued that the spending was politically driven. In the state House, Rep. Robert Pritchard, R-Hinckley, said the program survives with support from Democratic members of the black and Latino caucuses in the General Assembly.
“The Democrats have been in the majority. The Democrats have to have the African-American and Latino caucuses to get their agenda done. So they give them carrots,” said Pritchard, who serves on appropriations committees for K-12 and higher education.
Lawmakers allocated $1.5 million to the program this school year, and advocates expect another vote in the spring on money for 2015-16.
Lackland and other supporters say the Grow Your Own Teacher program is moving past initial problems, tightening program rules and improving the candidate pool. While initially aimed at those with high school diplomas or the equivalent, the program now is able to recruit candidates who already have bachelor’s degrees, which cuts down on the number of classes needed to become a teacher.
“It is our job to be good stewards of taxpayer money,” said Alan Phillips, the higher education agency’s head of planning and budgeting. “My goal is to procure as many graduates as we possibly can and make the program more efficient and more effective.”
Since the program began, 665 candidates have participated. In addition to those who received degrees, 140 are working toward getting their degrees. Chicago Public Schools officials say they’ve hired roughly 70 of the graduates in the last two school years, though they did not specify where they’re teaching or whether they’re still employed.
Advocates say Grow Your Own Teacher addresses a crucial need. State data show 83.6 percent of Illinois teachers are white, while 6.6 percent are black and 3.6 percent Latino. Last year, the percentage of minority students surpassed whites for the first time, accounting for 50.1 percent of student enrollment.
Nancy Aardema, executive director of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association in Chicago, cited a “deep need for teachers of color” as one of the key reasons for creating Grow Your Own Teacher. Aardema’s group ranks among the program’s largest grant recipients, getting more than $1 million in the last five years.
Several Logan Square Neighborhood Association staff members became teacher candidates, records show. Aardema said they were chosen because they wanted to be teachers and already were assuming community leadership roles.
The association has over the years improved its candidate recruitment efforts, she said, and now requires people to take some college classes before applying to the program. The vast majority of the program’s candidates have been black or Latino.
Grow Your Own Teacher has had success stories. In Berwyn’s Irving Elementary School, bilingual teacher Francisco Castellon, 40, is in his second year of teaching after studying for five years through the program. He maintained a grueling schedule, working as a school janitor in Chicago while taking classes at Northeastern Illinois University. He graduated in 2013.
“It was my passion. I wanted to work with students. I wanted to be a teacher,” said Castellon, who uses English and Spanish interchangeably to help his second-graders with reading and vocabulary lessons.
Some colleagues in the program lasted only two semesters, he said. “They thought it was something easy.”
At a recent Grow Your Own Teacher conference in Chicago, downstate graduate Travis Clayton said many candidates are maintaining jobs, homes and families. That can make it hard to quickly earn a teaching degree, he said, though the program has been criticized for its dropout rate.
“We are reaching out to try and draw the gifted and talented from among these communities who need our services most,” Clayton said. “And to get those people into the program, you have to bear in mind that they’re facing the same challenges that all of their (future) students … are facing. And for that reason, they need the extra support.”
State Sen. Dan Kotowski, D-Park Ridge, a high-ranking member of the Senate’s appropriations committees, said more time is needed for the program’s goals to be achieved.
“Expecting overnight success is unrealistic because the challenges in certain communities that are impacted by crime and violence are so entrenched,” Kotowski said. “They’re so deep. We need time for these programs to be successful and to achieve their goals.”
Since 2005-06, the General Assembly has earmarked about $23 million for the program, though not all of it has been spent. Through 2013-14, about $1.8 million was not used, according to state officials.
Some program administrators have struggled to spend their grant money.
For example, two Chicago community groups that partnered with Northeastern Illinois University to administer program funds were given roughly $157,000 to spend on student tuition and books during 2013-14. The groups wound up spending roughly $78,000 on those expenses. So both groups got state permission to use leftover tuition money to buy computers, spending about $67,000 on high-end laptops.
“I will say that if we err anywhere in the writing of grants, we err on the side of having more money in tuition than we may need to have to cover candidates who want to take more credits than the average,” said Maureen Gillette, dean of Northeastern’s College of Education.
The laptops are university property, Gillette said, but must be used solely by program students and staff since they were bought with program grant money.
The Illinois State Board of Education administered the program for its first five years, during which annual funding more than doubled to exceed $3 million. The program then switched hands amid concerns about its effectiveness.
ISBE spokeswoman Mary Fergus said the agency considered the program to be “more like a scholarship program and opportunity for people to go to college.” In addition, she said, “We were hearing from legislators that the cost benefit of this program was less than ideal.”
Legislative appropriations began to shrink after the higher education board inherited the program, to a low of $1 million in the 2012-13 budget year. Supporters say the decline in funding hurt the program, but researchers cited other problems early on, such as inconsistent candidate selection guidelines and already-climbing dropout rates.
In addition to forgiving loans for those counseled out of the program, loan repayments are waived for candidates who complete five years of teaching in a hard-to-staff school. Loan repayments also can be reduced for those who work a lesser amount of time.
Martha Damian, an eighth-grade math teacher at Kerr Middle School in Blue Island, has nearly reached the five-year benchmark. She says the program transformed her from a mom who was active at her child’s school to a teacher at the head of a classroom who is licensed in math, elementary and bilingual education in Spanish.
Damian had some prior college credits and was able to pass the basic skills test for teachers and required education courses. She graduated from Governors State University with a bachelor’s degree in winter 2009.
Along the way, she felt supported and connected to colleagues in the program.
“Many of the candidates were working moms, taking care of children and trying to be students,” she said. “It was good to have the support system.”
Overall, Damian said, “I felt the program was wonderful.”
