Steering Committee

The Steering Committee is composed of high school principals and assistant principals, area vocational center directors and CTE department chairpersons.  The Steering Committee meets four times per year.

Information distributed during the September 14, 2017 meeting:

Critical Teacher Shortage – new option for securing teachers (Harley Hepner, Illinois State Board of Education, College and Career Readiness)

As you know, the current options for securing a CTE teacher are typically one of two routes:  1) the PEL (graduate from a university program)  or  2) the ELS CTE/CTEP (various forms of a provisional based on industry experience).  I recently learned of a new option/tool as you work in getting teachers into a classrooms in the short term.  I know you work with your programs in trying to find good options for filling classrooms so I thought I would share this with you that recently went into effect.

 

There is an ability to apply for a short term approval.  In talking to licensure, my understanding is the following:

1. To be eligible, a person must have a current PEL for teaching (not admin), but can be in any grade range (elementary, middle, high, etc.).  This is only available to educators who hold a PEL. They cannot apply for this approval if they have an ELS-PEDU (provisional license – applied for PEL, but work on deficiencies) or an ELS-TBE (transitional bilingual).
2. He/she can apply (for an ‘approval’) on ELIS for a short term approval in any other endorsement area (except Special Ed and Drivers Ed) as long as they meet:
   1. 9 credit hours in a content area   OR
   2. Pass the content test for a specified area
   3. This approval is good for three years (however initially it may be a bit longer). At the end of three years, the approval ends with no ability to extend.  The idea is for this person to work on acquiring their teaching license in the appropriate approval area during this time.

 

The ‘Approval’ cost is $50.  If employment is pending, then the ROE can submit a RUSH; otherwise the submitted application will be in the queue to be reviewed.

 

Here is a document that discusses this and below is the meat of the issue.

 

In Part 25, ISBE has modified the current rules on short term assignments. Section 25.430 states that a teacher with nine credit hours in a content area may teach in that content area and has three years to complete the coursework requirements for the endorsement. The emergency rules for this Section include test only (and no coursework) for the purposes of assignability and state that an individual has three years to complete the requirements for the endorsement. In order to ensure that districts have the greatest flexibility, districts can either use the nine hour requirement or successful completion of an appropriate content test.

Special Education and those areas which do not currently have an available test are outside the scope of the emergency rulemaking. Special Education already has a process for short term approval and other areas such as Driver’s Education, ESL and computer applications do not currently have a content exam.

 

Here is the ISBE document on the website that addressed this ‘Approval’.  Go to Page 26 and click on the highlighted portion below. I believe there may be an error on the document so the correct guidance should be:   “This is only available to educators who hold a PEL. They cannot apply for this approval if they have an ELS-PEDU (provisional license – applied for PEL, but work on deficiencies) or an ELS-TBE (transitional bilingual).”