A pair of competing bills in the House would, for the first time in Illinois, other state-funded stipends for student teachers.
Supporters of the idea say it’s needed to ease some of the financial burden on teachers-in-training, which some argue is one source of the state’s teacher shortage.
Student teaching typically involves a full semester of on-the-job training in a classroom under the supervision of a licensed cooperating teacher. But while student teachers work similar hours as a full-time professional teacher, they are not paid for their labor and, in fact, have to pay full tuition and fees at their college or university to get credit for the experience.
Some districts discourage student teachers from working outside jobs, although many say that’s the only way they can make ends meet.
Both bills call for paying stipends of $10,000 for a semester, the rough equivalent of $15 per-hour for 40 hours per week – even though most student teachers say they work much more than that. Assuming an average of 5,400 student teachers per year, that would work out to $54 million in state funding needed to support the program.
The major difference between the two bills is how the program would work in years when lawmakers don’t fully fund the program.
House Bill 4652, by Rep. Barbara Hernandez, D-Aurora, does not account for underfunding the program. An initiative of the Illinois Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, it assumes lawmakers would fully fund the stipends each year.
“You all have constituent groups. Our constituency group is our aspiring educators, and they have said they want everyone to be paid for student teaching,” IEA lobbyist Unique Mickens told a House committee Wednesday.
House Bill 5414, an initiative of the advocacy group Advance Illinois, calls for paying the same $10,000 stipend to student teachers, plus another $1,500 to cooperating teachers, raising its total price tag to an estimated $67 million per year. But in years of underfunding, it would prioritize recipients on the basis of financial need, then focus on hard-to-bill subjects and areas of the state with the highest teacher vacancy rates.
Both bills are pending in the House Higher Education Committee
