Over this past winter, Kankakee School District superintendent Teresa Lance met with every one of their nearly 80 uncertified instructors and gave them a choice:
“One, they can decide to go back to school," she said, "or two, they can move into a substitute position for the 2025-26 school year, but I was going to be recommending their termination for the upcoming school year if they opted not to go back to school to get their license."
She says the conversations were hard. Dozens agreed to get their license. Dozens of others were dismissed. This was Lance’s first year as the superintendent.
A teacher is considered “out of field” when they’re teaching a grade level or subject that they’re not licensed by the state to teach. In Illinois, 4 percent of all teachers are “out of field.” In Kankakee, it ballooned all the way to 37 percent.
But how did Kankakee get to the point where their percentage of uncertified teachers was nine times the state average?
Beth Anderson says it began about a decade ago. She’s a special education teacher at the district and head of the teachers union. She says staff knew the status quo couldn’t continue.
“It felt like, to us, that we were just pushing students through," she said, "so, giving the gentleman's F, the D-, and we wanted to address that."
They wanted to be bold; to find the cutting edge of education to help them thrive.
“So," said Anderson, "the state of Illinois offered the pilot program."
The pilot was for Competency-Based Education or CBE. Anderson says it’s a model where students can prove their knowledge outside of traditional coursework, integrate real-world issues, and -- crucially -- where schools can hire people with industry experience to teach.
“For example, we have health clinics in our high school," said the union president, "and the doctor that served that clinic taught biology in the high school."
CBE started slowly, just with high school freshmen, then rolled up to sophomores the next year, and so on. It wasn’t meant to be implemented at lower levels. In the first few years, they only hired a few non-certified instructors, so it was easier for experienced teachers to mentor them as they settled into the classroom.
“I think that gave administrators and community members the impression that this was a really good thing," she said, "that we could train people on the job, that it would work, and it would be another opportunity to also address the teacher shortage."
90 percent of their students are considered low-income. Low-income districts like Kankakee tend to have the highest teacher vacancy rates. And, partially because of those shortages, Lance says they started to get a little too loose with their CBE waiver.
“Unfortunately," said the superintendent, "we used the teacher shortage, the national teacher shortage, as, in my opinion, a crutch to continue to hire non-licensed instructors."
Anderson agrees that, when filling positions got tough, it became a path of least resistance. She says, at the same time, several administrators left, which led to fewer professional development opportunities for the instructors, fewer mentorships, and less oversight to monitor how well Competency-Based Education was even working.
The number of non-certified teachers expanded at the high school and even started dripping down to the lower-level schools and roles where instructors were never supposed to be. Lance says they were in pretty much every content area, but they had the most in math, science, and special education.
“What I found out from the state," she said, "is that we never should have had instructors in special education."
As the number of instructors grew, Anderson says it started a downward spiral.
“We started to have so many instructors," she said, "and a system that just could not support their needs."
It caused conflicts between licensed and non-licensed teachers.
“It did become a very heavy lift for the veteran teachers, or teachers that were licensed," she said, "because there was not enough support to lift and educate and provide professional development or just emotional support for the instructors."
Anderson says there was a mass exodus of teachers, which made it even tougher for the remaining teachers and instructors.
"It's very difficult to watch someone flounder, to watch the students suffer because they don't have a teacher that can meet their needs," she said. "The whole culture just turned very difficult, stressful.”
Students were struggling academically. Lance says it was the first thing on her mind when she took the superintendent job last year.
“When I arrived, I actually said ‘we have to have licensed teachers in front of students,'" said Lance. "I wasn't suggesting that not having licensed teachers was the only reason our students weren't performing well on state assessments, but I was absolutely saying that was a contributing factor.”
They’ve spent the past year reversing course. Lance says the goal is to have a fully-licensed teacher in every Kankakee classroom by 2027. To do that, they’re on an aggressive recruiting campaign. They’re staffing job fairs, hiring international teachers, and partnering with universities to bring in student teachers they hope will stay on after graduation.
And, obviously, they’re encouraging their unlicensed teachers to get licensed. Lance says the state recently awarded the district a Teacher Vacancy Grant to help.
“We will reimburse you up to a certain dollar amount," she said, "for each course that you completed towards your licensure."
Lakitta Foster is one of the instructors earning her teaching credential. She’s been teaching 6th grade at Kankakee’s Kennedy Middle Grade School for the past two years.
Foster may not have the right credential, but she came into the classroom with experience.
“I was a preschool teacher for six years," said the instructor, "and my background was already in education."
She was recently accepted into the Golden Apple “accelerators” program, which helps career changers get licensed to teach in specific, targeted schools. She’ll be taking classes for the next year before she earns her credential.
“When school starts back for us, that's when we actually go into student teaching," she said. "But since I'm already teaching my own classroom, they’ll just set me up with a mentor from the program that comes in and checks on me.”
Even though Foster already has a degree and experience in education, the jump from preschool to middle school is still really hard. It’s a vastly different age group and skill set.
She remembers her first few weeks, scrambling to understand the curriculum.
“I started to feel more comfortable," she said, "because I took the time myself to bring it home with me and look it over and review, take out notes for myself and my students."
Now that Foster feels secure in what she’s teaching, she can focus more on building meaningful relationships with her students.
“We are both learning from each other," she said. "So, it brings me joy to see that I actually made a difference or touched as many students as I could each year.”
Union president Beth Anderson says Foster’s story is familiar. She says plenty of their instructors had classroom experience and did great work.
“We do have some licensed teachers who are teaching outside of their license," she said. "So, they might have taught sixth grade for 20 years in the district, and now they're teaching eighth grade math.”
Anderson says that all of the instructors had to have at least a substitute teaching license. They were also supposed to have a bachelor’s degree in a related field but again, over the past few years, that wasn’t always carried out in the right way.
As those problems persisted, she says they reported concerns to the state board of education. Anderson says they were responsive, but the waiver gave districts a lot of latitude to implement CBE, so there wasn’t much they could do.
But now, through Kankakee’s aggressive recruiting, superintendent Lance says they’re making real progress.
“We will go into this 25-26 school year with 90 percent of our teachers either being licensed or back in school to obtain their licensure," said Lance. "So, instead of 40 percent of folks out-of-field, we are now closing that gap. We won't have more than 10-15 percent of people out-of-field or out-of-licensure.”
And, aside from the instructor issue, they have to decide whether or not to keep the Competency-Based Education model. Lance says they’re in the middle of a curriculum audit to figure out what’s working and what’s not.
Anderson says their concerns about the previous system, where struggling students were passed along over and over, haven't gone away. And they still want to give their students a cutting edge, individualized experience.
“There were some really great pieces of CBE that the teachers want to hold on to," she said, "and there are some pieces of it that we never want to revisit again."
But no matter the path they choose, they feel better knowing that every student will be taught by a teacher who can help them succeed.
