Rural Issue

A growing need for more agriculture teachers

Demand is increasing for agriculture teachers in Illinois.

Dean Dittmar, who coordinates an Illinois Board of Education project called Facilitating Coordination in Agricultural Education (FCAE), tells Brownfield that was a recurring theme in their 2022 Ag Food and Natural Resources Education Report.

“Last year was an all-time high for demand. 139 schools across the state had a vacancy for an agriculture teacher.”

He says 374 schools are offering agriculture courses, an increase of 4% on the year and nearly 40,000 students are enrolled in ag classes, up 12%. One driving factor is an increased interest in food and agriculture.

“People are taking an interest as far as the price of food and food quality so that is going down to our school districts as well as far as wanting to implement agricultural courses.”

He says 33 schools also expanded to multi-teacher programs last year.

To help fill the void, Dittmar says they are recruiting ag professionals who have 2,000 hours of paid work experience and 60 credit hours of college work to pursue an alternative teacher certificate.

“Those individuals have good content knowledge and industry work experience. We provide professional development for them, especially over the summer before they begin teaching in August.”

He says about 22% of Illinois ag teachers are qualified under that certification.

He says the demand for ag teachers is also reflected in the salaries being offered.

“The average starting salary, believe it or not, is $49,068 for a first year ag teacher, which is up considerably over the last five years. The average salary from a 1-year teacher to a 30-year teacher is roughly $60,875.”

Currently there are about 40 ag teacher vacancies in Illinois for the 2023-2024 school year. Dittmar says some of those will be filled by the 30 Agriculture Education Majors expected to graduate from college in May.