Blog
Our blog provides readers an opportunity to hear from the Advance Illinois staff and partners on education policy issues affecting Illinois students and beyond.
On-the-Ground—The Hidden Crisis: Why Rural Districts Face Unique Teacher Workforce Challenges
Advance Illinois’ The State We’re In 2025 report finds that across Illinois, districts are struggling to recruit and retain qualified teachers — but rural schools face a unique set of barriers. Like their urban counterparts, they report higher vacancy rates, more novice teachers, and greater reliance on provisional licenses compared to suburban peers. However, the key difference is that rural schools have the highest rates of teachers working out of field or teachers teaching in a grade or content area for which they do not hold the proper credential. This affects students’ access to high-quality instruction, especially in specialized areas such as career and technical education (CTE).
As districts grapple with recruiting, training and retaining teaching talent across the state, some rural districts are innovating out of necessity. Still, their efforts’ long-term sustainability will depend on whether state-level policy and resources align with the ingenuity happening at the local level.
The Numbers Behind the Challenge
Dr. Joshua Stafford is superintendent of Vienna School District.
Data from the recent State We’re In 2025 show how deeply shortages affect small districts. When positions go unfilled, the consequences are immediate with fewer courses offered, staff stretched thin, and higher turnover costs.
“When you lose even a single staff member in a rural district, it has a ripple effect across everything — programs, student opportunities, and the community as a whole,” explained Dr. Joshua Stafford, superintendent of Vienna School District.
The Association of Illinois Rural and Small Schools (AIRSS) whitepaper, The Chronic Rural Educator Shortage and Hopeful Actions to Address It, notes that since 2022, reliance on substitutes and retirees has grown sharply. More than half of rural vacancies are now covered by under-certified or out-of-field staff. Geography makes things worse: the farther a district is from major highways or population centers, the harder it is to attract and keep teachers. Limited resources also mean rural schools often can’t match the salaries and benefits offered by larger districts.
Why Career Technical Education is Hit Hardest
Staffing courses that provide students with academic and technical skills for high-skill, high-demand careers like Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs illustrate the problem most clearly according to John Glasgow, director of the Rural Illinois Career Tech Ed Project with AIRSS.
“It’s hard enough to get anybody to go into the education field right now… That’s especially true for CTE. There are very few programs out there specifically for those who want to be, for instance, like a shop teacher or an ag [agriculture] teacher,” he said.
As researched by a 2023 National Rural Education Association report, Why Rural Matters 2023: Centering Equity and Opportunity, school funding formulas tied to enrollment deepen the challenge. With smaller student populations, rural schools are often expected to operate in the same ways that larger districts function with less funds. Even if funding was adequate, Glasgow acknowledges that distance and size mean it may not make sense for every rural school to run every CTE field. That reality encourages schools into regional collaborations that can be difficult to sustain.
Creative Solutions Born from Necessity
Rural districts are adapting in creative ways. For example, in Vienna, Illinois the school district is making opportunities for high performing middle school teachers to move into high school classrooms while they earn new endorsements. Others tap professionals with years of industry experience to enter classrooms through alternative licensing pathways.
Stafford offered one example: “Our nursing program… the person who ran that program for 30 years here never had a PEL [Professional Educator License]. She was an RN with hospital experience and masterfully led the program. Graduates from that program now staff hospitals across the region.”
These solutions don’t solve the shortage, but they demonstrate the value of flexibility and the deep expertise already present in rural communities.
John Glasgow is director of the Rural Illinois Career Tech Ed Project with AIRSS.
The Collaboration Imperative
Unlike large suburban and urban systems, rural schools must overcome geographical distance to collaborate with neighboring districts, local business and regional organizations. This reliance on partnerships adds a layer of complexity to rural leadership, requiring skills in coordination and resource-sharing that go well beyond traditional school administration, which Glasgow acknowledges can be hard to sustain over the long haul if entities are not unified or coordinated.
But rural schools are finding other innovative ways forward. The Southern Illinois Future Teachers Coalition began around 2017 with a modest $14,000 grant to address the teacher shortage that is being experienced with targeted programming at the local level in Southern Illinois. Today it has grown into a network of 25 schools working with universities, community colleges, and regional education offices to cultivate local teaching talent that’s delivering impact. =
Stafford recalled a recent round of teacher interviews where all three candidates — from different high schools in the region — had participated in the coalition as students.
“It was just this full circle moment,” Stafford said.
Looking Ahead
The Advance Illinois the State We’re In (2025) report finds that rural districts in Illinois have higher vacancy rates in addition to educators teaching out of field. However, the findings also show that educators in rural districts tend to have higher attendance rates.
Glasgow at AIRSS emphasizes that addressing rural educator workforce challenges requires policies that account for both adequacy and access. It calls for rethinking educator preparation, supporting under-certified staff in becoming fully credentialed, ensuring rural equity in funding and curriculum, and creating stronger collaborative efforts between schools, higher education, and state agencies—strategies that Glasgow and Stafford reinforced.
And there’s no time to waste or wait on outside solutions, said Stafford. “No one’s going to ride in and save us from teacher shortage… locally and regionally, we have to act and do something.”
Additional Resources:
Maty Ortega Cruz is a Senior Community Engagement Associate for Advance Illinois.
On-the-Ground—From High School to College Success: How Dual Credit is Driving Change at JJC
Dr. Clyne G. H. Namuo is the 10th president of Joliet Junior College.
In Illinois, a quiet but significant shift has been taking place. Community college students are completing their programs at higher rates than in previous years, and the trend is impossible to miss. Associate’s degree graduation rates within 150% of normal time climbed from 17 percent for the 2003 cohort to 31 percent for the 2017 cohort, placing Illinois 13th nationally. Completions are up 6.7 percent since 2020. These system-level numbers reflect deliberate choices made by the state’s community colleges. Joliet Junior College (JJC) is one of them.
When speaking with JJC President Dr. Clyne Namuo, one theme came through repeatedly: intentionality. Focusing on completion does not sit in a single program or office. It is embedded in the school’s culture. At JJC, that culture is strikingly tangible in how the college reimagined its relationship with local high schools through dual credit programming. A decade ago, JJC was not known as a strong dual credit partner. That is no longer the case. With the appointment of Dr. Namuo as president in 2022, the college made dual credit a centerpiece of its mission and also designed systems of support around it. These efforts have dramatically changed students’ trajectories before they even set foot on campus.
Dual Credit in Illinois
Across Illinois, first-time full-time students who took at least one dual credit course in high school graduate at substantially higher rates than their peers who did not. According to ICCB’s Dual Credit in the Illinois Community College System FY 2023 Report, for each of the last five cohorts, the dual credit subgroup’s graduation rate was roughly 20 percentage points higher. For the most recent cohort analyzed, 51.25% of dual credit students graduated compared with 33.13% of those without dual credit. This is not a marginal effect; dual credit provides an on-ramp for students to postsecondary opportunity1.
JJC leaned into this on-ramp with a clear and memorable initiative: 12x12x12. The idea is not a mandate but an aspirational framework: a goal for every student in the district to complete 12 college credits by 12th grade at a cost of 12 dollars per credit. Acting as both a promise and a challenge, the college meets students where they are: in their high school journeys, in their schedules, and in their budgets. Since adopting this approach in 2023, JJC’s dual credit headcount has reached 8,341 students (as of FY25), a 65 percent increase from FY23, moving the college to second place in the state for dual credit participation. As a result, students are arriving at college with more credits in hand, shrinking time and cost to degree. Arriving with credits also gives them a sense of belonging and momentum; they see themselves as college students because, in fact, they already are.
The college backed this initiative with resources. JJC and the JJC Foundation created a straightforward incentive: if a student at a partner high school completes 12 dual credits and then enrolls at JJC, they receive a $500 award. Further, advising capacity was expanded, and dedicated dual credit liaisons and tutors were added. Student Success Coaches proactively help students bridge the transition to college and connect to services like the student wellness center and tutoring. These moves are not flashy, but together they form the scaffolding that helps a high school senior become a college graduate.
The supports are part of a deliberate design. JJC’s Strategic Enrollment Management 4.0 plan puts the student experience at the center, from onboarding through graduation. That includes a redesigned new-student orientation, “Next Step Days” held at local high schools to guide seniors through final enrollment steps like admissions, testing, and scholarships, and centralized placement using multiple measures to keep students from getting stuck before they start. Advising access has grown sharply. Appointments rose 49 percent from 2023 to 2024, with additional gains in early 2025 as the college hired and trained more advisors and launched a hybrid advising training program to ensure consistent, high-quality advising
JJC is also explicit in its goal toward equity. As noted in our report, while graduation rates have improved for all groups statewide, gaps remain for Black and Latinx students. JJC tracks persistence and retention for these groups and aims to actively move the needle. Latinx fall-to-fall retention rose from 41 percent in FY22 to 47 percent in FY24. Black fall-to-fall retention rose from 36 percent to 41 percent over the same period. While equity gaps remain, these gains represent meaningful progress. The Tutoring and Learning Center on campus has been pivotal: among students flagged for academic intervention who used tutoring, persistence rates were far higher than for similar students who did not, and the gains were especially important for Black and Latinx learners.
The through-line is that JJC treats completion as a cross-campus responsibility. JJC utilizes federal TRIO programs to support first-generation and low-income students. The Center for Multicultural Access and Success serves as a dedicated resource center for English Learners and international students. Career Services helps students connect coursework to career pathways through internships, job exploration, and employment opportunities aligned with their interests and growing skills.
Taken together, these choices help explain why more Illinois students reach the finish line and why JJC’s own outcomes are moving in a strong direction. The lesson is not that one program fixes everything; it is that progress is built on many different investments that make a difference when they are aligned. At the core, however, is JJC’s conviction that dual credit is one of the most powerful tools to drive student success, with other supports layered around it to help students persist and complete.
There is more work to do. The pressures that students face are real, and research shows that equity gaps do not close without intentional action; states that fail to adopt direct interventions tend to see gaps persist or widen2. But Illinois has a clear path ahead. By continuing to expand dual credit with an equity lens and investing in advising, tutoring, and student wellness, community colleges across the state can build on recent graduation rate gains. JJC offers a compelling blueprint for how Illinois can sustain and accelerate this momentum.
Jeffrey Jen is a Senior Policy Associate for Advance Illinois.