Teachers and Teaching - Teachers And Students, Teaching's Gender Gap, Educational Attainment Of Teachers, Teacher Certification

The number of teachers has been increasing since the 1870s. So has the number of students. Pupil-teacher ratios have fallen considerably in the last 130 years, suggesting that the number of teachers is increasing at a faster rate than is the number of students. Who are these teachers? Most of them are women. In the 1870s, the ratio of female to male teachers was 1.6 to 1. In 1996, the ratio increased to 2.9 to 1. Until the 1970s, the number of male teachers had been increasing. What happened in the 1970s? The second panel will attempt to answer this question.

Teachers today are highly educated. Since 1961, the percentage of teachers with a master's or specialist degree has soared, while the percentage of those with less than a bachelor's degree has dropped. The percentage of those with a doctorate grew by 557% since 1961. The third panel will discuss the educational attainment of teachers.

A highly educated teacher workforce may not be enough. Many judge the abilities of teachers by their certification. The fourth panel will discuss certification and the problem of the growing number of uncertified teachers. Why are there so many uncertified teachers? Teacher shortages. The fifth panel discusses this problem and the next panel provides an in-depth discussion of teacher turnover.

The top complaint among teachers is low salaries, but in the year 2000, the average public school teacher salary was between 1.7 and 3.0 times the poverty level for a family of four. So, why the complaint? The next panel compares teacher salaries to those of other professions in an attempt to answer that question.

The Class Size Reduction Initiative is a part of the education reform package entitled The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The initiative is based on studies showing that smaller class size improves student achievement. The next panel looks at a couple of these programs to see if they really work.

Not many will argue that America's schools need improvement. But, what are the top problems in our schools today? You may be surprised to find out that teachers and the general public have different opinions.

What should we be teaching children and how should we be teaching it? The debate has been going on since the middle of the 19th century. We begin the discussion with the whole language vs. phonics debate. Then we move on to the different methods of mathematics instruction. We end this chapter with a discussion of character education.