Week 3- Ch. 2- Who's your teacher?

Laura Nardozzi- Rigorous Researcher


I felt that an interesting topic for a more in depth look at a specific topic would be to see what the numbers are for the ratio of men to women teaching in our schools. Also, to extend Sonia's discussion of this I looked at how many African and Hispanic American teacher's there are. Here is what I found:

Selected                 Number, in   
characteristics           thousands       Percent
--------------------------------------------------
     Total                    2,561         100.0
    Men                         694          27.1
    Women                     1,867          72.9
Race/ethnicity            
    White, non-Hispanic       2,217          86.5
    Black, non-Hispanic         188           7.4
    Hispanic                    109           4.2
    Other minorities             48           1.9
Experience   
    Less than 3 years           249           9.7
    3 to 9 years                653          25.5
    10 to 20 years              897          35.0
    More than 20 years          762          29.8
Highest degree             
    Less than bachelor's         18           0.8
    Bachelor's                1,331          52.0
    Master's or above         1,212          47.3

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs/MiniDig95/teach.asp
Although this data is significantly outdated (1994), it can still help us as educators because the students who were being taught during this extreme time of inequality within the field of education are most likely the parents of the students were are teaching. They may have developed a detachment from school and disinterest because of the lack of connect with the teacher. This is not to say that the teacher needs to be the same "race" as the student to connect, but the importance of diversity was not stressed nearly as much. Also, note that only 52% of teachers held a bachelor's degree when this data was collected?? Anyone else find that odd?