Oct 24, 2018, 12:42 PM
(from University of Pennsylvania) The elementary and secondary teaching force has grown larger, older, less experienced, more female, more diverse, more consistent in academic ability, and more unstable, according to a study of public, private and charter education using data from the past 30 years. Private schools have hired more teachers while teaching fewer students, on average. The average age of a teacher has gone from the early 40s to mid-50s and back down to mid-30s to 40s, and there are more inexperienced teachers today than in the 80s and 90s. When the teaching force was initially expanded in the early 20th century, the job was conceived as low-paying, temporary work for inexperienced young women. The trends uncovered in the study suggest that efforts by teachers to win greater professional respect may have stalled, with increased turnover and more women entering the field than men.
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