While the kinds of student outcomes discussed thus far are perhaps the most important
means of assessing the state of primary and secondary humanities education, valuable
perspectives on the state of the humanities can also be gained from looking at the
characteristics of those who teach such courses. Indeed, because standardized exams
taken by students can measure only a limited set of acquired skills, one must look
at rough measures of teacher qualifications and satisfaction to get a fuller picture
of students’ experiences in humanities classrooms.
Beyond what teacher-focused indicators indicate about the quality of students’ early
educational experiences in the humanities, such indicators are also important in
and of themselves: primary-and secondary-school teachers are professionals whose
qualifications, livelihoods, and perceptions are integral to the humanities infrastructure.
This section looks first at teachers’ educational backgrounds and certification,
examining to what extent teachers in the humanities are prepared to teach their
subjects. The focus then turns to the demographic characteristics of humanities
teachers. Additional indicators describe teachers’ earnings and level of job satisfaction.
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Indicator I-9
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Qualifications of Humanities Teachers
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Figures I-9a and b have been updated (11/28/2011) with data from the National Center
for Education Statistics’ (NCES) 2007–2008 Schools and Staffing Survey. The
NCES reports based on data collected after academic year 1999–2000 do not
include an analysis of middle school teachers’ qualifications. Hence, Figure I-9c
cannot be updated at this time.
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An important measure of the condition of humanities education at the precollegiate
level is the preparedness of teachers who teach humanities classes. Such preparedness
can be partly assessed through information provided by the National Center for Education
Statistics’ (NCES)
Schools and Staffing Survey
(SASS), which asks a sample of public school teachers about the fields in which
they have received teaching certificates, as well as their undergraduate and graduate
majors. Of course, teacher certification and subject-area education do not ensure
quality teaching. Some gifted teachers have not obtained certification, and subject-matter
specialization is no guarantee of effectiveness in the classroom. However, certification
and education are two factors that research suggests have at least some bearing
on student outcomes.1
They are also central to the public policy debate about teacher quality.
The data presented here describing humanities teachers’ qualifications are limited
in two respects. Because middle school encompasses different grades in different
states, NCES did not produce estimates of teacher qualifications for teachers at
this level for academic years 2003–2004 or 2007–2008, the two most recent academic
years for which data was collected via the SASS. Additionally, an improvement made
in 2003–2004 in the way NCES collects data on teacher certification means that data
for this academic year are not comparable with those collected in previous years.2
Thus, the trend analyses presented here focus solely on teachers’ educational backgrounds.
(From here on, academic years will be referred to using the calendar year in which
the academic term ended.)
According to the SASS data, public high school students in music and art classes
were the likeliest to be exposed to a teacher who was both certified in and possessed
a degree in the subject matter being taught (Figure I-9a). In 2008, 85% of
students taking music and 82% of those taking art were taught by such teachers.
For students taking language classes, the proportion ranged from 58% of those taking
Spanish to approximately 72% of those in English classes. The rate for English was
similar to that for students taking natural science courses (73%). The percentage
of students taking math who were taught by a certified teacher with a degree in
the subject was 64%, similar to that for German.
In the case of another key humanities subject, history, the degree of teacher preparedness
was markedly lower. A smaller share of students taking history classes was taught
by a certified and degreed teacher than in any other subject area. Although 62%
of students taking history were learning from teachers with degrees in the subject,
low certification rates among history teachers meant that only 29% of history students
found themselves in classes led by teachers meeting both preparedness criteria.
Close to a third (32%) of public high schoolers, the largest share found in any
subject area, took history in 2008 with a teacher who was neither certified nor
degreed. This proportion was more than five times as great as that for students
in natural science classes.
As Figure I-9b reveals, the most striking gains between 1988 and 2008 in
exposure of high school students to degreed teachers were achieved in history. Having
remained in the 40–50% range for over a decade, the percentage of students
taught history by someone with a degree in the subject jumped almost 25 percentage
points from 2000 to 2004 and then remained at approximately the same level through
2008. A similarly sharp rise occurred in the level of student exposure to degreed
instructors in languages other than English (LOTE), although changes in the way
NCES reports the qualifications of these teachers makes gauging the precise magnitude
of the increase difficult. The percentage of high schoolers learning English language
and literature from an individual with a postsecondary degree in the subject increased
steadily, if more modestly, rising from 70% in 1988 to 82% in 2008, a trend similar
to that observed in the natural sciences. From 2004 to 2008, the two years for which
NCES published data on students in specific types of LOTE classes, Latin was the
only LOTE subject in which high schoolers experienced increased exposure to degreed
instructors (an 11 percentage point rise). The other LOTE classes for which NCES
reports data—French, German and Spanish—all declined in terms of the share of students
taught by degreed teachers.
The most recent analysis of middle school teachers’ qualifications published by
NCES, that for the 2000 school year, reveals that in every subject besides arts
and music the percentage of middle school students taught by degreed teachers was
substantially smaller than the percentage of high schoolers taught by such teachers
(Figure I-9c). This disparity has existed since data on teacher qualifications
were first collected as part of the SASS in 1988. Despite this persistent gap, notably
different trends were observed among middle school humanities subjects. The proportion
of middle school students taught English by a degreed teacher increased modestly
over the last decade of the 20th century, from 41% to 46%, mirroring, as at the
high school level, developments in the natural sciences. In contrast, the percentage
of middle schoolers taught history by a degreed teacher declined by roughly the
same increment as English increased, so that by 2000, 31% of middle schoolers were
learning history from a teacher with an academic background in the subject, a percentage
similar to that for mathematics (34%). In the most striking development at the middle
school level during this time period, the percentage of students exposed to degreed
foreign language teachers jumped approximately 18 percentage points between 1991
and 1994, only to fall by a nearly identical amount over the next six years.
Notes
1
For a succinct review of recent research in this area, see: Hill, Jason G., Education
and Certification Qualifications of Departmentalized Public High School-Level Teachers
of Core Subjects: Evidence from the 2007–08 Schools and Staffing Survey,
Statistical Analysis Report NCES 2011–317 (Washington, DC: National Center
for Education Statistics, 2011), 4–6.
2
“The structure of the items concerning certification was revised in the 2003–2004
questionnaire. In 1999–2000, respondents reported whether or not they were certified
in their main teaching assignment . . . . This method relied on teachers’ self-reports
of the match between their main assignment (and other assignments) and their certification(s)
held. There was evidence that allowing teachers to self-report their certification
status led to the over-reporting of in-field certifications. As a result, the certification
items were changed on the 2003–2004 Teacher Questionnaire. In an effort to improve
the reliability of the items, separate questions were used to ask about main teaching
assignment and certification. Respondents were first asked to identify the subject
code for their main assignment and then, in a later section of the survey, to identify
subject codes for all subjects covered by the certification(s) they held. A determination
of whether or not teachers were certified in their main assignment is up to the
analyst; the analyst is able to match the course taught with certification areas,
rather than rely on teacher self-reports.” (Morton, Beth A., et al., Education and
Certification Qualifications of Departmentalized Public High School–Level Teachers
of Core Subjects: Evidence from the 2003–04 Schools and Staffing Survey,
Statistical Analysis Report NCES 2008–338 (Washington, DC: National Center
for Education Statistics, 2008), 57–58.)
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Indicator I-10
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Demographic Characteristics of Humanities Teachers
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The data presented below are from the most recent year in which the SASS was administered,
2007–2008. Due to changes made by NCES in the way teachers’ fields of primary assignment
were categorized, these data are not comparable to the 1999–2000 data that were
the basis of the first iteration of this indicator. The Humanities Indicators has
recently obtained information from NCES that will permit us to render the two data
sets comparable and present a trend analysis (anticipated completion date: spring
2011).
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See the
Note on Teacher Race and Ethnicity Data.
The SASS provides a demographic snapshot of the nation's primary- and secondary-school
teachers. These data reveal some continuities but also some striking discontinuities
between the humanities and other subject areas with respect to the age, gender,
and ethnic composition of their faculties.
In the 2007–2008 school year, teachers of humanities
subjects constituted 18.7% of the K–12 private, public, and Bureau of Indian Education
teacher population.1
(For counts of K–12 humanities teachers and other humanities educators, see Indicator
III-1,
Size and Occupational Distribution of the Humanities Workforce). The age
distribution of these humanities teachers was similar to that of teachers in the
arts, mathematics, and natural sciences (Figure I-10a). Teachers under 30
years of age represented 18% of the humanities teaching corps. Approximately one-third
of humanities teachers were age 50 or older.
Like teachers in all other subject areas, the majority of humanities teachers were
female (Figure-I-10b). However, the disparity between the numbers of female
and male teachers was more pronounced in the humanities than in the other subjects.
With a teaching force that was three-quarters female, the gender distribution of
humanities teachers was most similar to that of arts teachers (these include teachers
of studio art, dance, drama, and music), approximately 70% of whom were women. The
most gender-balanced faculty, with a female to male ratio of 51% to 49%, was that
of the behavioral and social sciences.
The ethnic composition of the humanities teaching corps does not mirror that of
the student population (Figure I-10c; See the
Note on Teacher Race and Ethnicity Data for a discussion of the comparability
of teacher and student data). Students were more than twice as likely as their teachers
to be African American, Asian, or Native American. Although humanities teachers
were more likely to be Hispanic than were teachers in any other subject, the proportion
of Hispanic humanities teachers (10.4%) was only about half as large as the percentage
of American school children of Hispanic descent (Figure I-10d). A supplemental
analysis performed by Humanities Indicators staff revealed that just over 50% of
humanities teachers who described themselves as being of Hispanic ethnicity taught
either English as a second language or Spanish.
Note on Teacher Race and Ethnicity Data
Due to differences among the 2007–2008 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), Common
Core of Data (CCD), and Private School Universe Survey (PSUS) in the way that respondents
were permitted to describe themselves, the data presented here on the racial and
ethnic composition of the humanities teacher population are not strictly comparable
to those for students.
The SASS employed a two-question format. Teachers were first asked whether they
were Hispanic. They were then asked to describe their race using as many of five
provided categories as they wished. Possible response categories were: “white”,
“black or African-American”, “Asian”, “native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander”,
and “American Indian or Alaska native”. In contrast, the CCD and PSUS asked state
and school administrators to count students in only one of five racial/ethnic categories.
These categories were “white”, “black (non-Hispanic), “Asian or Pacific Islander”,
“American Indian or Alaska Native”, and “Hispanic”.
The table below describes the persons included by The Humanities Indicators in each
of the race and ethnicity categories referenced in Figures I-10c and I-10d. The
reported percentages were calculated by dividing the number of students or teachers
in each category by the total number of teachers or students.
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HUMANITIES INDICATORS RACE/ETHNICITY CATEGORY
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Teacher Data Type
(SASS; data supplied by teachers)
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Student Data Type
(CCD—State Nonfiscal Survey, data supplied by state administrators on the basis
of information obtained by local school districts from parents; PSUS, data supplied
by school administrators on the basis of information supplied by parents)
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“Hispanic”
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Teachers who indicated that that they were of Hispanic or Latino origin
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Students placed in the “Hispanic” race/ethnicity category by administrators (except
for those who were described by their parents as “Hispanic” and another race/ethnicity—such
students were not included by NCES in the publicly available totals for any of the
CCD categories)
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“Black or African American”
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Teachers selecting only “Black or African-American” as their race* and indicating
that they were not of Hispanic or Latino origin
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Students placed by administrators in the “black, non-Hispanic” category (except
for those who were described by their parents as being of more than one race/ethnicity)
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“Asian (including Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander)”
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Teachers selecting only “Asian" or “native Hawaiian or other Pacific islander“ as
their race* and indicating that they were not of Hispanic or Latino origin
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Students placed by administrators in the “Asian or Pacific Islander” category (except
for those who were described by their parents as being of more than one race/ethnicity)
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“Native American (including Alaska Native)”
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Teachers selecting only “American Indian or Alaska native” as their race* and indicating
that they were not of Hispanic or Latino origin
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Children placed by administrators in the “American Indian or Alaska Native” category
(except for those who were described by their parents as being of more than one
race/ethnicity)
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* Approximately 1% of humanities teachers described themselves as being of more
than one race.
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Note
1 This percentage does not include "general" educators in the elementary
grades who spent a portion of their time teaching language arts, reading, history,
and other humanities material. These teachers represent 32% of the K-12 teaching
corps.
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Indicator I-11
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Humanities Teachers’ Earnings
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The data presented below are from the most recent year in which the SASS was administered,
2007–2008. Due to changes made by NCES in the way teachers’ fields of primary assignment
were categorized, these data are not comparable to the 1999–2000 data that were
the basis of the first iteration of this indicator. The Humanities Indicators has
recently obtained information from NCES that will permit us to render the two data
sets comparable and present a trend analysis (anticipated completion date: spring
2011).
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Primary- and secondary-school teacher salaries in the humanities are one indicator
of the value placed on humanities education (for faculty salaries at the postsecondary
level, see Indicator III-14,
Faculty Earnings). Because precollegiate teaching salaries are closely tied
to seniority, earnings data from the SASS are presented here by the career stage
of respondents. The earnings of new teachers are compared with those of both midcareer
teachers and educators with three decades or more of classroom experience.
For the 2007–2008 academic year, the median earnings
of precollegiate humanities teachers (base salary, as well as payment for extracurricular
activities and other services to their school system) were approximately $48,000
(Figure I-11; in 2007, the national median earnings of year-round full-time
workers age 25 and over were $42,196).)1
For those who were new to teaching (0–5 years of service), the median was closer
to $40,000. Among the most seasoned teachers, those with 30 or more years of service,
median earnings were just under $60,000.
The range of earnings was greater for more experienced teachers. The difference
between the 25th percentile and 75th percentile earnings of middle- and late-career
teachers was approximately twice as large as that for new personnel. A preliminary
analysis by Humanities Indicators staff suggests that this difference is attributable
to the fact that more experienced teachers are likelier than new teachers to hold
master’s and other advanced degrees.
Note
1 Figure I-11 displays, for earnings at each career stage, a set of
statistics referred to as the interquartile range, which describes the range of
“typical” or “usual” characteristics exhibited by a population of persons or objects.
Quartiles are statistics that divide the observations of a numeric sample into four
groups, each of which contains 25% of the data. The lower, middle, and upper quartiles
are computed by ordering the values for a particular variable (in this case teacher
earnings) from smallest to largest and then finding the values below which fall
25%, 50%, and 75% of the data. The lower and upper quartiles are the endpoints of
the interquartile range. The middle quartile is also known as the median.
The table from which the median income estimate for all full-time, year-round workers
was drawn was prepared by NCES personnel in September 2009 using data from the Current
Population Survey (U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau). The table is available
for viewing and downloading at
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_384.asp.
According to the Census Bureau, the collector of the income data from which this
estimate is derived, “A full-time, year-round worker is a person who worked 35 or
more hours per week (full-time) and 50 or more weeks during the previous calendar
year (year-round). For school personnel, summer vacation is counted as weeks worked
if they are scheduled to return to their job in the fall.” (Carmen DeNavas-Walt,
Bernadette D. Proctor, and Jessica C. Smith, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance
Coverage in the United States: 2008, Current Population Reports, P60-236 [Washington,
DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2009],
http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf.
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Indicator I-12
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Job Satisfaction of Humanities Teachers
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The data presented below are from the most recent year in which the SASS was administered,
2007–2008. Due to changes made by NCES in the way teachers’ fields of primary assignment
were categorized, these data are not comparable to the 1999–2000 data that were
the basis of the first iteration of this indicator (these data were originally presented
as part of Indicator I-11, which now deals separately with teacher earnings). The
Humanities Indicators has recently obtained information from NCES that will permit
us to render the two data sets comparable and present a trend analysis, (anticipated
completion date: spring 2011).
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Slightly more than 45% of humanities teachers indicated that if they “could go back
to [their] college days and start over again” they would certainly become teachers
(Figure I-12). This level of satisfaction was similar to that reported by
teachers of other subjects, with the exception of the natural sciences, in which
field only 38% of teachers reported the same level of enthusiasm for their teaching
careers.
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