Volume 7, #6
February 2003

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Fast Facts About Teachers

In 2000, virtually all public school teachers had a bachelor's degree; 45 percent held a master's degree; one percent held a doctorate or some other degree; and 18 percent reported having other certificates.

In 1999, over 20 percent of public school teachers with nine or fewer year of teaching experience were the group most likely to use the Internet "a lot" to gather information for planning lessons.

In 1999, elementary school teachers were more likely than secondary school teachers to assign students practice drills using computers (39 percent vs. 12 percent).

Sixty-one percent of public school teachers felt very well prepared to meet the overall demands of their teaching assignments. Thirty-five percent felt moderately well-prepared and four percent felt somewhat well-prepared.

There was a 14.6 percent increase in the number of students and a 23.1 percent increase in the number of teachers between the 1990-91 and 2000-01 school years.

Ninety-three percent of teachers stated that they learned about technology through independent study. Eighty-eight percent said that they learned through professional development, and 87 percent stated that colleagues helped them learn about technology.

The difference between the annual median salaries of all full-time workers with at least a bachelor's degree and all full-time teachers declined from about $5,000 in 1981 to $2,300 in 1998 (in constant 1998 dollars).

In 1999-2000, 2.9 million teachers taught in the nation's public schools. In the 2000-2001 school year, that number increased to an estimated 3 million teachers.

From National Center for Education Statistics at http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/search.asp?search term=teacher.