Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

PART 2: UNITED STATES
173
Teacher pre-service education takes place in universities in schools of education. Middle
and secondary school teachers generally major in the subject they teach, although this
practice varies from state to state. The No Child Left Behind legislation (2001) requires
schools in all states to hire only “qualified” teachers—teachers who meet certification
requirements. However, because the states set the certification requirements, the
definition of a “qualified” teacher varies from state to state.
Nearly all teachers teaching in a particular state are educated and certified in that state.
More than 40 of the 50 states require teachers to take a state test to be certified. More
recently, national certification programs have been developed that require already
practicing teachers to provide portfolios of their teaching and to take a national test in
the subject that they intend to teach. However, only a small percentage of teachers apply
to be nationally certified. In most states, secondary school teachers must major in the
subject they intend to teach.
Teacher salaries
Movements in teacher salaries in the period 1970 to 2005 can be divided into distinct
periods. After a rapid rise of average teacher salaries in real terms in the 1960s (an
increase of approximately 33%), average salaries fell about 12% in constant dollars in
the 1970s, then rose more than 20% in the 1980s (NCES, 2004, Table 77). They have
remained more or less constant since (see Figure 71 for the period 1980 to 2002).
The salaries in Figure 71 are averages for the entire United States. However, salaries
and changes in salaries for teachers vary greatly from state to state. A quick way to get
some idea of this variation is to estimate increases in spending per student between,
say, 1980 and 2000. A list of various states (Table 49) shows how great this variation is
(the average ratio of real spending per student between 1980 and 2000 was 1.58). The
increase in expenditure per student during this 20-year period in states such as Arizona,
California, Florida, and Louisiana was much less than the average for the United States
as a whole. Spending per student in states such as Georgia, South Carolina, Connecticut,
and Texas over this period was considerably more than the average. Although the
teacher salary increase was much smaller than the overall increase (20% versus 58%)
because of lower teacher–student ratios and rapid increases in the cost of maintenance,
transportation, and (especially) special education, we can assume that those states with
the greater increases in overall spending per student were also those states where salaries
increased.
From the standpoint of recruitment, a main issue is how to keep increasing the number
of teachers in the United States if real teacher salaries are not increasing (see Figure
70 above). It is important to keep in mind, however, that while it may be possible to
recruit more teachers, the quality of the teachers in terms of their capacity to teach, say,
mathematics, will doubtless depend on salaries in competing professions. We examine
this issue below.
One of the most important factors affecting both teacher salary increases and
recruitment is the rise in the real wages of university-educated females (and females in
general) in absolute terms and relative to male wages, over the past 30 years. The single
most important explanation for the rapid increase in teacher salaries in the 1980s, for
example, is the corresponding rise in female’s real wages in that decade. According to
estimates by the Economic Policy Institute (Washington, DC), the real wages of female
college graduates increased 17% in the 1980s (compared to only a two percent increase