Teachers, Faculty, and Staff - Elementary and Secondary Schools

Number of Teachers

A projected 3.7 million elementary and secondary school teachers were engaged in classroom instruction in the fall of 2009, with about 3.2 million teachers in public schools and 0.5 million in private schools.

The number of public elementary and secondary school teachers rose by 12 percent between 1999 and 2009. The number of public school teachers increased by a greater percentage than the number of students during that period (6 percent), resulting in a decline in the pupil/teacher ratio. In the fall of 2009, there was a projected ratio of 15.3 public school pupils per teacher, compared with the 1999 ratio of 16.1 public school pupils per teacher. The pupil/teacher ratio in private schools was projected at 12.8 pupils per teacher in fall 2009.

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Table 15. Teachers and pupil/teacher ratios in public and private elementary and secondary schools: Selected years, fall 1980 through fall 2009
[In full-time equivalents]
Year	Total	Public	Private
	Teachers, in thousands
1980	2,485	2,184	301
1990	2,759	2,398	3611
1999	3,319	2,911	408
2000	3,366	2,941	4241
2005	3,593	3,143	450
2007	3,634	3,178	456
20082	3,634	3,233	456
20092	3,705	3,249	456
	Pupil/teacher ratio
1980	18.6	18.7	17.7
1990	17.0	17.2	15.61
1999	15.9	16.1	14.7
2000	15.9	16.0	14.51
2005	15.4	15.6	13.5
2007	15.2	15.5	13.0
20082	15.0	15.3	12.9
20092	15.0	15.3	12.8
1 Estimated. 2 Projected. Note : Full-time-equivalent teachers are the sum of full-time teachers, plus the number of part-time teachers expressed as the fraction of their scheduled hours compared to the normal full-time teacher scheduled hours. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding. Some data have been revised from previously published figures.