Teachers, Faculty, and Staff - Elementary and Secondary Schools

Number of Teachers

A projected 3.6 million elementary and secondary school teachers were engaged in classroom instruction in the fall of 2010, 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 8 percent between 2000 and 2010. The number of public school teachers increased by a greater percentage than the number of students during that period (5 percent), resulting in a decline in the pupil/teacher ratio. In the fall of 2010, there was a projected ratio of 15.6 public school pupils per teacher, compared with the 2000 ratio of 16.0 public school pupils per teacher. The pupil/teacher ratio in private schools was projected at 13.0 pupils per teacher in fall 2010.

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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 2010
[In full-time equivalents]
Year	Total	Public	Private
	Teachers, in thousands
1980	2,485	2,184	301
1990	2,759	2,398	3611
2000	3,366	2,941	4241
2005	3,593	3,143	450
2007	3,634	3,178	456
2008	3,674	3,219	4551
20092	3,617	3,161	457
20102	3,633	3,174	460
	Pupil/teacher ratio
1980	18.6	18.7	17.7
1990	17.0	17.2	15.61
2000	15.9	16.0	14.51
2005	15.4	15.6	13.5
2007	15.2	15.5	13.0
2008	15.0	15.3	13.11
20092	15.3	15.6	13.1
20102	15.2	15.6	13.0
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.