News of the Profession

Too Many Teachers Assigned to Out-of-Field Courses

A recent study by the Education Trust warns that the nation's middle and high schools continue to assign teachers to courses outside of their areas of expertise. The watchdog group's analysis of the U.S. Department of Education's 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) found an alarming number of instructors in classrooms without college backgrounds related to the courses they must teach. Overall, 24 percent of high school classes and 44 percent of middle school classes in core academic subjects are given to teachers lacking a college major or minor in the subject being taught. In high-poverty high schools, the rate is 34 percent. In high-minority high schools (where over half the students are nonwhite), the rate is 29 percent, as opposed to only 21 percent in low-minority high schools (where 15 percent or less of the students are nonwhite).

The amount of out-of-field teaching "remains unacceptably high," says the Education Trust, despite concerted national and state efforts over the past decade to address the problem. In the face of increasing public and private attention, research, media coverage, and political pressure since the previous SASS in 1993-1994, "the nation made no progress reducing out-of-field teaching." For high-poverty and high-minority schools, the situation has grown worse. Between the 1993-1994 SASS and the most recent one in 1999-2000, out-of-field teaching has increased by 4 percent in high-poverty and high-minority schools.

If anything, warn the authors of the Education Trust study, their calculations underestimate the problem. Their analysis "considers a teacher as being assigned out of field only if he or she lacks at least a college minor in the subject being taught or in a related field." Similarly, the analysis draws the boundaries of each field quite broadly. An instructor in a social studies, history, world civilization, geography, or civics class, for example, is considered in field even if they have a college major or minor in psychology, public affairs, social studies, education, or history. One can imagine that the percentage of history courses taught by teachers without any historical training, therefore, is quite a bit higher than the overall 24 percent rate of out-of-field teaching in high schools and 44 percent in middle schools.

Conditions vary greatly from state to state, according to the analysis of the SASS study. The states with the highest number of out-of-field teachers include Louisiana, Delaware, Tennessee, New Mexico, and Arizona. States that are doing the best, with the fewest incidents of out-of-field teaching, include Minnesota, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Nebraska. (View a state-by-state comparison.)

The Education Trust cautions that its study should only be taken as a starting point. It recognizes that the U.S. Department of Education's SASS is not comprehensive and that states vary in the amount and quality of information they are gathering about their teachers. All states, however, according to the No Child Left Behind Act, will begin to collect comprehensive information next year about teachers at every school in every district.

Craig D. Jerald of the Education Trust and Richard M. Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania, the study's authors, paint a troubling picture of the state of precollegiate education. However, they finish their report with several recommendations for reducing the amount of out-of-field teaching. The first step they suggest, is convincing more school officials to take seriously the problem of teacher assignments. The problem is not rooted in supply, but in misassignment, unclear standards at the middle school level, and unnecessarily low standards for teacher preparation. For a the full Education Trust report, supporting statistics, and recommendations for improvement, go to <http://www.edtrust.org>.

Salary Study Released: Historians' Salaries Could Be Better, Could Be Worse

According to a study released by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, for the fourth year in a row, professors of law, financial management, and chemical engineering are the best-paid faculty members in both public and private institutions. The typical professor received a 3.6 percent to 3.7 percent salary increase this last year, making the average salary in all fields $60,893 at public institutions and $60,289 at private colleges. The average salary for historians was $58,106 at public and $58,050 at private institutions.

Average salaries for historians lag behind compatriots in the fields of political science and government ($59,914 and $62,703 at public and private universities respectively) and anthropology ($58,710 and $64,106) but are more than those of professors of library science ($56,992 and $44,206) and education ($57,974 and $51,760). Historians, on average, earn just slightly more than those teaching in the social sciences at public institutions ($56,867) but lag behind at private institutions ($60,254).

Faculty members in library science ($44,206) and English composition ($44,616) at private colleges earned the lowest salaries. At public institutions, English-composition professors ($48,503) and professors of foreign languages and literature ($51,176) were at the bottom. Salaries appear to be reflective of the supply and demand of qualified doctorates in fields of expertise. Annual earnings for those in the lower paying fields are not expected to rise significantly in coming years because a surplus of Ph.D.s is expected to persist in those fields.

The survey covered 122,031 faculty members at 352 public colleges and universities and 62,645 faculty members at 519 private institutions. Only four-year institutions were surveyed and medical doctors and researchers were not surveyed because many of the institutions do not have medical schools.

--Bruce Craig