Randi Weingarten, the NYC-street smart, newly elected president of the American Federation of Teachers, is a welcome addition to teachers union leadership here in Washington. I may not always agree with her, but you always know you’re dealing with a force and a straight shooter. For now, what’s most interesting is the all-female leadership team taking over the AFT.

As written about by my colleague Greg Toppo here and by the Chicago Tribune here, this marks the first time a teachers union will be run by women: Weingarten, Loretta Johnson as executive vice president and Antonia Cortese as secretary-treasurer.

My reaction: What took the unions so long? Here’s an NEA press release from 2004 with the headline, Are Male Teachers on the Road to Extinction?

An NEA survey shows that the number of male public school teachers now stands at a 40-year low. After two decades of decline, just 21 percent of the nation’s 3 million teachers are men. Male elementary school teachers are even more scarce. According to NEA’s research report, Status of the American Public School Teacher, the percentage of male elementary teachers has fallen from an all-time high of 18 percent in 1981 to an all-time low of 9 percent today. And while men represented half of secondary teachers in 1986, today they make up 35 percent.

For minority males, the statistics are as troubling. Teachers of color make up 16 percent of the teaching population, and some 42 percent of public schools have no minority teacher at all.

In short, the answer is yes, male teachers are on the road to extinction, and this is not just a U.S. issue. Consider this recent story out of Vietnam.

The important question, however, is whether that can explain the boy troubles. The easy answer is yes, but I’m not so sure. I’ve visited classrooms where male reading teachers at 6th grade are having a huge impact, especially if they double as coaches. Still, I’m hesitant to place major weight on the disappearance of males from the classroom as the cause.

 As described in this post, TFA founder Wendy Kopp is not so sure teacher gender is a major player. As an observer of KIPP charter schools, which draw heavily on TFA alums and appear to be doing well by boys (and employ mostly women as teachers) I’ll have to concede she has a point. What works with boys is the determination to not let them slip behind in verbal skills, and there seem to be a lot more female teachers out there willing to undertake that challenge than male teachers.  Forget the movie nonsense about Joe Clark roaming the hallways with a club to knock some discipline sense into boys. What’s needed are some teachers of either gender willing to knock some literacy sense into boys.

Tags: Male Teachers

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