The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reports on certification status and experience of U.S. public school teachers and how the status varies among students of different demographic groups, in different school settings, and in different states and large urban school districts.
On March 21, 2017, NCES will release a report that provides a snapshot of the extent to which U.S. public schools students are taught by certified and experienced teachers using two available datasets. The Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) provides a comprehensive picture, as it includes teachers of K–12 students in all subjects and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) provides a picture specific to grades 4 and 8. In addition, NAEP data are directly related to teachers of two key subjects: reading and mathematics. SASS data are available for the 2011–12 school year and NAEP data are available for 2013 and 2015.
Approximately 47,600 public school teachers from 9,800 public schools were sampled for the 2011–12 SASS. Approximately twenty-one thousand grade 4 teachers from about seven thousand schools and about thirteen thousand grade 8 teachers from about six thousand schools participated in 2015 surveys of NAEP reading and mathematics assessments.
The report presents the percentage of U.S. public school students who are taught by teachers with state certification, by teachers with more than 5 years of experience, and by teachers with a postsecondary degree in the subject in which they teach by various school and student characteristics.
