TEACHERS

College Training

Concerns about the quality of the nation's teachers grew as the number of students in the school system increased. In 1950 the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education stated that 90 percent of college professors were poor teachers. The National Education Association's Commission on Teacher Education and Professional Standards, in February 1951, reported that less than 50 percent of the twelve hundred colleges and universities offering training in education met "reasonable standards." It labeled training as "chaotic," and the associations urged a national organization to improve training for teachers and the professors who taught them. That, coupled with the massive dismissals due to the "Red Scares," left the educational system lacking an adequate teacher base.

Teacher Accreditation

In 1952 the National Committee on Accreditation urged reform of accreditation for several fields of higher education, especially schools of education and teacher-education departments. Instead of more than three hundred independent college-accrediting agencies, the higher educational system should fall into six regional associations, the committee recommended. This would make steps to standardize requirements for teacher licensing easier. By 1959, forty states required at least a bachelor's degree for teacher certification (compared to six in 1937), and efforts were made to intensify the requirements even beyond that.

Filling Vacancies

In 1950, 914,000 teachers were in classrooms with over twenty-nine million elementary and secondary students (a 1 to 33 ratio). It was estimated by the NEA in 1952 that the nation had only one qualified teacher for every five vacancies. States issued thousands of temporary or emergency certificates in an attempt to alleviate some shortages. But a vast number of schools were forced to split the day into two sessions to serve more students. The new suburban schools as well as the ever-crowded urban centers needed teachers. Colleges and universities, already pressured to meet higher standards, struggled to produce large numbers of graduates. States, in response, implemented scholarship programs to encourage college students to work in education. The numbers of new teachers, however, still trailed the number of students entering school.

Recruitment

In 1956, as shortages continued, the Labor Department announced that it would recruit retired officers and other armed forces personnel for high-school-teaching positions. That won the support of the NEA, which projected the end of shortages by 1962 as a result of increases in college graduates majoring in education. Other groups called upon to teach included mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and engineers—all employed in private industry. Indeed, some observers charged that industry had "raided" college graduates and wooed them away from education with more lucrative salaries. Plans were made by the federal government to form a national educational reserve to meet teacher short-ages. The result of all these efforts was that in 1960 there were only 1,464,000 teachers in public elementary and secondary schools to serve a student population of over 34 million students. The student-teacher ratio was 32.2 to one in elementary school and 15.4 to one in secondary schools.

Teacher Salaries

Many graduates avoided teaching as a profession due to low average pay. The U.S. Office of Education put the average pay for U.S. public elementary and secondary teachers in 1950 at just over $3,000 a year. (College-level teachers fared a bit better with an average annual salary of $4,354). But in the rural South salaries were less than half of the national average. Recruiting teachers to that region proved increasingly difficult. Worse, the turnover rate for teachers increased over the decade. By 1953 the rate was highest since the end of World War II.

National Disgrace

The NEA's 1953 annual convention declared teachers' salaries to be a "national disgrace" and called for efforts to increase the minimum scale to help recruit new people to the field of education. More teachers left the field than entered it because of low pay and classroom overcrowding (one-third of children were in classes of 36 or more, one-eleventh in classes of 41 or more in 1953). By 1959 the average teacher salary had climbed to $5,100 ($6,711 for college teachers).

Teacher Strikes

Several teacher unions waged strikes against local school districts over pay increases during the 1950s. A twenty-two day strike in Minneapolis closed the public school system in 1951 as teachers, janitors, and clerks demanded more money. As strikes in Connecticut increased, the state supreme court finally ruled that teachers had no right to strike or bargain collectively. Parents and administrators expressed outrage at the teaching days lost. Increasingly the public viewed strikes by teachers as a threat to public safety. Garfield, New Jersey, teachers went out on strike in 1953 after funds earmarked for a pay raise had been used elsewhere. Teachers strikes in Baltimore the same year resulted in the use of television programs to educate those students affected by closed schools.

More Money!

The NEA called for the federal government to help states pay teachers' salaries in 1954. It contended that quality teachers for quality education demanded increased compensation. Those efforts proved fruitless as federal funding focused on research and development and construction while day-to-day expenses, such as salaries, remained in the hands of the state and local budgets.