New Jersey’s Many Types of Teachers, Administrators and Staff
Education, Policy — By Paul Tyahla on March 21, 2011 at 4:52 PMby Mark ‘Jay’ Williams, Economics Fellow
The use of statistics is a routine and important part of the policy making process, but too often the repetition of a generalized statistic lulls advocates, legislators and the press into false assumptions.
One of the most misused variables is ‘teacher’, particularly when describing the entire population of certificated staff teachers and other certificated professionals in our K12 education system. There are many types of teachers, and understanding their distribution is particularly important when large-scale policy decisions are considered.
The following is a review of the 2010 Certificated Staff data, which was acquired from the New Jersey Department of Education. This is intended only as a simple overview of the types of certificated staff, and their average of experience and salary.
The Data for All Certificated Staff
• Last year, 144,083 certificated staff worked in New Jersey’s public (including charter) K12 education system. Of this total, approximately 435 staff had missing coding for some measurement variables.
• There are 9,025 administrators, 534 bilingual teachers, 114,077 general education teachers, 344 teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing, 57 teachers of the blind and visually impaired, and 19,611 teachers of students with disabilities;
• 23% of certificated staff were male, 77% female, and 61 were not coded;
• 85% are white, 8% black, 4% Hispanic, 1% Asian, 1% American Indian, and the remaining 1% Hawaiian and two-or-more-races;
• 51% have a Bachelor’s degree, 46% hold a Master’s, 2% a Doctorate, while 835 have ‘other’ degree, and 419 have ‘no’ degree;
• 94% are 10-month employees; 1% are 11-month, and 5% are 12-month;
• 11% are ‘alternate route’ and 89% are ‘traditional route’;
• Only 800 are National Board Certified, and 136,027 are not (7,256 no response);
• Among the 143,130 staff with ‘highly qualified’ coding, 23% “doesn’t need to be”, 45% passed the ‘Praxis/NTE’, 15% by the ‘house matrix’, 5% has ’30 credits in content area’, 6% has graduate degree in ‘subject area’, and less than 1% are ‘nationally board certified’.
Title-Specific Certificated Staff
The following table is self-explanatory. For purposes of convenience, some non-instructional titles were combined, such as Educational Services (which includes librarians, therapists, psychologists, interpreters and specialists). Note that elementary teachers were not sub-categorized for math, language and science, which would account for less than 1,400 teachers (3%). Also, middle school and high school teachers sub-categorization of ‘general’ math, English and science is identified, although each of these subjects have ‘other’ content categories (e.g., high school math-other includes business, remedial and computers, and science-other includes biological, chemistry, and physics).
Certificated Staff in New Jersey Public Schools
Title | Total | Experience -District | Experience - NJ | Experience Total | Average Salary | Average Age |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Superintendent/CSA | 589 | 9.5 | 24.9 | 27.7 | $157,353 | 57 |
Admin Asst to Superintendent | 33 | 15 | 23.2 | 24.8 | $139,781 | 56 |
Interim Superintendent | 17 | 5.4 | 29.6 | 31.4 | $126,698 | 66 |
School Business Administrator | 576 | 7 | 13.4 | 13.8 | $114,014 | 53 |
Asst. School Business Administrator | 50 | 5.2 | 7.6 | 7.6 | $85,023 | 46 |
Asst Superintendent | 237 | 16.5 | 24.8 | 25.8 | $152,395 | 56 |
Director | 769 | 13.6 | 21.9 | 22.9 | $121,111 | 54 |
Supervisor | 2,288 | 15 | 20.8 | 21.69 | $107,763 | 52 |
Principal/Asst Principal | 4,109 | 14 | 19.9 | 20.6 | $116,136 | 50 |
Non-Supervisory Coordinator | 358 | 1639 | 19.2 | 19.6 | $86,134 | 50 |
Pre-School Teacher | 2,669 | 7.9 | 9.5 | 9.7 | $59,353 | 43 |
Elementary Teacher | 40,429 | 10.9 | 12.2 | 12.5 | $63,631 | 44 |
Middle School-Math Teacher | 3,186 | 9 | 10.6 | 10.9 | $62,032 | 43 |
Middle School-Science Teacher | 1,936 | 10.1 | 11.8 | 12.1 | $63,823 | 45 |
Middle School Language Teacher | 3,536 | 9.9 | 11.5 | 11.9 | $62,750 | 43 |
Other Middle School Teacher | 1,883 | 10.9 | 12 | 12.2 | $63,482 | 44 |
English Teacher | 5,740 | 9.6 | 11.1 | 11.5 | $64,278 | 43 |
English-Other Teacher | 4,154 | 13.3 | 15.2 | 15.7 | $70,095 | 50 |
Math Teacher | 5,266 | 9 | 11.1 | 11.5 | $65,987 | 44 |
Math-Other Teacher | 1,493 | 13.7 | 15.4 | 15.8 | $68,320 | 49 |
Science Teacher | 774 | 10.3 | 12.6 | 13.1 | $67,918 | 48 |
Science-Other Teacher | 3,999 | 8.7 | 10.8 | 11.3 | $67,941 | 45 |
Art Teacher | 3,271 | 11.1 | 12.6 | 12.9 | $64,056 | 46 |
Business Teacher | 1,217 | 11.2 | 13.3 | 13.5 | $67,791 | 49 |
World Language Teacher | 4,628 | 8.1 | 10 | 10.6 | $63,255 | 46 |
Health/Phys Ed Teacher | 7,068 | 12.4 | 13.9 | 14.2 | $66,141 | 44 |
Home Economics Teacher | 799 | 13.5 | 16.7 | 17.1 | $71,822 | 54 |
Industrial Arts Teacher | 1,130 | 14.1 | 17.3 | 17.6 | $74,158 | 50 |
Music Teacher Teacher | 3,701 | 11 | 13.6 | 14 | $65,835 | 45 |
Social Studies Teacher | 4,412 | 9.6 | 10.9 | 11.2 | $64,466 | 43 |
Vocational Education Teacher | 1,113 | 9.7 | 10.9 | 11.1 | $66,114 | 51 |
School Counselor | 4,185 | 12.7 | 15.8 | 16.5 | $75,156 | 48 |
Supplemental Instruction/Resource/Coach | 12,521 | 9.6 | 11.5 | 11.9 | $63,324 | 44 |
Educational Services | 14,994 | 10.3 | 13.5 | 14 | $71,403 | 50 |
Conclusions
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate to the reader that the title ‘teacher’ and ‘certificated staff’ is really a combination of many different job titles. In viewing the chart, some trends can be easily identified:
• Most teachers spend nearly their entire career in one district, and their entire career in New Jersey;
• There are only 287 Assistant Superintendents and Assistant Business Administrators, but three-times as many Directors;
• There are 2,288 Supervisors, but only 4,109 Principals/Assistant Principals. All three of these functions are responsible for staff evaluations;
• There are only 10,400 math teachers in elementary through high school, but we have more than 7,000 music/art and 7,000 Physical Education teachers;
• There are a significant number of Supplemental Instruction/Resource/Teacher Coach and Educational Services positions, accounting for almost 20% of certificated staff.
Author
Mark ‘Jay’ Williams is an Economics Fellow at the Common Sense Institute of New Jersey, a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing free-market solutions to the public policy challenges facing New Jersey.