Whites, Women Dominate Teaching Corps : Education: Racial makeup of public school educators has changed little in 20 years, survey finds. Percentage of male teachers is at a low point.

As U.S. public school students have grown more racially diverse, their teachers have remained overwhelmingly white and female, according to a survey released Monday by the nation’s largest teachers union.

The survey by the National Education Assn. found that 86.8% of public school teachers are white, roughly the same as 20 years ago. The survey found that 8% of teachers are black and 3% are Latino, while all other minorities account for the remaining 2.2%.

Nearly three-fourths of public school teachers are women, and the percentage of male teachers is at its lowest point since the NEA first measured the female-male ratio in 1961, the NEA reported.

The survey, conducted in the spring of 1991, was based on 1,354 responses to questionnaires distributed by mail. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.

The failure to recruit more male and minority teachers, particularly for elementary schools, is “very disheartening,” NEA Vice President Bob Chase said in releasing the report. “Students learn lessons about life through both formal instruction and what they see around them,” Chase said. “We need more male elementary teachers and more people of color at all grade levels to teach our children.”

One reason schools have trouble recruiting minority teachers is that the competition for well-educated minorities in the private sector is intense, and other professions offer higher salaries, more prestige and greater perks, educators said Monday. Many minority students take out large student loans to attend college, and this makes highly paid jobs even more attractive, many educators agree.

“Many of our young people are going into business because they can make more and move up the ladder faster,” said Faustine Jones-Wilson, acting dean of the school of education at predominantly black Howard University in Washington, D.C. “They have to go into debt to attend college, and they feel that they may have to major in something where the rewards are greater.”

Even within the field of education, she added, it pays to move out of the classroom and become a principal or administrator.

Money and status also keep many men from choosing teaching as a career. Men are still expected to be the breadwinners in many families, and teaching, particularly teaching young children, is still considered the realm of women.

“The sexist images have not gone away, they’ve only gone undercover,” said Dale Lange, associate dean of the University of Minnesota’s College of Education.

Men may be more likely to go into high school teaching, Lange added, because “elementary education is more oriented toward nurturing, and men do not necessarily consider themselves nurturers.”

Only 12% of the elementary school teachers surveyed are men, down from a high of 17.7% in 1981. Male teachers compose 43.8% of secondary school instructors, down from 56.8% in 1961.

The survey also found that:

--Nearly six out of every 10 public school teachers, 59.1%, say they would become teachers again if given the choice. The percentage of teachers reaffirming their career choice has been increasing since 1981, when 46.4% said they would become teachers again.

--Today’s teaching force is the most educated in the nation’s history: 53.1% of America’s public school teachers have earned master’s degrees or doctorates, compared with about 23% in 1961 and 49.6% in 1981.

--The required school work week averages 36.2 hours.