Who Are Today’s Career and Technical Education Teachers?

Career and technical education teachers (labeled Vocational/Technical in the charts below) make up about 11 percent of all public high school teachers across the country, according to 2011-2012 data from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). There are over 125,000 career and technical education teachers. Nearly 42 percent of these teachers are age 50 or older. Almost a quarter (23.5 percent) have more than 20 years of full-time teaching experience.

While career and technical education teachers have the highest percentage of teachers without a bachelor’s degree (14.2 percent), nearly 80 percent have bachelor’s or master’s degrees and almost 2 percent hold doctorates.

Data about the categories and characteristics of teachers are available in the National Center for Education Statistics tables.

Some examples:

If you are interested in more information on the national landscape, check out 21st Century Educators: Developing and Supporting Great Career and Technical Education Teachers, a special report from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders (GTL Center) at the American Institutes for Research.