In this report, we address this question with a comprehensive look at public school teachers in Greater Milwaukee. This work builds on a pair of reports we published in December 2014 that defined and tracked changes to the K-12 educational landscape in the City of Milwaukee. The analyses broadly laid out the “system” of schools in the city — including public, charter, and private schools — to delineate where Milwaukee schoolchildren are being educated, student demographics in the various types of schools, and the performance characteristics of those schools. With this information in the public conversation, understanding the teaching workforce serving students in our region became a logical next step for our research.
Our analysis expands the scope of the K-12 reports to the four-county Milwaukee metropolitan area. It uses the most up-to-date data available to answer a number of questions, including:
- How many teachers are there in Greater Milwaukee and how does that number compare among school districts?
- What are the ages and demographics of the teaching workforce across the region?
- How do teacher qualifications and levels differ among different districts, and have there been significant changes over time?
The teaching profession in Wisconsin has been the subject of much discussion and debate in recent years, particularly during consideration and implementation of Wisconsin Act 10. Consequently, our analysis includes data over multiple years to capture changes in teacher characteristics that have occurred since Act 10’s adoption in 2011.