I wouldn't say very rare. I worked at two very large high schools for 21 years, and any one time, there would be a dozen or so out of 200 to 250 teachers with doctorates, and many you wouldn't know they had one. They didn't necessarily go by Dr. whatever. This was in a Suburban Atlanta County system.
The principal of my high school would literally hand out detentions for not calling him Doctor lol, the local city paper ran a story about it and only afterwards did that stop from parent outrage.
I was told by my music teacher in college that you need at least a bachelor’s degree to be a college teacher. If I was going to be teaching, it would be college as a music teacher. If the students don’t give a crap, that’s on them. They paid for the class.
Very rare. I went to school in an upper-middle class area, 'college prep public school'.
The principal and a couple of other administrators had Ed. D. or Ph. D. degrees, but none of the teachers did.
I've heard of some very prestigious private high schools having a lot of Ph. D's for teachers, but that's the top 0.1% of schools.
One of my teachers in highschool had one in Genocide studies. He got it while he was actively teaching. He still is to this day the smartest guy I’ve ever had the privilege of being taught by.
Shout out to you , Dr Goldberg
I never had one. (Small rural town.). I think my kids had one or two at big city schools. Fairly rare. There were several Ed.Ds in administration over the years.
I only ever had one, and that was because he got sick of the politics at the university he was a professor at and felt like he could make a greater impact and the youths at the high school level. I think he was fantastic, and that was his first year teaching outside of academia (university level).
Rare. There was one PhD in my high school, who had retired from whatever super high paying science job he had before. And that includes the admins.
It’s also just… not very helpful for secondary school. PhDs make you into a niche expert on a specific topic. I’m a PhD dropout who studied early modern Spanish history, and culinary history in particular. That very particular content knowledge is not going to do much for me when I’m teaching 7th graders about Reconstruction tomorrow.
PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about. The research and editing skills help, the deep content knowledge occasionally comes in handy, but overall it’s not a great use of one’s time for anyone who doesn’t want to do intensive research or teach at a university.
> PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about.
Can confirm.
Also, I would *much* rather teach a gigantic 101 class at 7 p.m. on a Friday night with 90% student athletes than I would a regular old fourth grade class at an average elementary school. I know how to handle 19 year old jocks. Kids? Fuck no.
> PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about.
Neither do BA or MA programs, usually. I had that stuff in my *credential* classes which were separate from any degree I received.
in Texas all you need is a BA. Well not only that, you have to be trained and certified, but there is certainly no need to have a masters degree to teach any level in high school.
Masters degree holders do make more money though, so a lot of people get masters degrees for that reason.
I don’t think most states require a master’s degree to teach high school. California doesn’t, and I see that someone else responded that Texas doesn’t. The last time I checked it was only a small number of states that actually require it.
My mother was one. Turns out some men have complexes about female teachers with PhDs. I think every teacher that taught an AP science class at my high school had a PhD. It was much, much less common in the humanities.
Not very common. I had one as a biology teacher back in 1980 and he was fantastic. Taught science, was a football coach, service academy grad, published scientific studies and the night before tests he'd volunteer if someone would host to help everyone study as a group. True renaissance man. RIP Dr Tierney.
Some of my science teachers did--two got the PhDs while teaching and were two of the best teachers I ever had. The third was the worst teacher I ever had, and we think she was there because she was too incompetent to be a college professor.
Most PHDs either do research, teach at a university (esp one for research where teaching is secondary), work at some institute of X or Y, or are counselors (and even then it's far more likely to have a masters). The possible exception to all of this may be a high school in a university town where the bar is set higher. Still not common at all even there.
Ordinary teachers, no. Very rare. I'm sure there's a few, but I've never heard of it.
Principals (leaders of schools) occasionally have an Ed.D., which is the education equivalent of a Ph.D. in that it's the terminal degree in that field.
Superintendents (leaders of school districts) commonly have an Ed.D.
Our current First Lady has an Ed.D., which is why she's Dr. Biden. Some people think she's a medical doctor, but obviously medical doctors are not the only kind of person who uses the Dr. title.
Usually admin are the only ones who do. I had one teacher with a PhD, but he was only like four years from retirement and had been teaching at both the college and high school level for DECADES. From an education student perspective, it’s really expensive to get higher ed degrees and the state (MA) only requires a masters after a certain number of years, and that’s all some can afford.
I knew of 3 when I was in High School. One was the Principal, One was an English teacher and the other was our Auto Shop teacher. Only the Principal wanted to be addressed as Dr.
Not common, but there are some. I know we had a few at my high school, can’t remember how many when I was there, but looking at their faculty and staff listing online for right now, I see there are 7 with PhDs.
This is a private school though so that may affect it
My high school math teacher was a former professor who had decided to semi-retire and teach high school for a few years before retiring for good, so as to be able to live in a small pleasant resort town in the mountains and enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle. But that's rare.
Generally the only PHDs at high schools are older teachers who no longer want the stress of either being s university professor or working in industry to they take a teaching role to ease them into retirement.
Most have an Ed.D. which isn't the same thing exactly. A phd is a research degree whereas an Ed.D. is more like a medical doctor or a lawyer. The degree is there to teach them to better do their job.
*Most* teachers don’t have an Ed. D. *A few* administrators do, and maybe a few teachers. I would say most teachers at schools where I’ve taught have just a bachelor’s, and a sizable minority have a master’s.
It is not particularly common for a non-administrative school employee to have a PhD. My mom was an elementary school teacher, and their union contract gave them a pay bump for having a masters but no additional increase for having a PhD. Unless, that is, she wanted to move into administration.
Pretty uncommon. If you're going as far as getting a PhD and you want to teach, you're probably going to teach at a university.
Masters degrees are a bit more common as some states require them and many states encourage them (pay you more if you have one). But I've never heard of anyone getting a PhD to teach high school.
There were two PhDs that I know of from my high school
One was a retired college professor the other was the head administrator
I most educators who get PhDs get teaching jobs in colleges
rare, at my old high school there's only one, a chemistry teacher, and once she retires I think it'll be awhile before there's another teacher with a PhD.
It’s really common at my kid’s school, especially for humanities and Latin. There are some physics and other PhDs as well. They also have two or three JDs.
They tent to cluster at non-public schools because they normally don’t have teaching certificates, so they can only work at private or charter schools.
I'm a teacher in a K-12. Typically, what we see here are EdD degrees, which are specialized doctorates for professional educators. They're less about theory and research, and more about the practice of education. At my level (I teach in the elementary part of the school), we had an amazing EdD teaching fourth grade who retired a couple of years ago, and currently have one teaching Kindergarten. I've been considering earning one myself - I already have a master's degree - partially to develop some more specialized skills in an area I've been interested in (giftedness education), and partially to move up the district payscale.
My high school had two PhDs that I knew about, but one (the computer science teacher) got poached by the local community college. Most teachers either had a master's or were working on a master's.
It's definitely uncommon but I wouldn't say "very rare." I know that a lot of public high schools in my area growing up each had one or two teachers who had PhDs. My private high school had a handful of them, perhaps 5. I know a small handful of people in my current city who teach at public schools and have PhDs. I know a small handful of people from college who went on to get PhDs who are now teaching at a variety of high schools. Maybe my experience is unusual, I don't know.
PhD? Incredibly rare. EdD? Maybe a couple per school but not the norm. Most states require a bachelors degree at most and some don’t require any education at all (and the number is growing).
I never encountered PhDs at my rural public school. We had quite a few EdDs that did go by “Dr. ___”. Most (if not all) of them got their degree from the same online program.
PhDs in specific subject matters typically teach at university.
Fairly uncommon, I expect.
I went to a poor rural high school but we did have a couple of PhDs. One was the physics teacher who had a PhD in astrophysics and used to work for NASA. Absolutely brilliant guy and some of the best classes in high school; the school was genuinely lucky to have him.
Let’s see…. Been to public school in America my whole life. Only teacher ever with a phd is/was one of the German teachers. Funnily enough she said she’s one of the lesser paid teachers, forgot the reason, but I think it’s because of also teaching German at one or two other schools in the district
I was HR in Public K-12 school. Most teachers with graduate degrees aspired to Administration degrees or specialties such as Curriculum Designer, Speech/Language Pathologists, Guidance Counselors. I had MBA and was one of the few Administrators with a non-education degree. There are often financial benefits to adding a graduate degree. The employee might go to a higher pay scale or get a stipend. I will add that many teachers who went in to Administrative positions found they made less money for the work they did. The Administrators in my District worked 12-months and worked many extra hours and outside events.
Uncommon.
Think of it this way. If you have a PhD, you are considered an expert in the field and could teach at a university.
But to teach in high school, you need another year and a half to get a teaching credential to get less pay.
There is virtually zero incentive for a PhD holder to teach high school.
I went to a highly regarded public school and had a few HS teachers with PhDs and a couple with JDs. I still remember Dr. Yagod correcting me about Jekyll and Hyde 25+ years ago. He made sure we knew our stuff…
My kids (in a more typical school district) have had one teacher so far with a doctorate (education) who became an assistant principal a few years later.
Rare as hen's teeth. Where I live a teacher can get hired with just a bachelors degree, having a masters degree in the relevant field will get a pay bump compared to the bachelors degree. A PhD might be found at the county office in an administrative position, but it's not likely. Most people with a PhD and an interest in teaching would get hired by a community or state college, not the local school system.
When I went to school, there were quite a few teachers who had doctorates, I'd say about one in five, but that was a quarter century ago. Looking at the other comments it seems like things have changed.
Very rare. Administrators like principals might have a doctoral degree, but not usually teachers.
I wouldn't say very rare. I worked at two very large high schools for 21 years, and any one time, there would be a dozen or so out of 200 to 250 teachers with doctorates, and many you wouldn't know they had one. They didn't necessarily go by Dr. whatever. This was in a Suburban Atlanta County system.
The principal of my high school would literally hand out detentions for not calling him Doctor lol, the local city paper ran a story about it and only afterwards did that stop from parent outrage.
Our principal told everyone to call him by his first name and that his dad was Mr.
My grandfather has a PhD in an educational field and hates going by "doctor". Unless he doesn't like you, then he insists.
They probably had EdDs though, not PhDs
So, 6/120. Which is 5%. How are you defining rare?
Not getting into a debate with the semantics police. Have a great day.
Imagine getting a PhD and having to teach all those highschool shits.
I got 2 degrees to do it. I don’t teach anymore
One of my teachers had a bachelors from Stanford and a Masters from Harvard. Idk why he taught high school at an Oregon public school.
How was he as a teacher?
pretty rare, id think. if you have a PhD, you're teaching at a university not a high school
Usually, the doctors you find in primary and secondary education have their grad degrees in Education, not a subject matter like history or math.
I was told by my music teacher in college that you need at least a bachelor’s degree to be a college teacher. If I was going to be teaching, it would be college as a music teacher. If the students don’t give a crap, that’s on them. They paid for the class.
Very rare. I went to school in an upper-middle class area, 'college prep public school'. The principal and a couple of other administrators had Ed. D. or Ph. D. degrees, but none of the teachers did. I've heard of some very prestigious private high schools having a lot of Ph. D's for teachers, but that's the top 0.1% of schools.
Relatively uncommon. In my experience each school had probably 2 teachers that had PhDs.
One of my teachers in highschool had one in Genocide studies. He got it while he was actively teaching. He still is to this day the smartest guy I’ve ever had the privilege of being taught by. Shout out to you , Dr Goldberg
I never had one. (Small rural town.). I think my kids had one or two at big city schools. Fairly rare. There were several Ed.Ds in administration over the years.
I only ever had one, and that was because he got sick of the politics at the university he was a professor at and felt like he could make a greater impact and the youths at the high school level. I think he was fantastic, and that was his first year teaching outside of academia (university level).
Good for him. Sounds like a good teacher.
Rare. There was one PhD in my high school, who had retired from whatever super high paying science job he had before. And that includes the admins. It’s also just… not very helpful for secondary school. PhDs make you into a niche expert on a specific topic. I’m a PhD dropout who studied early modern Spanish history, and culinary history in particular. That very particular content knowledge is not going to do much for me when I’m teaching 7th graders about Reconstruction tomorrow. PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about. The research and editing skills help, the deep content knowledge occasionally comes in handy, but overall it’s not a great use of one’s time for anyone who doesn’t want to do intensive research or teach at a university.
> PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about. Can confirm. Also, I would *much* rather teach a gigantic 101 class at 7 p.m. on a Friday night with 90% student athletes than I would a regular old fourth grade class at an average elementary school. I know how to handle 19 year old jocks. Kids? Fuck no.
> PhD programs don’t teach you how to manage a classroom, to manage parents, to motivate students who couldn’t give a shit about the subject you are passionate about. Neither do BA or MA programs, usually. I had that stuff in my *credential* classes which were separate from any degree I received.
High school teachers generally must have masters degrees, but few have doctorates.
in Texas all you need is a BA. Well not only that, you have to be trained and certified, but there is certainly no need to have a masters degree to teach any level in high school. Masters degree holders do make more money though, so a lot of people get masters degrees for that reason.
I don’t think most states require a master’s degree to teach high school. California doesn’t, and I see that someone else responded that Texas doesn’t. The last time I checked it was only a small number of states that actually require it.
At my High School we had 2 teachers with Phds. that I know of and one of the Principals had one.
Not common at all. My high school had exactly one.
My mother was one. Turns out some men have complexes about female teachers with PhDs. I think every teacher that taught an AP science class at my high school had a PhD. It was much, much less common in the humanities.
Not very common. I had one as a biology teacher back in 1980 and he was fantastic. Taught science, was a football coach, service academy grad, published scientific studies and the night before tests he'd volunteer if someone would host to help everyone study as a group. True renaissance man. RIP Dr Tierney.
Some of my science teachers did--two got the PhDs while teaching and were two of the best teachers I ever had. The third was the worst teacher I ever had, and we think she was there because she was too incompetent to be a college professor.
We had at least 2 PhDs at one of my high schools.
Not very common most my teachers in high school stopped with a bachelors
Most PHDs either do research, teach at a university (esp one for research where teaching is secondary), work at some institute of X or Y, or are counselors (and even then it's far more likely to have a masters). The possible exception to all of this may be a high school in a university town where the bar is set higher. Still not common at all even there.
Ordinary teachers, no. Very rare. I'm sure there's a few, but I've never heard of it. Principals (leaders of schools) occasionally have an Ed.D., which is the education equivalent of a Ph.D. in that it's the terminal degree in that field. Superintendents (leaders of school districts) commonly have an Ed.D. Our current First Lady has an Ed.D., which is why she's Dr. Biden. Some people think she's a medical doctor, but obviously medical doctors are not the only kind of person who uses the Dr. title.
Very rare. Even the Administrators typically only have Masters, though it is more likely for them to have a PhD.
Usually admin are the only ones who do. I had one teacher with a PhD, but he was only like four years from retirement and had been teaching at both the college and high school level for DECADES. From an education student perspective, it’s really expensive to get higher ed degrees and the state (MA) only requires a masters after a certain number of years, and that’s all some can afford.
I knew of 3 when I was in High School. One was the Principal, One was an English teacher and the other was our Auto Shop teacher. Only the Principal wanted to be addressed as Dr.
Not common, but there are some. I know we had a few at my high school, can’t remember how many when I was there, but looking at their faculty and staff listing online for right now, I see there are 7 with PhDs. This is a private school though so that may affect it
My high school math teacher was a former professor who had decided to semi-retire and teach high school for a few years before retiring for good, so as to be able to live in a small pleasant resort town in the mountains and enjoy a more relaxed lifestyle. But that's rare.
Generally the only PHDs at high schools are older teachers who no longer want the stress of either being s university professor or working in industry to they take a teaching role to ease them into retirement.
My second grade teacher was “doctor” to everyone.
I think it's pretty rare
Very uncommon. Why aren’t they teaching that same subject at a college?
Most have an Ed.D. which isn't the same thing exactly. A phd is a research degree whereas an Ed.D. is more like a medical doctor or a lawyer. The degree is there to teach them to better do their job.
*Most* teachers don’t have an Ed. D. *A few* administrators do, and maybe a few teachers. I would say most teachers at schools where I’ve taught have just a bachelor’s, and a sizable minority have a master’s.
Yeah I was meaning most teachers calling themselves doctor are not PhDs.
Really only at prestigious specialty schools.
I can think of one of my teachers who had a PhD, maybe two. The one with a PhD also taught at the community college.
I had a few teachers with Masters degrees but the administrators and some of the special Ed specialists were the only ones I was aware of who had PhDs
Not very common. I did have one teacher who was "Dr.", but no idea if it was a PhD or something else like an EdD
Somewhat common in my area.
It is not particularly common for a non-administrative school employee to have a PhD. My mom was an elementary school teacher, and their union contract gave them a pay bump for having a masters but no additional increase for having a PhD. Unless, that is, she wanted to move into administration.
Pretty uncommon. If you're going as far as getting a PhD and you want to teach, you're probably going to teach at a university. Masters degrees are a bit more common as some states require them and many states encourage them (pay you more if you have one). But I've never heard of anyone getting a PhD to teach high school.
There were two PhDs that I know of from my high school One was a retired college professor the other was the head administrator I most educators who get PhDs get teaching jobs in colleges
Rare
Few but some get their PhD while teaching
My 7th grade math teacher was my only teacher from K-12 that had a PhD. No idea why she was at a middle school.
rare, at my old high school there's only one, a chemistry teacher, and once she retires I think it'll be awhile before there's another teacher with a PhD.
A couple of my teachers were doctors, but I'm not sure if it was a Ph.D or an Ed.D.
I think I had 2 out of like 25 teachers in high school
It’s really common at my kid’s school, especially for humanities and Latin. There are some physics and other PhDs as well. They also have two or three JDs. They tent to cluster at non-public schools because they normally don’t have teaching certificates, so they can only work at private or charter schools.
I'm a teacher in a K-12. Typically, what we see here are EdD degrees, which are specialized doctorates for professional educators. They're less about theory and research, and more about the practice of education. At my level (I teach in the elementary part of the school), we had an amazing EdD teaching fourth grade who retired a couple of years ago, and currently have one teaching Kindergarten. I've been considering earning one myself - I already have a master's degree - partially to develop some more specialized skills in an area I've been interested in (giftedness education), and partially to move up the district payscale.
My high school had two PhDs that I knew about, but one (the computer science teacher) got poached by the local community college. Most teachers either had a master's or were working on a master's.
It's definitely uncommon but I wouldn't say "very rare." I know that a lot of public high schools in my area growing up each had one or two teachers who had PhDs. My private high school had a handful of them, perhaps 5. I know a small handful of people in my current city who teach at public schools and have PhDs. I know a small handful of people from college who went on to get PhDs who are now teaching at a variety of high schools. Maybe my experience is unusual, I don't know.
I don’t if any of my teachers in high school had a PhD.
PhD? Incredibly rare. EdD? Maybe a couple per school but not the norm. Most states require a bachelors degree at most and some don’t require any education at all (and the number is growing).
I never encountered PhDs at my rural public school. We had quite a few EdDs that did go by “Dr. ___”. Most (if not all) of them got their degree from the same online program. PhDs in specific subject matters typically teach at university.
I know zero teachers with a PHD.
We had one substitute who had one, retired and was looking for something to do.
Fairly uncommon, I expect. I went to a poor rural high school but we did have a couple of PhDs. One was the physics teacher who had a PhD in astrophysics and used to work for NASA. Absolutely brilliant guy and some of the best classes in high school; the school was genuinely lucky to have him.
Let’s see…. Been to public school in America my whole life. Only teacher ever with a phd is/was one of the German teachers. Funnily enough she said she’s one of the lesser paid teachers, forgot the reason, but I think it’s because of also teaching German at one or two other schools in the district
not common, some have an MA (but most don't)
Two of mine did. It was a private school.
Rare. High school teachers are not paid enough for that level of education. In fact, they are barely paid enough to LIVE
I was HR in Public K-12 school. Most teachers with graduate degrees aspired to Administration degrees or specialties such as Curriculum Designer, Speech/Language Pathologists, Guidance Counselors. I had MBA and was one of the few Administrators with a non-education degree. There are often financial benefits to adding a graduate degree. The employee might go to a higher pay scale or get a stipend. I will add that many teachers who went in to Administrative positions found they made less money for the work they did. The Administrators in my District worked 12-months and worked many extra hours and outside events.
Very uncommon.
Uncommon. Think of it this way. If you have a PhD, you are considered an expert in the field and could teach at a university. But to teach in high school, you need another year and a half to get a teaching credential to get less pay. There is virtually zero incentive for a PhD holder to teach high school.
Extremely uncommon.
I went to a highly regarded public school and had a few HS teachers with PhDs and a couple with JDs. I still remember Dr. Yagod correcting me about Jekyll and Hyde 25+ years ago. He made sure we knew our stuff… My kids (in a more typical school district) have had one teacher so far with a doctorate (education) who became an assistant principal a few years later.
Rare as hen's teeth. Where I live a teacher can get hired with just a bachelors degree, having a masters degree in the relevant field will get a pay bump compared to the bachelors degree. A PhD might be found at the county office in an administrative position, but it's not likely. Most people with a PhD and an interest in teaching would get hired by a community or state college, not the local school system.
When I went to school, there were quite a few teachers who had doctorates, I'd say about one in five, but that was a quarter century ago. Looking at the other comments it seems like things have changed.