The State of Languages in the U.S.: A Statistical Portrait
Number of Language Teachers in Public High Schools, 2003/2004–2011/2012
The number of public high school teachers specializing in world languages has not changed substantially over the most recent decade for which data are available, even though there is a well-documented teacher shortage. The one exception is Spanish teachers, whose numbers increased by over ten thousand from 2004 to 2012. Unfortunately, over that same time period, the share of students in French, German, Latin, and Spanish language classes who had a teacher with a college degree in the subject fell between 5% and 11%.