Gender gaps among public school leaders have reversed since the late 1980s, finds a new federal analysis.
The National Center for Education Statistics found that 1 in 4 public and private school principals in 1987-88 was a woman. That rate remains the same for private schools, but in public schools in 2011-12, 52 percent of principals were women. Slight upticks also occurred in the share of school leaders who are nonwhite, but white principals still make up nearly 90 percent of the total. The analysis, based on more than 750,000 administrators, also found that there were about 12,000 more principals in 2011-12 than in 1987-88, and that contemporary school leaders were more likely to have master’s degrees.
