That was a joke back in the days when I was on the launch/startup of USA Today, which loved, and I mean loved, to call trends. Thanks for Jonathan Wolfer for spotting this article from Denver on male elementary school teachers.
At first, I thought I skimmed the article too quickly, looking for the trend data to substantiate that, in fact, more males are teaching at the elementary school level. Well, at this school there’s a trend!
Would it make a difference if, suddenly, more males streamed back into the teaching profession. Yes, but only at the margins. The gender of the person at the head of the class is not as important as the effectiveness of the instruction, especially when it comes to literacy skills.