Preparing Teachers of Statistics in the United States

In the later half of the last century, use of statistics by federal/state governments, businesses, and industries led to increased popularity of statistics as a discipline in the higher education. As the educators realized the need for knowledge of statistics early in the education, emphasis on statistics in K-12 curriculum also increased. However, with industries attracting most of the graduates with degrees or training in statistics, K-12 education and to some extend higher education also was left in a dire need of trained statistics teachers. Due to increased enrollment in Advanced Placement statistics, and increased use of statistics in other science subjects for data analysis, the demand for trained statistics teachers has become even greater. Although, teacher preparation programs are available in many different subjects, including mathematics, no such programs were available in statistics until recently. Efforts are made to develop new programs to prepare teachers of statistics to meet this increased demand in the United States. There are many problems that need attentions, but this first step towards teacher preparation in statistics makes the future for statistics teacher preparation look bright.