PolitiFact – Trump said ‘many’ teachers are ex-soldiers. Data shows 2%.

In a CNN town hall featuring former President Donald Trump, moderator Kaitlan Collins said there had been more than 200 mass shootings in 2023 and asked Trump whether he would sign into law any new gun restrictions if reelected.

Trump replied that he supports schools hiring teachers with gun experience.

“Many of these teachers are soldiers, ex-soldiers, ex-policeman,” Trump said May 10. “They’re people that really understand weapons.”

Trump suggested schools need only 5% of teachers armed, which was similar to a statement he made at the April National Rifle Association convention.

Research shows that armed school police do not prevent school shootings. The National Education Association teachers’ union and the National Association of School Resource Officers dispute that arming teachers is a viable solution.

We asked a Trump spokesperson for evidence that “many” teachers are ex-soldiers or former police officers, and he sent back a repeat of Trump’s words and a link to his comments at the NRA convention. 

Our research found that Trump exaggerated how many teachers are veterans; we found no national data on how many teachers are ex-police officers.

A tiny fraction of public school teachers have military experience

The U.S. Education Department keeps statistics on teachers who are military veterans. No matter how you slice the data, it shows former servicemembers represent a tiny fraction of teachers nationwide.

The department’s data for 2019, the most recent available, shows about 2% of the nation’s approximately 5.4 million teachers are military veterans — roughly 107,000. That includes public and private school teachers from preschool through high school.

A federal program, Troops to Teachers, helps servicemembers and veterans become certified and employed as teachers in K-12 schools. The program launched in 1993 was canceled Oct. 1, 2020, and reauthorized in December 2021. About half of the states participate in the program.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a bill in 2022 to give military veterans a path to a five-year teaching certificate. Military.com, a respected source of military news, contacted all of Florida’s school districts and found that six months after the program started, seven teachers were hired. At the start of the 2022-23 school year, Florida had more than 5,000 teacher openings.

A January press release from the DeSantis administration said more than 500 veterans had applied for the program.

We contacted teachers unions and law enforcement experts and could find no national data source on the percentage of teachers who are former police officers. 

Christopher R. Herrmann, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said, “There is very little ‘national data’ on police, since we have over 17,000 police departments and no one really keeps track of them, let alone the officers.”

Our ruling

Discussing the idea of arming teachers in schools to limit mass shootings, Trump said, “Many of these teachers are soldiers, ex-soldiers, ex-policeman.”

Education Department data for 2019 shows about 2% of the nation’s 5.4 million teachers are military veterans. Roughly 107,000 people is not a small number, but it represents a tiny fraction of the teaching corps.

We found no data on what percentage of teachers are ex-police officers, and Trump’s campaign provided no evidence.

We rate this claim Mostly False. 

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