USA Today reports (with map!) that Massachusetts ranks ninth in the percentage of teachers who are over 50. Its source is the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, which warns of an approaching “tsunami” of retirements by teachers in the Baby Boom generation. 

In Massachusetts, 53.3 percent of teachers are over 50. West Virginia is by far the worst positioned for a teacher shortage; 67.6 percent of its teachers are over 50. Second place goes to Maine, with 55.8 percent.

If Maine gets desperate enough, will it start poaching good teachers from the Bay State by offering a bit more money? At least we don’t have to worry about New York: Only 41.4 percent of its current teacher workforce is over 50, so it’s not exactly a sellers’ market for education school graduates.

Oddly, the youngest-skewing teaching corps is in Kentucky (40.0 percent under over 50), even though it borders geriatric West Virginia. The American Federation of Teachers ranked Kentucky 35th and West Virginia 45th for teacher pay in 2006-07, which doesn’t seem like enough of a difference to explain why the latter state has so few new teachers.