WATERVILLE – Male teachers are vanishing from the classroom nationally, and the decline is happening in Maine as well.

Men now make up only one in five teachers in the nation’s public schools and account for only 9 percent of teachers in elementary schools, according to the National Education Association.

In Maine, the Department of Education says just 17 percent of the state’s elementary school teachers are men, down from 31 percent in 1980.

Education officials say the Task Force on Gender Equity in Education is likely to take a look at whether there is a connection between the declining number of male teachers and the widening achievement gap between boys and girls in school.

“It’s very much of interest to us,” said Patrick Phillips, deputy commissioner of the Department of Education and a former elementary school teacher who is heading the task force with first lady Karen Baldacci, also a teacher.

Bryan Nelson, founder of the Minneapolis-based MenTeach, a nonprofit trying to attract more men to education, said he doesn’t think men are better teachers than women but says the gender imbalance is unfair to boys. He says there’s a connection between the lack of men in schools and the fact that boys have lower test scores and high school graduation rates than girls.

“Boys go to school and don’t see anyone who looks like them,” he said. “They’re not dummies. They say, ‘This is somewhere I don’t belong.'”

Education officials say some Maine schools have just one or two male teachers on staff. Some have none.

“We’re an all-female staff,” said Deborah Emery, principal of Cottrell Elementary School in Monmouth.

There is no single reason for the decline.

Some point to low teacher salaries and say men expect to be big breadwinners. Others believe men want high-status jobs, enjoy competitive professions and feel uneasy in a nurturing job such as teaching.

“It’s a little more huggy,” said Pittsfield third-grade teacher Jim Hammond. “Teaching [small children] can lend itself to a more motherly approach than a fatherly approach.”

Nelson says there may be another unsettling reason for the decline: sexual abuse allegations.

Nelson says some men who might want to teach fear false molestation accusations and said society looks at men with suspicion. That view of men has been worsened, he said, by recent attention to priest abuse scandals and even the trial faced by Michael Jackson.

“Society has a narrow view of men,” Nelson said. “We think men are dangerous.”

The National Education Association, hoping to reverse the trend, advocates that states actively encourage high school boys to consider a teaching career.

The teachers union also believes higher teacher salaries would slow the trend. It says states that pay teachers well have more male teachers and vice versa.

Mississippi, for example, has the fewest male teachers and is ranked 49th out of 50 states in teacher pay.