A survey released last year by the National Education Association (NEA) found 55% of educators want to leave teaching earlier than they originally planned. The main reason? Burnout from massive labor shortages.
About one in six teachers expressed they would likely leave their job pre-pandemic. This increased to one in four by the 2020-21 school year. In 2021 and 2022, teachers were twice as likely to report experiencing frequent job-related stress and difficulty coping with their job-related stress than the general population of working adults, according to the 2023 State of the American Teacher survey, released by RAND in June.
At one elementary school within the Fort Worth Independent School District, there was a whopping 88% teacher turnover rate for the 2022-23 school year. The year prior, there was a 42% turnover rate.
“More than half of our teachers are reporting frequent job-related stress and burnout, and that number is even higher for our Black educators and our female educators,” said NEA President Becky Pringle. “Teacher well-being continues to remain worse than that of other working adults, and this crisis is hurting our students and our communities.”
In March 2024, Education Resources Strategy (ERS), a national nonprofit that partners with school system leaders, released an analysis of teacher turnover trends from 2021 to 2023. Using data from nine large, unnamed urban and suburban school districts, 23% of teachers left their school or teaching role during the 2022-23 school year. While it is higher than pre-pandemic turnover in the sample, which was around 18% during the 2019-20 school year, it is lower than the 2021-2022 school year’s peak of 26%, Education Week reports.
Most impacted by the shortage are higher-poverty schools. The ERS analysis determined schools serving the greatest proportion of students from low-income families lost 29% of their teachers between Oct. 2022 and Oct. 2023. Schools with the lowest concentration of poverty lost 19%. When teachers change schools within their district, they are much more likely to move to a more affluent school.
Amy Rock Editorial, LLC 