Teachers aren't 'fleeing' the classroom

Teachers aren't quitting the profession, write Chad Aldeman and Samuel Yi. Turnover rates -- 8 percent for public school teachers -- have remained "relatively stable" over time. The "Covid spike" turned out to be temporary.

Photo: Katerina Holmes/Pexels

Although teachers report more stress and burnout than other working adults, their turnover rate is comparable to other professions, such as nursing and accounting, and lower than the quit rate for social workers, research shows.

Teachers in some schools and districts with high-need, low-income students are much more likely to quit, they write. That raises the odds students will be assigned to a novice teacher who's still learning the job. It also raises recruitment and training costs, which can be up to $25,000 per hire.

"Too much turnover can also harm a school’s internal culture and make it harder to implement school improvement initiatives, such as adopting a new curriculum or pursuing other turnaround efforts, which might be more efficiently achieved with a stable team," Aldeman and Yi write.

However, not all turnover is bad, they point out. "Teachers who leave the profession tend to be lower-performing than the ones who stay." In the District of Columbia, "a tougher evaluation system improved the overall quality of the district’s teacher workforce because it was able to hire new teachers who were even better than the ones who left."

Instead of trying to retain all teachers, the goal should be "retaining the most effective educators and those who work in the hardest-to-staff schools and roles," write Aldeman and Yi. Quality is more important than quantity.

Nationwide, school districts employ more teachers than ever, even as student enrollment falls. That can't last forever. Higher expectations for teachers -- perhaps coupled with higher expectations for student behavior -- should be achievable. And good teachers like to work with competent colleagues.