Fewer young people want to be teachers, writes Jessica Grose in the New York Times. The new teacher pipeline is running dry.
She cites a working paper by Matthew Kraft of Brown and Melissa Arnold Lyon of the University at Albany which found many measures at a 50-year low. Stress is high. Prestige is low.
Perceptions of teacher prestige have fallen between 20 percent and 47 percent in the last decade . . . Interest in the teaching profession among high school seniors and college freshman has fallen 50 percent since the 1990s and 38 percent since 2010 . . . The number of new entrants into the profession has fallen by roughly one third over the last decade, and the proportion of college graduates that go into teaching is at a 50-year low. Teachers’ job satisfaction is also at the lowest level in five decades, with the percent of teachers who feel the stress of their job is worth it dropping from 81 percent to 42 percent in the last 15 years.
The decline started more than a decade ago, well before the pandemic, Kraft says.
Even when schools are able to hire new teachers, many have one foot out the door, writes Fordham's Meredith Coffey, who left the classroom in 2022. Teaching is seen as inflexible and not "family friendly," especially to young people who have friends in other professions working on hybrid or at-home schedules.
She met a 22-year-old, newly certified kindergarten teacher who was full of enthusiasm -- but also planning to leave teaching and "move on to something more flexible" when she has children of her own.
"Teacher turnover continues to escalate while enrollment in teacher-prep programs declines," she writes. Thirty-eight percent of teachers ages 25 to 34 plan to leave teaching, in contrast to 30 percent of their older colleagues. "Among teachers who planned to leave as of 2022, 26 percent cited a desire for greater workplace flexibility as a top reason motivating their career change."
Teachers who leave are "going into fields like ed tech, instructional design, IT services, consulting, and software development," jobs that don't have 20-minute lunch breaks.
Flexible work schedules could "attract new teachers and combat burnout and attrition," Coffey writes. For example, "schools could consider scheduling four days for concentrated core academic instruction, with one day for activities like tutoring, the arts, physical education, internships, or community service," Coffey writes. While students are on field trips or doing extracurriculars, teachers could have time "to plan, grade, call families, or meet remotely with colleagues." Or take the kids to the dentist.