The new school year has started, and that means it's time for an evergreen story about teachers being burnt out and quitting in record numbers:
Teacher exit rates reached new highs in the past two years, according to data from several states. In Texas, thousands more teachers left the classroom in 2022 and 2023 compared with the years before the pandemic.
....“Across multiple data points, we see that the health and the state of the teaching profession is at or near a 50-year low,” said Matthew Kraft, a Brown University professor.
I can't say for sure if teachers are more burnt out than usual. Every year there are stories saying they are, and they're never backed up with anything more than anecdotal evidence. So who knows?
But it's easy to see if they're leaving the profession in droves. Just look at the number of teachers:
There are more teachers this year than any year in history, despite the fact that student enrollment is down yet again. Whatever teachers say, they're still showing up to teach.
Now, it's true that this doesn't tell us anything about the quality of teachers. And I don't doubt that teacher exits are up, what with baby boomers retiring. One way or another, though, there seem to be plenty of teachers to replace the boomers.
NOTE: This chart is for "local government education," which includes more than just teachers. But it goes up and down in sync with teachers, so it gives a good indication of teacher employment. Also note that for maximum accuracy I'm using numbers just for the month of July each year, not seasonally adjusted. They haven't been modified in any way.
Well, if you'd like an anecdote....
In Texas, at the college level, at least in STEM areas, women applying for openings has dropped off, and younger faculty are being poached.
(extrapolated from a discussion with one person at the single department at a major research university)
The article makea two claims: both teacher burnout and quits/turnover are up
Kevin admits he cant create a graph to argue about teacher burn-out.
Then he also admits he cant creat a graph to address quits/turnover so instead he will graph teacher hires minus quits mimus retirements and assume that this accurately reflects quits or turnover. Then he also admits the data doesnt actually include only teachers, instead he will use total educational employees which contains roughly 50+% teachers plus all other educational employees, but trust him its close enough.
So we are left with a chart that doesnt actually address the topic. But its a chart that reconfirms some priors, so we can run with it.
Its frustrating when we dont have good data.....but pretending that we have good data is bad form.
Recommend you start your own blog so you can post the truth.
Another confounding variable is that we are constantly needing more teachers. As kids come to us without even basic living skills, we need more counselors and behavior support teachers. And we only ever need more Special Education teachers as more and more students qualify. Someone with more time (I'm a teacher, sorry! ????) can find numbers for some of these issues. A good place to look if KD is really interested is to track the number of unfilled positions?
Or the length of time the position is vacant. I work in a K-12 public district and we’ve had some positions open for over a year. We have had more long term substitutes and people on license waivers in the past few years than ever. Granted, we’re tucked up against the borders of two states with much higher average teacher salaries than we offer, but that’s been the case for my entire adult life and it’s only been the past couple of years that we’ve struggled to even get applicants.
I think better measures would include teacher turnover rates and the percentage of rookie teachers on the job, particularly in districts serving poorer families. "On average, 23% of teachers left their school in the 2022-23 school year—a much higher percentage than pandemic rates, but a slight decrease from last year’s turnover spike. Schools serving the greatest proportion of students experiencing poverty lost 29% of their teachers between October 2022 and October 2023, while schools with the lowest concentration of need lost 19%." -- Educational Resource Strategies.
You can't really measure teacher turnover nationally and really understand its impact on the students who need services the most. Turnover is always highest in poor communities, and so these districts always have the least experienced teaching forces.
One Texas teacher who left in 2022 moved back home to Virginia -- my daughter.
Teachers come and go. Administration lasts forever…
Nah, administration sticks around just long enough to be vested in the pension system then gets a job in another state. Rinse/repeat.
There are about 7mil teachers and about 49mil students, which gives us 7 students/teacher ratio. I am yet to encounter anything like that in my boys' classrooms. I've never even seen 20:1. Something must happen to those teachers on the way to school. Maybe they get abducted?
That thing you're worried about (public schools being starved of funds and workers)? It's not a big deal to Kevin Drum, the childless retiree who has a vague knowledge of how to make charts and graphs that support his previously determined position.
I don't have any stats, just more anecdotal evidence. My wife is a teacher, has been for 22 years. She got a degree in education and a masters in varying exceptionalities (i.e. special education). She said that many people like her are leaving teaching. They're fed up with an array of issues -- pay, constantly changing guidelines/regulations/policies, absurd expectations of parents, etc. The people that are coming in to backfill those positions are not people that received degrees in education. They're people that have done all sorts of other jobs and fell into teaching for one reason or another. Some of them end up being decent but they are not people that have a passion for teaching and really care.
Anyway, like I said, it's just anecdotal and just pertains to my neck of the woods (Tampa). But, like Kevin stated, the charts don't account for the quality of teaching.
“varying exceptionalities”? Seriously? That’s the term now? I understand trying not to stigmatize anyone, but language that obfuscates rather than informs seems to be a growing trend. It kind of drives me crazy.
There's Varying Exceptionalities (VE) and Exceptional Student Education (ESE). I think ESE is used within the schools (my wife is an ESE teacher) and VE is used in academics.
And VE was the term 20-some years ago. No idea if that is still what the degree is called.
If I hadn’t seen the prior discussion I’d assume Exceptional Student Education meant Gifted and Talented programs. Which is exactly my point. Language should clarify and inform, not obfuscate.
There's no shortage of new teachers. In fact, every year we need to hire lots of them, because other teachers retire or quit.
The problem is that new teachers are, on average, not very good at their jobs! See e.g. some of the studies here—
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/new-studies-find-that-for-teachers-experience-really-does-matter/2015/03
(that was a 30-second Google search; there are many more studies where those came from...)
It takes years for teachers to get really good at what they do. They need more training and experience than they have at the start. This is why turnover is a problem. Higher turnover means more new teachers who are less good (for the first couple years) than the teachers they replaced. On average that means students are stuck with inexperienced teachers more of the time, resulting in worse education. Seems really obvious and straightforward.
A graph of the total number of teachers has basically nothing to do with the topic. I don't get it.
Surely somebody (like NCES) has data about the years of experience in teaching that teachers have, over time? That would be way more relevant.