Education Week - March 9, 2022 - 4

Will There Really Be a Mass Exodus of Teachers?
Experts see poor morale as a warning sign, but are wary
about making predictions about turnover
By Madeline Will
Survey after survey says the same
thing: Teachers are tired and stressed-
and ready to quit. But will the nation
really see a mass teacher exodus in the
coming year?
Typically, 8 percent of teachers leave
the profession every year. There's no
national data yet to say whether teachers
have left the profession in the past
two years at a higher volume, even
though multiple recent surveys have
sounded the alarm that teachers are
preparing to head for the exit. In one
stunning example, the National Education
Association surveyed about
3,600 of its members in January and
found that 55 percent of respondents
said they are more likely to leave or
retire from education sooner than
planned because of the pandemic.
" This is a five-alarm crisis, " NEA
President Becky Pringle said in a statement,
adding that the staff shortages
in schools have left teachers burnt out
and unable to give students the oneon-one
attention they need.
Even so, experts warn caution when
making predictions about teacher resignations
based on survey results. In
the past, such talk has not materialized
into action.
" Teacher intentions are not the
same as actual teacher turnover behavior,
in part because the intention
is measured at a single point in time, "
said Tuan Nguyen, an assistant professor
at Kansas State University who
researches teacher policy and the
educator labor market. " The way that
teachers are feeling at the beginning of
the school year or even in early spring
isn't necessarily the same way they're
going to feel in April or early May. "
Nguyen and three other researchers
from Boston University, the University
of Florida, and Temple University
recently published a working paper
comparing teachers' turnover intentions
and actual turnover. The study
analyzed three iterations of nationally
representative surveys administered
by the National Center for Education
Statistics, with data from 2003-04,
2007-08, and 2011-12.
Researchers found that for every
100 teachers who indicated they
would leave the profession as soon as
possible, just 34 left-the rest were still
teaching the next year. (Meanwhile,
only 7 percent of teachers who didn't
indicate they were planning to leave
the profession actually quit the following
year.)
It often takes time for teachers to
find another job, Nguyen said, adding
that many potential leavers might
end up staying in the classroom for a
couple of years as they take classes to
pad their resumes or work to expand
their networks. And some teachers
might change their minds, especially
if their working conditions change,
he said.
Still, the paper found that teachers
who indicate they intend to leave
the profession as soon as possible
are nearly 27 percentage points more
likely to actually leave the profession
compared to teachers who indicate
otherwise. That effect held true
even after researchers controlled for
teacher and school characteristics.
Will COVID change the landscape
of teacher turnover?
One caveat to the study is that the
data used was from before the pandemic.
COVID-19 has dramatically
altered conditions in school buildings.
Some teachers have said they no
longer feel safe at work, especially as
many states and districts begin to lift
mask mandates. And the spread of the
virus has led to high volumes of staff
absences, causing many teachers to
have to skip their planning periods
to cover colleagues' classes. Survey
results show that teacher stress levels
have increased since 2019.
While federal teacher turnover data
from during the pandemic isn't available
yet, early indicators suggest that
teachers still aren't quitting in droves,
said Chad Aldeman, the policy director
of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown
University.
" We had this fear in 2020-it didn't
pan out, " he said, noting that some
state-level reports showed that teacher
turnover may have actually fallen in
the fall of 2020. While turnover was a
bit higher going into the 2021-22 school
year, it was still in line with historical
trends, Aldeman said: " It's hard to
characterize that as a mass exodus. "
While some onlookers are worried
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that the real exodus will happen this
school year and summer, Bureau of
Labor Statistics data is not showing significantly
higher than normal turnover
rates in public education.
Even so, individual districts are reporting
higher numbers of vacancies at
this point in the school year than they
typically do. Aldeman said that could be
caused by districts hiring more people,
especially since they have an influx of
federal COVID-19 relief money to staff
more positions. And because so many
teachers are reporting dissatisfaction
with their current jobs, there may be
more churn within districts, as neighboring
schools try to poach talent by offering
incentives and better conditions.
Also, there have always been perenSSign
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nial shortage areas, Aldeman noted.
Districts that serve mostly students
from low-income households historically
struggle to recruit and retain
teachers, as do districts in rural areas.
Districts have always had a hard time
recruiting teachers for certain subject
areas, including special education.
These problems may be magnified by
the pandemic.
That's why district leaders still need
to take teacher dissatisfaction reports
seriously, Nguyen said, even if the data
has not borne out a massive exodus
just yet.
" It's not so easy to just try to recruit
more teachers into the profession-
there's not a magic button we can
push to increase the teaching supply, "
he said, adding that retention is key.
" Even if we don't see a huge uptick [in
teacher turnover right away], I think if
50 percent of teachers say they want to
leave, that indicates to me they are feeling
very stressed and very burned out. "
Research has shown that teachers
who are experiencing symptoms of
burnout are less effective at their jobs.
'The working conditions were
unsustainable'
Teachers who have quit mid-year say
they were pushed to a breaking point,
and there was no relief in sight.
" I thought I was going to do this for
30-40 years and then retire, " said Clay
Michalec, who resigned in January
after more than a decade of teaching
band and orchestra in Maryland. " I
didn't leave the job because I didn't
like the job or I didn't like the kids-I
left because the working conditions
were unsustainable. "
Michalec said he felt like the system
was broken before the pandemic, but
the pandemic made everything worse.
His workload increased, and his stress
levels surged. Students were more disruptive
than in years past, which Michalec
attributed to social and developmental
delays due to remote learning.
Political tensions also wormed their
way into his classroom: Parents criticized
him for displaying Black Lives
Matter and LGBTQ pride flags, with
one parent even threatening to report
him to a state senator. Michalec's principal
supported him, and he was able
to keep his flags in his classroom, but
the experience was still frustrating,
Michalec said.
Ultimately, he said, he realized that
teaching was taking a serious toll on
his mental health. " I reached a point
where I knew I had to stop abandoning
myself for a career, " he said.
Michalec now works for an education
technology company. Ever since leaving
teaching, he's been able to stop taking
antidepressants. He's sleeping and exercising
more, and his blood pressure is
back to normal: " I feel human again. "
Experts say school leaders need
to heed these types of stories and
find ways to make teaching more
sustainable.
" Teachers' intentions are a measure
of a single point in time, " Nguyen said.
" There are things that policymakers,
principals, and superintendents can
do to affect teacher turnover between
now and May. ... Listen to teachers and
provide them with support so they feel
like they're heard and [can] do their
jobs better. "
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Education Week - March 9, 2022

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