The Annual Report on Teachers Leaving the Profession arrives every fall, published by the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. It is designed to document general trends in teacher turnover over time, but it does not identify specific factors that led to teachers’ departures.
For example, the report does not indicate how many teachers left the profession because they were dissatisfied with compensation, working conditions, tenure, evaluation, testing, and so on.
As in past years, the latest report shows that the top reasons teachers left their jobs were 1) to teach in another N.C. public school system, 2) retirement, and 3) resignation due to family relocation. We can attribute about half of the statewide teacher turnover rate to these three reasons.
The first represents no net loss to the state. Those teachers are simply migrating from one public school to another (for unspecified reasons). The latter two are beyond school districts’ control.
In fact, teachers continue to find new opportunities in North Carolina schools. Nearly 4,100 of the 13,557 teachers that left the classroom last year remained in education. Of those who remained in education, most resigned to teach in another public school in North Carolina or accepted a nonteaching position in education. The number of teachers in these two categories has been on the rise in recent years.
Moreover, thousands of teachers leave the profession each year to address personal matters. These include family relocation, health, childcare, or their own continued education. Last year, approximately 2,600 departing teachers reported that they left the teaching profession for those reasons.
The categories that will get the most attention, despite the fact that they accounted for only 1.8 percent of the total teaching work force last year, concern teachers who were dissatisfied with teaching or left North Carolina to teach in another state. Last year, around 1,000 teachers resigned because they were dissatisfied with teaching or desired a career change. Another 734 teachers left North Carolina to teach in another state.
There was a year-to-year increase in both categories. While reporting limitations make it impossible to determine which aspects of the teaching profession prompted teachers to change careers, I suspect that intense recruiting efforts by out-of-state school districts led to the increase in North Carolina teachers accepting positions elsewhere.
Despite this year’s slight decrease, there has been an uptick in teacher turnover in recent years. Left-wing advocacy organizations, school district personnel, teacher unions, and the mainstream media have argued that Republican education reforms are driving more and more teachers out of North Carolina’s public school classrooms.
But correlation is not causation. There is simply not enough data to identify the cause or causes of teacher turnover in North Carolina. Unfortunately, that will not stop some from using the Annual Report on Teachers Leaving the Profession for political gain.
Dr. Terry Stoops is Director of Research and Education Studies for the John Locke Foundation.