Andrew Camp, Gema Zamarro, and Josh McGee
March 15th marks three years since then Governor Asa Hutchinson announced that public schools in Arkansas would close to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Since then, students, teachers, and school staff have had to contend with abrupt pivots to remote learning, quarantines, and increased health risks. Despite schools remaining open for most of the pandemic, Arkansas’s students still missed significant learning which will likely impact students’ lifetime earnings and the state’s economy for decades to come.
Research consistently demonstrates that teachers are the most important school-based factor for students’ success. Teachers will undoubtedly play a big role in any plan to address the pandemic’s impacts on student learning and help all students reach their full potential. Unfortunately, since the pandemic began, teachers have indicated on surveys that they are feeling high levels of stress and job-related burnout. In previous research, we found that teachers who had to change the mode of instruction, teach hybrid classes, or were approaching retirement age (i.e., were more experienced) were more likely to say they intended to leave the profession.
Given the serious challenges that Arkansas students face and apparent dissatisfaction among teachers, it’s natural to be concerned about increased teacher turnover and potential teacher shortages. In our new report, we examine teacher turnover before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Before we dig into our findings, we need to talk about turnover.
While any turnover potentially harms students’ outcomes, different types of turnover have different implications for the health and stability of the Arkansas teacher workforce. If teacher turnover is largely caused by movements between schools and districts, policy solutions might focus on understanding why some teachers prefer one school to another and target those concerns.
Conversely, if teacher turnover is largely caused by teachers exiting the public education workforce entirely this could indicate dissatisfaction with the profession that would require more systematic efforts to address.
To describe these different types of teacher turnover from one academic year to the next, we use the following terms:
- Exiters are teachers who leave the Arkansas public education workforce entirely;
- Switchers change from a teaching to a non-instructional role but continue working in Arkansas public schools;
- Movers leave their current school to teach in another public school or district in the state; and
- Stayers remain in a teaching role at the same school.
With that vocabulary out of the way, it’s time to dig into our findings.
1. Teacher turnover was relatively stable for the first two years of the pandemic but has risen entering the 2022-23 school year.
Before the pandemic, Arkansas public schools had a teacher retention rate of around 78%. During the pandemic, there was a moderate increase in turnover of 3 percentage points entering 2021-22 and a larger increase of 5 percentage points entering 2022-23. This was due to more teachers switching to non-instructional roles or leaving the education workforce entirely. Given that about 32,000 teachers are employed by Arkansas school districts each year, this indicates that about 1,250 more teachers left the classroom during the summer of 2022 than what we would have expected on average during pre-pandemic years.
Figure 1 – Arkansas Teacher Turnover and Retention Over Time
2. Changes in teacher turnover have not been uniform across the state.
Before the pandemic teacher turnover varied a lot across school districts. Some school districts, particularly those in eastern and southern Arkansas, saw consistently high levels of turnover while other districts had more stable teacher workforces.
Figure 2 – Average Teacher Turnover Pre-Pandemic (2013-14 to 2019-20),
by District
However, districts around the state have seen increases, particularly entering the current (2022-23) school year. While before the pandemic only 7 districts had turnover rates above 40%, entering the 2022-23 school year, 22 districts had turnover rates greater than 40%.
Figure 3 – Teacher Turnover Entering the 2022-23 School Year, by District
Although teacher turnover has increased in many school districts, that is not the case for all Arkansas districts. Statewide, 32 districts have seen a decrease of 5% or more in average turnover since 2020-21 while 29 districts have seen an increase greater than 10%.
Figure 4 – Changes in Teacher Turnover Pre-Pandemic (2014-15 to 2019-20) vs. During Pandemic (2020-21 to 2022-23), by District
3. Teachers who left the profession did not immediately find jobs in other sectors.
Investigating what teachers do when they exit the profession can help us understand what might be driving those decisions and what we might do to keep effective teachers in the classroom. In that vein, many stakeholders are concerned that teachers are leaving the profession for better jobs (e.g., because of higher pay, more flexibility, etc.) in other sectors.
To provide an initial look at this issue, we follow teachers who left the public school workforce at the end of the 2020-21 school year to see where they end up employed by the end of the 2021 calendar year (i.e., an approximately 6-month period).
The majority of these Exiters (80%) do not appear as an employee at any unemployment insurance-covered employer in the state. Of those Exiters aged 60 or more, only 25 (4%) appear in the Arkansas workforce while 25% of Exiters under the age of 60 do so. Among Exiters who were employed, the most common job was working in the education services industry (e.g., as a tutor or consultant).
The fact that 80% of Exiters did not immediately find employment outside of public education suggests they may have left due to factors like job dissatisfaction and working conditions rather than better job opportunities and higher pay. Improving these other job conditions may encourage some Exiters to return and reduce future turnover.
Figure 5 – Labor Force Outcomes of Exiters Entering the 2021-22 School Year
Teacher staffing challenges are likely to be an ongoing issue in Arkansas. Turnover in 2022-23 is on par with the highest levels in the past decade. However, the story is not universally grim. While turnover is up, we have not seen anything approaching a mass exodus. And some school districts have even seen reductions in their turnover during this period. Moving forward, it will be important to understand what, if anything, these districts are doing to improve teacher turnover and how state and federal policy may also be impacting the teacher workforce.
About half of the turnover increase that Arkansas experienced during the pandemic is due to teachers leaving for non-instructional roles, such as principal or instructional coach. We suspect that the Federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds may be driving some of these transitions because many districts have used these dollars to create new, non-instructional positions. It remains unclear what will happen with these positions when the funds run out in the 2024-25 school year.
Having a high-quality teaching workforce is important for Arkansas students’ success and to create a thriving state economy. We will continue to collaborate with the Arkansas Department of Education to monitor and support the teaching workforce.
For more insights into Arkansas teacher turnover during the pandemic, check our full report here.