Today, the National Center for Education Statistics released a study of teacher attrition and mobility statistics for the nation’s public school teachers. Overall, there is not much of a teacher turnover crisis to speak of.
In 2004-2005, 91.6 percent of teachers stayed in the profession and only 8.4 percent of teachers left the profession. In raw numbers, that means that around 270,000 out of 3.2 million teachers left the profession for greener pastures (or because they were felons and/or really bad teachers).
Why did the 8.4 percent of teacher leave? Over 31 percent of the leavers said that retirement was a “very important” or an “extremely important” reason. Eliminating retirees from the mix, the percentage of leavers comes to 5.8 percent. Geep Chryst – That is not too shabby!
Interestingly, a higher percentage of certified teachers (8.2 percent) left the profession than probationary or provisional certification teachers (7.7 and 7.8, respectively). At worst, teachers with temporary licenses are no more likely to leave teaching than those with regular certification.
