Pascale Abadie, OFLA Recruitment and Retention Chair
Associate Professor, Wright State University

In the last decade, the United States has been experiencing a steady increase in teacher shortage. This ongoing issue has been further exacerbated by problems in retention. Data shows that K-12 schools in the U.S. find it extremely difficult to retain teachers. Over the last ten years, “the annual teacher turnover rate has hovered around 8 percent nationally”. Throughout the previous three decades, the predominant issues facing workforce retention were teachers choosing early retirement or career changes. However, the alarming fact is that about 30% of new teachers quit their jobs within five years of teaching. It would seem to be of the utmost importance to focus on implementing improvements during the crucial first five years of an educator’s career because past the five-year mark, teachers tend to stay in the profession. Keeping teachers from quitting is no easy task, but finding a solution is critical and needs to be tackled sooner rather than later.

One of the main reasons why teachers leave the profession is their wages, and it’s a known fact that teachers have been complaining about salary for decades and that nothing has changed since the 1990’s. While it is understood that raising teacher salaries could help improve interest in teaching and keep teachers in the classrooms, other important issues have also emerged. These issues have played an important role in teachers’ retention, making it even more challenging than before to stop the turnover of teachers in our schools.

Besides wages, we can acknowledge other vital OR essential reasons why teachers choose to switch careers or retire early. The following four main reasons are the ones that currently make a difference between staying or leaving the profession. When negatively impacted by these factors, teachers will mostly quit within their first five years of teaching: 

1. Working too many hours, leaving less time for lesson planning
2. Overly populated classes
3. Isolation
4. Weak professional development

To quell these obstacles in career longevity, strategies must be implemented to increase the teacher retention rate. Approaches to keeping teachers in the profession could be highlighted by (but not restricted to):

1. Tackle working conditions by reducing the working hours thus allowing more time for teachers to lesson plan. This will provide stress relief, a major issue in today’s schools and classrooms. 
2. Nurture a positive environment by empowering teachers to succeed. Teachers need to be able to freely express their opinions and concerns.
3. Provide support from colleagues, administrators, and external organizations such as OFLA. 
4. Cultivate collaboration so teachers do not feel isolated. This point cannot be stressed enough, as it will change the way teachers feel about their job.  
5. Increase wages as it has become very difficult to persuade college graduates to become teachers when they see their peers obtaining better salaries.  
6. Make the profession attractive again 
7. Celebrate successes

Additionally, providing teachers with mentorship opportunities can be valuable in the growth and development of new educators.  It is essential for schools to create structures that allow meetings to be incorporated into teachers’ schedules. Mentorships for new teachers are more successful if they are within the same subject. Another valuable tool would be to strengthen Professional Development. Benefits from Professional Development are countless as they open individuals up to more opportunities, commitment for self-improvement, an increase in overall performance, and skill set development. Furthermore, it exposes novice and experienced professionals to new ideas while increasing their know-how within their domain and while sharing successes in teaching.

As mentioned earlier, shortage and retention go hand in hand. The shortage is real, large and rising; it hurts students, and the public education system. High teacher turnover consumes economic resources that could be allocated elsewhere. Lastly, poor teacher retention will end up impacting students’ educational achievement. The future of education relies on our leaders’ willingness to address retention issues and successfully implement new policies that create a school environment in which teachers can thrive.