Teachers still quitting at a concerning rate; hindering students' education

Rebecca Dell, AP English teacher, poses in front of her classroom at Concord High School in Concord, California, on March 8, 2023. (Andria Lo for The Washington Post via Getty Images / Getty Images)

By Daniella Genovese FOXBusiness August 28, 2024

There were 55,000 vacant positions and an additional 270,000 teaching posts currently filled by underqualified teachers earlier this year

With mounting responsibilities and stagnant pay, teachers are continuing to feel burnt out and leaving the industry at a concerning rate. It's an ongoing trend, impacting students' education, according to experts. 

Evan Stone, who co-founded Educators for Excellence, a teacher-led organization that advocates for shaping education policy, says he's tracked teachers leaving the workforce over the past seven years, due to the creation of "an unsustainable set of conditions for them in the classroom."

Dr. Paul Gavoni, a behavior scientist, told FOX Business that "education is the backbone of our nation, yet we are systematically failing our educators by sending them into classrooms underprepared for the complexities of teaching." 

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According to a 2024 national poll of teachers, conducted by Educators for Excellence, teachers’ outlook on the profession "remains at an all-time low, following a precipitous drop during the pandemic." 

Today, only 16% of teachers said they’d recommend the profession to others, according to the poll. 

"If you wouldn't recommend the profession that you're currently doing, it means your level of satisfaction was pretty low," Stone said. 

A huge driver of their dissatisfaction is due to growing responsibilities, but compensation or support hasn't matched that growth. 

In most districts, teachers are being tasked with creating an even more rigorous curriculum.  

They are also being asked to monitor technology, including the use of cellphones. Additionally, they are also facing greater disciplinary challenges due to routines being disrupted during the pandemic. 

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Stone stated that they are fully supportive of "higher quality curriculum," but teachers are expressing the need for coaching and support to achieve that goal. They are also seeking added support to keep phones out of classrooms, saying they don't want to become "phone police on top of our instructional duties," Stone said

Teacher Kareem Neal poses in his classroom at Maryvale High School in Phoenix on Oct. 26, 2022. (Olivier Touron/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)

The shortages are even more pronounced among high-needed subject areas such as math, science, special education and bilingual education. Part of the reason those are so hard to fill, Stone explained, is because there typically is no pay differential between those more challenging roles and other positions throughout the school. 

There were already 55,000 vacant positions as of the 2023-2024 school year, according to Teachershortages.com. 

Many schools have already kicked off the school year as the problem persists and experts in the industry have warned that late hiring can have impacting effects on students. 

A study conducted by professors at Brown University, The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring, revealed that hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement to a certain degree in mathematics and in reading. 

Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, said a lot of parents' concerns are about ensuring their children don't just have substitutes filling in their classrooms constantly or giving them work packets. 

Roosevelt High School 12th grade government teacher Aldo Parral uses the News Literacy Project's materials to teach his students about how to read the news and sniff out what's true and what's not in Los Angeles on Sept. 15, 2022. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images / Getty Images)

"We know that relationship building and having a solid relationship with a trusted adult helps our kids with so much, from being able to feel comfortable in the classroom to just really impacting things like chronic absenteeism," Rodrigues said. "That's one of the main things that we know motivates kids to go to school is that that fear of missing out in that relationship with a trusted adult." 

Rodrigues said if students don't have those trusted adults in the building, it can cause a lot of anxiety.

"It doesn't allow them to really build that foundation of trust, that they need to be able to open their minds and actually be able to learn and grow," she said. 

Dr. Paul Gavoni, a behavior scientist, told FOX Business that "teaching is not merely a job — it's about engineering a day optimized for learning." 

"Leadership in education, which can influence student achievement by as much as 25%, is also steeped in theory rather than practice," he said. "What's missing across the board is an education in the science of human behavior — the critical component for achieving real results." 

A school bus is seen in Brooklyn, New York, on July 4. (Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Gavoni asserted that "all educational outcomes hinge on behavior, and there exists a robust science of human behavior that, when applied, can dramatically enhance those outcomes." 

In order to ensure students are at their best, Gavoni asserted that "we must first bring out the best in our teachers. And to achieve that, we need to bring out the best in our school leaders, extending all the way up to district and state leadership." 

The issue is that the foundational principles of effective leadership are often misunderstood or overlooked in our educational systems, according to Gavoni.