The number of teachers quitting keeps growing, with matters worsening since the pandemic.
For the 2013-2014 school year, Texas saw 34,557 teachers quit.
After slowly climbing over the next few years, the number dropped to 33,945 by the 2019-2020 school year. By the 2021-2022 school year, it had risen to 50,998—up more than 50%.
And things have only gotten worse. Nearly 65% of Texas teachers said they were seriously considering leaving the education profession at the end of the 2023-24 school year, as previously reported by The Dallas Express. In a recent survey conducted by the Texas State Teachers Association, two-thirds of Lone Star State teachers were so fed up that they were ready to quit teaching once and for all.
The teacher survey has been conducted every two years for the past 40 years. The past two surveys recorded the highest-ever percentage of Texas teachers seriously considering leaving the profession.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the rise in teacher burnout and how student behavior and mediocre pay are taking their toll. Here’s the start of the story:
Students are showing up to school in much of the country this week. Their teachers are already demoralized and exhausted.
Student behavior problems, cellphones in class, anemic pay and artificial-intelligence-powered cheating are taking their toll on America’s roughly 3.8 million teachers, on top of the bruising pandemic years.
The share of teachers who say the stress and disappointment of the job are “worth it” has fallen to 42%, which is 21 points lower than other college-educated workers, according to a poll by Rand, a nonprofit think tank. As recently as 2018, over 70% of teachers said the stress was worth it.
In surveys and interviews, teachers are most often pointing to a startling rise in students’ mental-health challenges and misbehavior as the biggest drivers of burnout. In the Rand survey, student behavior was the top source of teachers’ job stress.
High-school math teacher Cory Jarrell says he saw student behavior deteriorate, yet his school grew more lenient in administering consequences. He also didn’t feel like teaching offered much opportunity to advance in his career.
And then his district, Kansas City Public Schools, rolled out a new policy last year. Teachers couldn’t give students a zero for an assignment, even if they didn’t turn it in. This was the final straw.