Dive Brief:
- A study by The Education Trust questioned 150 black teachers about the reasons their colleagues were more prone to leave the profession, finding black teachers are often stifled by their race when it comes to promotion and growth.
- The Hechinger Report writes black teachers get stuck teaching low-performing students or serving as disciplinarians because they are good at those things, even if they might want to move on to teaching Advanced Placement courses or doing other challenging work.
- Mentorship expectations are also unreasonable, as black teachers can be expected to forge connections with practically every student of color in a school, and study participants reported being seen as less competent than their white colleagues by superiors, coworkers and parents.
Dive Insight:
The Learning Policy Institute released a report in September about the teaching profession’s retention problem, calling on the education sector to focus on keeping teachers in their jobs as much or more as recruiting new teachers. The report compared the United States’ 8% teacher attrition rate to the attrition rate in other countries with high-performing education systems, which can be as low as half of that. Giving teachers better resources for their classrooms and offering opportunities for shared leadership can go a long way to reducing turnover.
Still, The 74 points out the teacher attrition rate is significantly lower than the rate of attrition in other industries in the United States. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, professional and business services saw 31.5% voluntary turnover in 2015, and leisure and hospitality saw 47.5% turnover. State and local education actually had the most stable workforce outside of the federal government. Realistic expectations for retention might also help the field address the shortage of qualified teachers.