In this article, Tristan Reynolds discusses the current landscape of education where almost half of teachers leave within five years, and shares why a career ladder approach akin to high-education professions could address the realities of today's workforce
One of the most commonly-cited statistics in K-12 education is that almost half of all teachers will leave the profession less than 5 years after they start as teachers. This is a major part of the teacher shortage crisis, but it’s worth looking at how the approach fits into the wider contemporary workforce. What we see is that teachers need a real career ladder, like other high-education professions.
Overall, millennial and Gen-Z workers switch jobs more often than older workers. In fact, this is often advised for workers, especially young workers, as a savvy career move–a way to increase pay and move up the career ladder. In other words, younger teachers are entering a career market where job-switching is expected and even encouraged. The mantra for many bright and ambitious younger workers is ‘move out to move up,’ and teachers aren’t insulated from the effects of the wider job market.
Advice to quickly climb up the salary curve is particularly impactful for new teachers, who tend to be younger and in the stage of life where most wage growth happens. A focus on wage growth tells us that, in the words of the National Council on Teacher Quality, “[s]alaries that grow too little throughout the teacher's career and max out too soon could discourage retention of experienced teachers.” When that point arrives, it shouldn’t surprise us that many young workers will listen to the advice that’s offered from all sectors of the job market and ‘move out to move up.’
This is a reality that many educational leaders have trouble acknowledging or accepting. Think about all the ‘teacher swag’ that has variations on the phrase ‘teachers do it for the outcome, not the income’ you’ve received over the years. But that doesn’t mean that teachers aren’t still connected to larger economic forces.
So what can school and district leaders do to keep teachers in schools? Instead of moving out to move up, how can school leaders help teachers ‘stay in and climb the stairs’?
The first, and easiest, thing that school and district leaders can do is create real career ladders for teachers. Currently, most teachers end their careers with exactly the same job title and job duties as they started with; this doesn’t lead to a sense of career progression. Fortunately, international models for teacher career ladders exist, and we can learn from them.
Singapore, on the other hand, offers several career tracks for teachers. Singaporean teachers can develop as teacher educators, school leaders, and education researchers, all without ever leaving the classroom. As a result, teachers in Singapore report high career satisfaction, and the National Center on Education and the Economy report that “[t]he resignation rate for teachers in Singapore is low by international standards, at less than 3 percent.”
Of course, the biggest thing that school leaders need to do is raise teacher wages, particularly in the early stages of a teacher’s career. The Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University finds that “compared to other professions, teaching has more heavily back-loaded pay–meaning a disproportionate share of earnings comes late in a career.” This means that many teachers are leaving to make up an early career wage gap that could be filled simply by shifting when teacher raises occur. Raises may be especially important around that 5-year mark, when teachers start to leave the profession in droves.
Fortunately, research shows that teachers improve their effectiveness in the classroom throughout their careers, especially in the first 3-5 years, exactly when it’s most important to retain teachers. As a result, shifting raises earlier in a teacher’s career can be justified on job performance grounds (even if it remains fiscally difficult in an era of shrinking public investment in education amid political attacks on the public school system).
The educational workforce is seeing more churn than at any point since the 19th century. But while this is often framed as a crisis, it’s also an opportunity to rethink how we attract teachers to the profession, and how we induce teachers to stay in the profession. Our students deserve the strongest teachers it’s possible to get, and that means supporting teachers’ careers throughout the whole career cycle. Alongside raising wages, creating real career ladders for teachers can do just that.
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