What Are The Main Reasons Teachers Call It Quits?
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For Ross Roberts, it was a lack of resources that drove him from the classroom. For Danielle Painton, it was too much emphasis on testing. For Sergio Gonzalez, it was a nasty political environment.
Welcome to the U.S. teaching force, where the "I'm outta here" rate is an estimated 8 percent a year — twice that of high-performing countries like Finland or Singapore. And that 8 percent is a lot higher than other professions.
The teaching force is "a leaky bucket, losing hundreds of thousands of teachers each year — the majority of them before retirement age," says a recent report from the Learning Policy Institute.
Why are so many teachers leaving?
There are, of course, many reasons both personal and professional.
Let's start with money. While teachers don't get into the profession for the dough, money is a factor. Beginning teachers make about 20 percent less than college graduates in other fields.
But overall, teachers and researchers say, educators want a bigger voice in school policies and plans. Many feel left out of key discussions.
"Working conditions are even more important for keeping people in once they've made the choice to teach," says Linda Darling-Hammond, the president of the Learning Policy Institute.
Another key factor is preparation.
"Teachers who are well prepared leave at more than two times lower rates than teachers who are not fully prepared," Darling-Hammond says.
So what can we learn from teachers who've left? We asked four of them to give us their reasons:
Robert Lutjens 39, is a former middle school science teacher in Sugar Land, Texas, near Houston.
"It sounds a little bit dramatic, but part of it was I was not allowed to fail students," he says. "There was a phrase that kept going around that I heard from administrators: 'We need to make sure they succeed, we need to guarantee their success.' Which was code for: 'They need to pass.' "
Lutjens says he just couldn't support passing students if they weren't learning the material. In addition, he says, the paperwork that came with the job was ludicrous, burdensome and plentiful: "I felt that I had a lot of not very effective hoops to jump through."
What would have helped him stay?
"There's not a simple solution," he says. "I would like to see more of an emphasis on — rather than passing — to have an emphasis on actually learning. The culture of the What Are The Main Reasons Teachers Call It Quits? : NPR Ed : NPR: