This analysis was originally published in May 2023 and was significantly updated in March 2024 to reflect new data.
The disruptive pandemic years pushed the challenge of keeping great teachers in classrooms to the top of the nation’s education agenda. Other publications have noted that, while fewer teachers left during the height of the pandemic, turnover rates are on the rise again.
But the current state is slightly different than what most reports cite. Districts and researchers tend to report turnover as the percentage of teachers who leave their district or the profession entirely. This approach understates the actual effects of teacher turnover on schools and students by overlooking the impact of teachers who transfer to other schools within their district.
Our original research, derived from fieldwork with nine large school districts, shows that turnover rates have increased significantly from pandemic all-time lows. This analysis takes a closer look at some key findings:
- On average, 23% of teachers left their school in the 2022-23 school year—a much higher percentage than pandemic rates, but a slight decrease from last year’s turnover spike.
- Schools serving the greatest proportion of students experiencing poverty lost 29% of their teachers between October 2022 and October 2023, while schools with the lowest concentration of need lost 19%.
- A staggering 40% of teachers who moved to another school in the same district went to a school with fewer students living in poverty.
- Within the analyzed time period, 30% of rookie teachers left their school.
To end this cycle of instability, we must address the root cause of the issue: a job that isn’t attractive or sustainable enough to ensure we can properly educate all students.
See our interactive data and analysis below to learn what each takeaway means for students, families, and school systems.
Twenty-Three Percent of Teachers Left Their School or a Teaching Role Last Year
Building a positive and inviting school climate in which every student is known requires sustained effort and strong relationships. Teacher turnover makes that work harder. To truly understand the impact of teacher turnover on students, we need to look at the proportion of teachers who leave not just their district or the profession, but also their individual schools.
What the Data Shows
Among teachers in our sample, 23% left their school or their teaching role between October 2022 and October 2023. That number comprises teachers who:
- Left their district. These teachers may have left the profession entirely or moved to other school systems in search of better pay or working conditions.
- Left their role, but stayed in their district. These teachers may have moved into instructional coach or assistant principal roles, for example.
- Remained in a teaching role, but moved to another school in their district. This category accounts for about a third of school-level turnover.
Figure 1: School-Level Teacher Turnover
Average across districts since the 2019-20 school year
We define the pandemic period as the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years and the post-pandemic period as the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. For more information, please see our data and methodology notes.
The magnitude of the turnover challenge varies across the nine districts in our sample, with some seeing school-level turnover as high as nearly one in three teachers last year and other districts seeing one in five. In many of these districts—Districts A, B, C, D, and H—roughly half of their overall school-level turnover is within-district, due to teachers who either moved to other schools or sought out other roles. Districts may have more ability to influence this within-district turnover.
Figure 2: School-Level Turnover Between October 2023 and October 2024 by District
What this means for students and families
This level of instability is particularly concerning in our current moment, when students’ mental health and social-emotional needs are greater than ever.
At the start of the school year, for example, a student attending a school with this amount of turnover is less likely to get a teacher they recognize. And if that student has an older sibling, they are less likely to get a teacher who has already built a relationship with their family. What’s more, a student in a school that needs more experienced teachers is highly likely to receive a teacher with only a few years of teaching experience.
Turnover Is Greatest in Schools That Serve the Most Students Experiencing Poverty
Students from low-income backgrounds face additional barriers to success compared to their peers from higher-income backgrounds. As the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores showed, students in high-poverty schools lost more ground during the pandemic than their peers in low-poverty schools. And so far, recovery efforts haven’t sufficiently reduced widening achievement gaps between high- and low-poverty schools and districts. These high-need schools often lack the supportive working conditions teachers need to meet their students’ needs, and, as a result, they tend to have the highest turnover rates. As teachers transfer to other schools within their districts in search of more manageable workloads, the challenge only gets harder and more complex.
What the Data Shows
Schools serving the greatest proportion of students experiencing poverty lost 29% of their teachers between October 2022 and October 2023, while schools with the lowest concentration of need lost 19%. Compared to teachers in schools serving the lowest proportion of economically disadvantaged students, more teachers in high-need schools leave or move into other roles in their districts—and more than double the number of teachers transfer out of their school.
Figure 3: Average School-Level Turnover Between October 2023 and October 2024 by Percentage of Students Who Are Economically Disadvantaged
When teachers move between schools in their district, they’re much more likely to move to a school with a smaller proportion of students living in poverty than the school they left. 39% of teachers who moved in between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years went to a school in a lower-poverty quartile.
Figure 4: Change in School Poverty Quartile of Teachers Who Moved Schools Between 2022-23 and 2023-24
Over time, this level of instability means that few teachers remain in their same schools after five years of teaching—particularly in schools with the greatest concentration of poverty. This year, nearly half of teachers in the lowest-poverty schools have been there for at least five years, compared to only 34% of teachers in the highest-poverty schools.
Figure 5: Percent of Teachers in 2023-24 Who Have Been at Their School for at Least Five Years
What This Means for Students and Families
It’s critical that students in high-need schools have consistent access to strong teachers. With nearly 30% of teachers leaving these schools, however, it’s unlikely that students are getting consistent instruction from effective educators, especially when open positions are filled by less experienced, less effective teachers. This turnover also means that students aren’t able to build lasting relationships with their teachers, which can impact their social-emotional experiences in school.
Early-Career Teachers Are Leaving Schools and Districts at Alarmingly High Rates—Especially at High-Poverty Schools
Being a new teacher is incredibly hard. Most new teachers have had limited classroom practice prior to becoming responsible for a classroom of 25-30 elementary students or a full secondary roster of up to 150 students.
These teachers fill roles that look identical to those of more experienced educators, and they’re often responsible for teaching students who need the greatest support. This combination of inadequate preparation, challenging assignments, and lack of differentiation can be overwhelming for new teachers, leading to frustration and burnout.
WHAT THE DATA SHOWS
School-level turnover has increased among teachers at all experience levels, but the rate of turnover among teachers with seven or fewer years of experience is most alarming. After the 2022-23 school year, 30% of new teachers left their school, and 26% of teachers with 3-7 years of experience left their school during that time, compared to 17-20% of more experienced teachers.
The proportion of teachers who move to other schools within their districts looks similar across experience levels, but that movement is potentially most detrimental to early-career teachers’ growth and development. Research shows that teachers who have repeated experience teaching the same grade level or subject area improve more rapidly than those whose experience is in varied grade levels or subjects.
Figure 6: School-Level Teacher Turnover Between October 2023 and October 2024 by Years of Experience
Data Note: Cuts by years of experience take the average across 8 districts in our data sample, excluding districts that did not have accurate years of experience data.
Schools serving greater proportions of economically disadvantaged students tend to also have the most rookie teachers—though this isn’t the only reason for high turnover rates at these schools. Turnover at high-poverty schools is higher than turnover at lower-poverty schools among teachers of all experience levels.
Figure 7: Average Teacher Turnover by Years of Experience and School Poverty Level
Includes leavers, movers, and role-changers
Data Note: Cuts by years of experience take the average across 8 districts in our data sample, excluding districts that did not have accurate years of experience data.
What this means for students and families
Teachers experience the most professional growth during their first five years of teaching, so the high percentage of teachers leaving around this time underscores a cyclical impact: When schools face turnover among teachers with this level of experience, they lose those teachers’ potential and typically replace them with less experienced (and often less effective) teachers. When those less experienced teachers face substantial challenges in high-poverty schools, they’re more likely to move to other schools in their districts, thus perpetuating the turnover cycle.
This cycle creates a compounding effect on student experiences and outcomes, as students lack consistent instruction, struggle to build lasting relationships with their teachers, and face unstable learning conditions.
WHAT district leaders can do
District leaders have a responsibility—and an opportunity—to address this vicious cycle of teacher turnover. To do so, they need to make the teaching job more attractive, sustainable, and supportive—particularly in schools where most students are experiencing poverty.
District leaders can use their funds to pilot teacher retention strategies in high-need schools, while also addressing systemwide policies and practices that will enable lasting change. These practices include:
- Making the teaching job more sustainable in high-need schools. District leaders can focus on creating schedules that enable more time for collaboration and reflection; forming teaming structures that allow teachers to share work; and supporting strong leaders at these schools.
- Investing in “shelter-and-develop” models for early-career teachers, especially in high-need schools. These models reduce workloads for rookie teachers and provide opportunities to learn and practice with expert support.
- Targeting increases in teacher compensation to enable early-career teachers to earn a living wage and achieve meaningful salary increases in their early years. These increases can also support teacher leadership roles that enable strong teachers to expand their reach and earn more without leaving the classroom.
- Considering the unintended impact of district policies, including seniority-based transfer policies that hinder principals’ abilities to make the best decisions for their schools and “last in, first out” policies that lay off teachers based on experience rather than effectiveness. These policies contribute to the turnover cycle in the highest-need schools, since that’s where the least experienced teachers tend to be.
Teacher turnover is a pervasive issue that’s only increasing as our nation’s schools continue to recover from the pandemic. But with a strategic focus on supporting teachers—particularly rookie teachers and those in high-need schools—district leaders can work toward stopping the turnover cycle and making the teaching job more sustainable for all educators.
Learn How to Improve the Teaching Job
Data and Methodology Notes
We analyzed five years’ worth of teacher employment data from nine large urban and suburban school districts across the country. Five districts have between 80,000 and 150,000 students; two districts have between 20,000 and 50,000 students. Between 30% and 80% of students in these districts qualify for free and reduced-price lunch based on direct certification.
We looked specifically at teachers who were employed in each district on October 1 in each year from 2019 to 2023. We excluded teaching aides, administrators, other school-level staff, and teachers who were not assigned to a school location. We also excluded teachers at school sites that closed or reconfigured grade levels to avoid artificially inflating the rate of teachers moving between schools.
We calculated turnover rates within each district as the number of teachers who were employed on October 1 of year n and were still employed in the same district on October 1 of year n+1, divided by the total number of teachers employed on October 1, year n.
We are defining the pandemic period as the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years and the post-pandemic period as the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years.
We calculated cross-district averages as the straight, unweighted average of turnover rates across districts among a given group of teachers. In other words, district size does not affect the relative impact of one district’s experience over another.
We conducted school-level poverty analyses by sorting schools into quartiles based on the relative poverty levels of schools in their district. Poverty levels are defined by the concentration of students enrolled in that school who are considered economically disadvantaged. We compared schools in the top quartile of poverty for a given district to schools in the top level of poverty for other districts in our sample.
