Where have all the teachers gone?
We heard a lot recently about teachers leaving Kentucky’s public school system.
But, I have to wonder.
We won’t get information on the number of teachers in Kentucky’s public schools during the 2021-22 school term until Fall, but data is already available in the Kentucky School Report Cards system on the total number of teachers in Kentucky’s public schools from the 2017-18 to the 2020-21 school terms, and Figure 1 shows how that looks:
Figure 1
If there is a teacher exodus, it certainly isn’t apparent in these statistics.
In fact, the number of teachers in Kentucky, as of the most recently reported data, is the highest it’s been since before COVID hit.
The numbers of teachers present each year don’t tell how many had to be replaced each year, but data on teacher turnover is also found in recent Kentucky School Report Cards. Figure 2 shows how the turnover has ranged in the school terms from 2017-18 to 2020-21.
Figure 2
Surprise! If more teachers were leaving, the percentage of teachers turning over should be growing. But, the latest trend here is moving in the other direction.
Another piece if data is incomplete in the report cards. However, for 2018-19 and 2019-20, the report cards show that average years of teacher experience in Kentucky was 12.0.
Guess what happened in 2020-21. The average years of experience increased slightly to 12.1.
None of this real data is consistent with claims that teachers are leaving in increasing numbers. Over the past four years, at least, teachers have always left in fairly large numbers as the data in Figure 2 shows. But, they have been replaced, as shown in Figure 1. This isn’t new.
However, the available data for the past four years makes it look like the situation is getting a bit better, not worse.
Maybe this picture will change when we see the 2021-22 data, but that data wasn’t available during the recent legislative session when much hand wringing about teacher losses was going on. The data that was available then indicated the teacher loss situation didn’t exist and might actually be improving.