Race for the exits? A new survey shows how many Texas teachers are looking to quit
As school districts across Texas get ready to welcome students back, many of the state’s teachers may be looking for another line of work, according to a survey released this week.
Near-record numbers of teachers told survey-takers last spring that they were strongly considering leaving the profession, according to a report released this week by the Texas State Teachers Association. The organization pointed to stagnant pay, job stress and political gridlock in Austin around school funding as factors driving teachers out of the classroom.
Of the 840 teachers association members surveyed, 65% said they were strongly considering leaving the profession, according to the report. Surveys were conducted anonymously, so it’s impossible to say how many of those teachers resigned over the summer.
That figure represents a decline from the 70% who told survey-takers in 2022 that they were strongly considering leaving the profession, but those two years still mark the highest rates in the survey’s 44-year history. Researchers at Sam Houston State University have fielded the survey every two years since 1980. No survey was conducted in 2020 because of the pandemic.
A third of teachers told survey-takers that they had to take extra jobs during the school year to make ends meet. About two-thirds of those teachers said they thought their moonlighting jobs hurt the quality of their instruction, but said they needed the extra income.
Ovidia Molina, the organization’s president, said she was concerned that many of the teachers surveyed had already switched careers or would soon do so. She called on state leaders to step up support for teachers and stop attacking public schools. Only 4% of teachers surveyed said they thought lawmakers and other state leaders have a positive opinion of them.
“Gov. Greg Abbott and his legislative allies have spent several years undermining the morale and reputations of teachers with inadequate school funding, proposed book bans, attacks on classroom diversity and laws imposing political restrictions on what teachers can teach,” Molina said.
Many districts across the state are facing budget shortfalls due to the end of federal pandemic relief money and a lack of new money from the state. During last year’s legislative session, Texas lawmakers considered proposals to send some of the state’s multi-billion dollar budget surplus to schools to help keep up with rising costs and raise teacher salaries. But those proposals became mired in the debate over school vouchers, and ultimately went nowhere.
Tarrant County teachers feel lingering pandemic job stress
Steven Poole, executive director of United Educators Association, said the survey results track with what he’s heard from teachers in Tarrant County. UEA, which represents teachers in about four dozen districts in North Texas, is separate from Texas State Teachers Association and wasn’t involved in the survey.
Many of the biggest sources of job stress for teachers come from the lingering effects of the pandemic, Poole said. In the days immediately after school districts reopened in person, teachers had to manage sets of students at once — those in their classrooms and those learning remotely from home. That expectation left many teachers feeling overwhelmed and led to burnout, Poole said, and many haven’t recovered. That’s led many teachers to retire or leave the classroom for another line of work, he said.
Student behavior issues are another source of job stress that teachers often bring up, Poole said. School leaders across the country, including in Fort Worth, reported a sharp uptick in disruptive behavior and fights after students came back following school shutdowns. Poole said district leaders need to offer more support to teachers who are struggling to manage their classrooms. That means investing in behavior specialists and intervention specialists to work with students who are acting out in class, he said.
But Poole pointed out that those kinds of support positions are often among the first areas district leaders cut when budgets are tight.
“They don’t want to cut classroom teachers, but they’re cutting the support schools have, and that just compounds the problem,” Poole said.
