https://edsource.

org/2015/half-of-new-teachers-quit-profession-in-5-years-not-
true-new-study-says/83054

Half of new teachers quit profession in 5

years? Not true, new study says
Teacher Effectiveness
July 16, 2015
John Fensterwald
33 COMMENTS

U.S. Department of Education

A recent federal study found that a much smaller percentage of beginning teachers
leave the field in their first five years on the job than the widely quoted figure of 50
percent. It’s 17 percent, according to the new research.

The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Educational Statistics made the
new finding in a study released in April. Not extensively reported, the study conflicts with
the widely held perception that new teachers experience a high turnover rate. This may
be true in some districts, in some regions, but it wasn’t a nationwide trend in the five
years studied, 2007-08 through 2011-12.

The longitudinal study, “Public School Teacher Attrition and Mobility in the First Five
Years,” found that 10 percent of new teachers in 2007-08 didn’t return the following
year, increasing cumulatively to 12 percent in year three, 15 percent in year four and 17
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percent in the fifth year. The totals include teachers who were let go and subsequently
didn’t find a job teaching in another district.

The most exhaustive study of teacher attrition to date, the study followed 1,900
teachers, with follow-up paper questionnaires and contacts by phone.

The frequently cited statistic that “half of new teachers leave after five years” stems from
a 2003 study, also using federal data, by Richard Ingersoll, a sociology professor at the
University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, who concluded that between
40 and 50 percent of teachers didn’t return for a sixth year of teaching – one year longer
than the new study. His finding was based on yearly approximations. Unlike the current
study, the federal report that Ingersoll used didn’t track what happened to individual
teachers after the first year. His data included private school teachers and excluded the
3 percent of teachers who left (perhaps on maternity leave) and returned to teach within
the five-year period

“Two important findings support what NEA has

advocated for a long time. That high-quality mentors
and competitive salaries make a difference in
keeping teachers,” said Segun Eubanks, director for
Teacher Quality at the National Education
Association.
Another reason for the differences in findings could be the time periods in which the
studies were done. Ingersoll used data on first-year teachers collected in four years
between 1988 and 2000. The recent study followed one group of teachers from 2007-08
to 2011-12, during an economic recession that could have affected job mobility, said
Isaiah O’Rear, the project officer from the National Center for Education Statistics. The
study didn’t delve into that issue, he said. The center is not planning another in-depth
study at this point, he said.

The new study didn’t break down the findings by state and region, but it did analyze
teachers’ earnings, ages, education and school locations and cited a number of
findings:

 Money – 97 percent of teachers who earned more than $40,000 their first year
returned the next year, compared with 87 percent who earned less than $40,000.
By the fifth year, 89 percent of those earning $40,000 or more were still on the
job, compared with 80 percent earning less than $40,000.

 Guidance – 92 percent of teachers assigned a mentor their first year returned the
next year, and 86 percent were on the job by the fifth year. Only 84 percent of
teachers without mentors returned in the second year, declining to 71 percent in
the fifth year.
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 Degrees – There was no statistically important difference in attrition between

teachers who began teaching holding bachelor’s degrees and those with
master’s degrees.

 Mobility – By the second year, 16 percent of teachers had moved to another
school or district. One-fifth of the “movers” moved involuntarily or didn’t have their
contracts renewed.

Reacting to the study, Segun Eubanks, director for Teacher Quality at the National
Education Association, said on the NEA website, “Two important findings support what
NEA has advocated for a long time. That high-quality mentors and competitive salaries
make a difference in keeping teachers.”

Eubanks also said, “Not surprisingly, the study found that teachers who spend their first
year in higher-poverty schools are more likely to leave the profession than those who
spend their first year in lower-poverty schools.” But O’Rear said the difference – an
attrition rate 3 percentage points higher in year five – was not statistically significant.

The study, however, didn’t note which teachers moved to lower-poverty schools after
the first year. O’Rear said that a follow-up report, which will delve into more details, will
be out later this summer.

John Fensterwald writes about education policy and its impact in

California.

GOING
DEEPER
 “Public School Teacher Attrition and Mobility in the First Five Years,” Institute for
Education Sciences, NCES, April 2015
 National Education Association’s view of the study , May 2015
 “Is There Really a Teacher Shortage?” study by Richard Ingersoll, September
2003
 Analysis of Richard Ingersoll’s study by Matthew Di Carlo, National Education
Policy Center, December 2011
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Comments

Nancy Nguyen
1 month ago
I thought about leaving teaching in year 4 but didn’t actually leave the profession until
year 7. I think the study should go beyond 5 years to capture this group of people.

vee
3 years ago
In 2003 the economy was good and there were plenty of employers wooing teachers
into their ranks. Much different economy in 2007-2008. As soon as the economy
heats up, teachers will leave for greener pastures.

Lucas F
3 years ago
I think I would lean with the department of education numbers on this subject and not
with a biased report that is trying to mask an epidemic rather find the root cause and
a solution. It’s very dishonest to say that the notion that half of teachers quit within
their first five years is based on research from 2003 when in fact there have been
many studies since that show numbers in between 40% and 50%, including surveys
by departments of education.

Dr. Charles Bickenheuser

4 years ago
If you use the percentage of teachers who leave each year for the first five years,
then the cumulative rate (para. 3) is 55.87 percent remain for years six. In an
average expression, you could then say that about 44 percent of teachers leave
before year six.

No
4 years ago
The study was started in 2008 when a recession hit. Teachers were not leaving
because they were afraid that they would not get another job. For example, in NYC,
there was a hiring freeze for two years! Wondering what was the motive for the
person who worked the numbers to disprove that teachers quit at a higher rate. They
do. I have seen it in NYC.
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Karl Meer
4 years ago
I think schools pay low salaries in the first 15 years knowing a large percentage of
teachers will not make it to the top salary because of the pay, having a family, burn
out, and such. It would be better to increase the first 15 years and decrease the top
years some, so you have money to start a family.

Miseducation Nation (@MisEduNation)

5 years ago
I don’t believe the study. Actually, I don’t believe anything posted on this site.

Don
5 years ago

We are told over and over of the difficulty in retaining teachers at "hard-to-staff"
schools and we know that low-performing schools have much higher layoffs. This 3%
figure seems questionable in that light. The study (or the reporting) doesn't address
how many teachers leave voluntarily or are laid off. Every time we lay off new
teachers and give them their walking papers after a long, hard and expensive
journey through college, we condemning students to a diminishing pool of talent and
put another nail in the coffin of public education.

Concerned Parent Reporter

5 years ago

I concur with your important well thought out and balanced views Mr.
Don.

I say the studies need to,desperately find out and analyze if interns are
the ones that leave.

age discrimination, and the need to,pay a bit more for non intern teachers
have driven the quality of,teachers down.

cheap,intern teachers view teaching as a way to jump to another job.

The CDE needs to not allow interns to teach.

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Paul
5 years ago

Contrary to your assumption, many Intern Credential holders are second-

career teachers or teachers with prior public school substitute or private
school experience, who desperately want to be in the classroom. Highly-
motivated, they meet exactly the same requirements as traditionally-
prepared teachers, except that they teach for 1 to 2 years WHILE
completing the certification coursework. (Traditionally-prepared teachers
perform a variable but inevitably lower number of hours of student
teaching while taking classes.) Regulations mandate that interns receive
support from both a school district teacher and a university-appointed
supervisor.

Whether certified traditionally or through an internship program, all new

California teachers complete the same final assessment (TPA) and
receive the same preliminary credential. At that stage, would you rather
have a teacher with 1 to years’ experience running his own classroom, or
a few hundred hours helping someone else run a classroom?

The Intern Credentisl has existed since 1967.

This information, easy to find on the Web site of the California

Commission on Teacher Credentialing, is often ignored, misunderstood,
or not reported. Most school principals do not know it (there are 2,000 to
3,000 interns in a given year in California, out of 300,000 teachers, so
most principals have never worked with one). Parents certainly wouldn’t
know the information.

Interns do not seem to meet the sampling criteria for this particular
research study, and even if they did, no conclusions could be drawn for
such a small subgroup.

FloydThursby1941
5 years ago
I see the union people attack these professionals, but it seems more knee jerk to
me than scientific. For instance, I'm 100% sure Caroline would oppose these
people, and Gary, before it comes up. The thing is, maybe they're right, maybe
they're wrong, why don't we just compare test score results of their students,
students of teachers in each group. Then we will see factually whether or not
they are right. Let’s not be automatic. Let’s be scientific. Let’s study this strictly by
the numbers.

Parent Concern
5 years ago
No, say 95% , say 3,000 to say 8,000 , are people with no previous credential.
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Bill Younglove
5 years ago
And how, I wonder, does this teacher-leaving-rate compare/contrast with other
professionals who have also spent years and years and a small fortune to
become those who serve the public?

navigio
5 years ago
If one were to choose a time period to measure, this would probably be one of
the worst possible ones. 07-08 was peak funding, and subsequent years saw
large decreases in funding along with associated drops in staffing levels and
apparent increases in emergency credential use. Our district pink slipped almost
15% of our teachers in one of those years. And if the enrollment in teacher prep
programs is accurate, instead of 50% of teachers leaving the profession after
becoming credentialed, we now have 50% of the expected applicants ‘leaving the
profession’ by not bothering to even start it.

Paul Muench
5 years ago
Interesting points. Did the study only measure voluntary departures?
Maybe the poor economy also influenced more teachers to stay on due to
the lack of other jobs.

Paul Muench
5 years ago
Keeping teachers in the classroom is a low bar. Paying teachers significantly more to
attract a much different group of people into teaching is a better approach. I’m willing to
gamble that fixing teacher pay would mobilize public support to work through the
remaining issues such as pensions etc..

Gary Ravani
5 years ago

Pauls:

So you want more avaricious people in the classroom?

Paul Muench
5 years ago
Do you agree that lack of money can make people feel taken
advantage of? That’s what I’m looking to prevent.

FloydThursby1941
5 years ago

The pay should be higher at the beginning but not go as high at the end. It
should be based on contribution, not loyalty to the union. People don't see
that paying so much after 20 years reduces how much you can pay from 1-10
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years. I'm not against paying more if there is more effectiveness but from my
observations and including days missed from work and replaced with a sub, I
don’t believe there is as much of a difference in contribution as their is in pay
scale, according to the union salary scales. I believe part of the reason it is as
it is now is not based on what’s ideal for children but based on rewarding
those in the union with the most power who have been there the longest and
ensuring loyalty. I believe flattening the curve somewhat would increase
retention of young teachers?

I’d like to hear from teachers and union members and experts in this area.
Without considering politics, in your opinion, A. is the pay schedule fair based
on contribution to children and B. Would flattening it bring more young people
into the profession? Or what about merit pay so young teachers, if they stay
every day and really push and tutor their students after school and do better
than their peers, however they do it, after accounting for demographics and
previous year’s test scores, they could earn as much as a lower performing
older teacher, or more. I do believe there is room to attract more teachers
and drive teachers to put in that extra level of focus which can help raise test
scores across the board.

Jessica
2 years ago
I disagree, people don’t become teachers for the money, so I don’t really
agree that more money will attract ” the right people.” The real problem is,
it is a very, very stressful job, and school are asking teachers to do more
and more and more, and holding students accountable for less and less. I
think our educators are reaching a tipping point on how much they are
willing to deal with.

Gary Ravani
5 years ago

From the above story:

"Another reason for the differences in findings could be the time periods in which the studies
were done. Ingersoll used data on first-year teachers collected in four years between 1988 and
2000. The recent study followed one group of teachers from 2007-08 to 2011-12, during an
economic recession that could have affected job mobility, said Isaiah O’Rear, the project officer
from the National Center for Education Statistics."

And:

“Reacting to the study, Segun Eubanks, director for Teacher Quality at the National Education
Association, said on the NEA website, ‘Two important findings support what NEA has advocated
for a long time. That high-quality mentors and competitive salaries make a difference in keeping
teachers.'”
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Well, yes.

Paul
5 years ago
It’s so funny how the NEA grasps at straws. A box checked on a
questionnaire does not mean that the respondent had a mentor, much
less an involved and effective one. The mentor/no mentor distinction is
one of flimsiest elements of this research project.

Gary Ravani
5 years ago
Maybe for this project. But there is a lot of support for the idea that
keeping new teachers in the classroom improves when they have a well
trained mentor in their early years.

Zeev Wurman
5 years ago

Very interesting. Thanks, John!

I’d like to point out that even the discredited “half in 5 years” number was not as
frightening as people made it to be.

For example, “Only about 38% of college graduates whose highest degree is in an S&E
field work in S&E occupations” http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/c3/fig03-07.gif
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Melissa V Rentchler, MLISc, M.Ed., CA State credentials Teacher and Teacher

Librarian
5 years ago
I just examined the “study”. It is not very “longitudinal”, but rather less than a decade of
data examined at best.

John Fensterwald
5 years ago
Melissa: You obviously have found the data, starting on page 12. The study is
what is says: a look at the first five years of employment, starting in 2007-08. My
assumption is these types of studies are expensive, and this is the most thorough
look at nationwide teacher attrition to date. It would be great if a new study,
starting in 2015-16, under different economic conditions, could be done. at least
the majority, would like to cut the Department of Education budget, which would
affect research.

Melissa V Rentchler, MLISc, M.Ed., CA State credentials Teacher and

Teacher Librarian
5 years ago
Where is the data for the year/s this article is representing? I hypothesize that
there might have been/is more perseverence and staying power during tight
employment times ie., the recession era 2008+ and the slow “recovery”.

Paul
5 years ago

I am a big believer in statistics, and knowledgeable about math. Even I have a

hard time accepting statistical inferences made from a tiny sample.

If all 2,000 teachers in the sample were from California, the sample would
comprise 0.67% or 67 out of 10,000 in our credential pool of 300,000 people.

California has roughly 12% of the nation’s population, and if 12% of the teachers
in the sample were from California, the sample would comprise 0.08% or 8 out of
10,000 people in our credential pool.

Can the habits of 240 teachers really predict the habits of 300,000?

Some will argue that the denominator should be new credentialholders, not all
credentialholders, but that would still yield a sampling rate of 1.1% or 111 out of
10,000 people (versus the 0.08% or 8 out of 10,000 mentioned above).

To the researchers’ credit, they avoid many of the frauds that the CTC commits
in compiling its retention report. The CTC relies on a sample of convenience of
BTSA completers, ignoring teachers who exit before finishing BTSA. Since BTSA
is a two-year program, no one who stops teaching before the end of Year 2 can
be counted in CTC attrition figures. Also uncounted are teachers ineligible for
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BTSA, due to part-time, part-year or substitute employment. Last but not least,
teachers who leave after starting BTSA late, interrupting it (e.g., due to a layoff),
or never starting, don’t count as having left.

Both these researchers and the CTC ignore people who earn teaching
credentials but never find a teaching job.

These researchers make much of whether a new teacher had a mentor, but the
notion is ill-defined. Anyone might have checked the box.

Unless and until the CalTIDES tracking system is funded, we have no data to
support optimistic teacher retention claims in California.

John Fensterwald
5 years ago
Paul, as you know, this was a national study, not a California study, and I am
confident that the NCES researchers had a valid and reliable sample of the
152,000 new teachers nationwide in 2007-2008. As my article noted, The new
study didn’t break down the findings by state and region, … And it would be
incorrect to infer California trends from the national study.

Manuel
5 years ago

John, that's a nice way of making sure that what you reported is factually
correct without giving an impression that it is more than what it is. Not
saying that you did anything wrong, mind you, as you are just being the
messenger while navigating between Scylla and Charybdis. (Why is it
getting attention just now if it was released in April?) But if what Paul
states in his comment is also factually correct (no, I don’t want to do a
deep dive into the study, at least not yet), then it is fair to ask how
significant this study is to get an idea of what really goes on in the totality
of the teacher pipeline.

Regardless of how one feels about this issue, the undeniable fact is that if
teachers are not retained in sufficient numbers there will never be a
sufficiently large pool of highly qualified teachers who are willing to put up
with student scores in standardized tests as true measures of their
effectiveness. True, many argue over what exactly is a highly qualified
teacher, but if there are not enough teachers with experience, who is
going to staff our schools? After all, the districts that you and Ms. Ellison
mentioned in your other article have felt the decrease in supply.

In regards to a better study, my guess is that we get what we pay for: a

very limited study done during a period of very unfavorable economic
circumstances. In my opinion, it is not in the interest of many of the Usual
Suspects to get an accurate and current look at this problem.

Wendy
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5 years ago
I wonder how many new teachers stay after the first five years because their
loan debt is so high that they don’t feel comfortable moving to another
career? I find the data extremely limited as well. Too bad.

John Fensterwald
5 years ago
Wendy: The project manager said that a follow-up report on the study will
be coming out later this summer. I don’t know what it will explore, but I will
link to it, if not report on it.

Paul
5 years ago

Interesting point, Wendy. Given low starting salaries and precarious

employment, teaching is a particularly bad way to pay off student loans.
State assumption of up to $12,000 of a teacher's loans (A.P.L.E.) runs its
course after four years, and a $5,000 federal assumption payment arrives
after Year 5. Apparently, new A.P.L.E. slots were de-funded during the
recession, as part of the Cal Grant cutback. (Can someone confirm?)

The state and federal loan assumption programs require consecutive

years of full-time teaching in the same economically-disadvantaged or
low-performing school, a bar which is nearly impossible for a new teacher
to reach today, what with temporary status, “no cause” non-reelection,
seniority-based layoff, or seniority-based bumping/involuntary transfer.

What’s more, the $17,000 total did not rise with the drastic CSU and UC
tuition hikes of the last decade. Today, the whole sum covers less than
one year’s tuition and living expenses, against the five years of university
study required of teachers.