One of the biggest challenges facing schools today is teacher retention amid record levels of teacher attrition. Teacher turnover is the result of much more than just retirement.
In fact, of the 300,000 teachers who left teaching between 2020 and 2022, most did so for reasons other than retirement.
From looking for a position with more benefits to searching for more supportive teaching and learning environments, about 44% of all teachers leave the profession within their first five years.
This leaves schools with a hiring crisis that is even greater among lower-performing schools in underserved communities, where quality teachers are greatly needed.
The result is that many schools are left with under-qualified teachers, or they must rely on substitutes to try to make up the gap.
Teacher turnover has become such a pervasive problem in school districts across the country that research groups have begun studying why teachers are leaving.
According to this study, 90% of open teaching positions are created by teachers who leave the profession (as opposed to retiring), and 55% of teachers cite dissatisfaction as the reason for their departure.
One of the main problems that teachers cite is a lack of administrative support. When teachers feel like they are not receiving support, encouragement, or recognition from their administration, for many, their school no longer feels like a place where they can grow their careers.
Over 20% of teachers said that lack of support from their school administrators was their reason for leaving. The same number of teachers simply were dissatisfied with their careers as teachers in general.
But it’s not fair to blame this on the profession itself.
Though teaching is one of the most difficult jobs, most teachers cited lack of advancement opportunities and lack of personal input in their schools as their reason for leaving.
In a sense, these two problems still stem from poor administrative support.
The best method to combat these growing problems is by building a stronger relationship between teachers and school administrators and by aligning their goals and objectives.
One high leverage way to keep everyone on the same page is through teacher coaching.
The idea behind teacher coaching is to have professional instructional coaches work with teachers, helping them to better manage classroom behavior, make instructional time more productive, and line up classroom instruction with their school district’s overall curriculum goals.
After coaches help teachers identify areas of growth in their planning and instructional delivery, coaches provide individualized, ongoing support and feedback to help teachers continue to grow and improve throughout the school year.
Such feedback conversations can take the form of a high-leverage action step assignment, content-specific coaching, or can take place through problems of practice in inquiry cycles.
The current reality is that half of the teachers in the top 20% of effectiveness leave within five years, and these excellent educators are nearly impossible to replace. Keeping these teachers should be a top priority for schools.
What’s more, teachers with 10 or fewer years of experience make up 45% of teachers.
Research on the attitudes of these teachers indicates they want to grow as educators throughout the course of their career, but these needs aren’t being met by the current educational system.
With so much going wrong in school systems’ efforts to retain quality teachers, schools should look to teacher coaching as an effective means to improve the current teacher retention crisis.
Teacher coaching improves retention in a number of ways:
Despite its many benefits, teacher coaching is an underused tool in making teachers more confident and less stressed. These are the key aspects that make teachers want to leave their jobs, so coaching provides a direct solution for retaining (and nurturing) our schools’ teachers.
Finding a way to effectively coach teachers and improve retention rates doesn’t have to be hard or expensive. SchoolMint offers complete teacher observation and coaching software to monitor and refine teacher performance across all areas of classroom education.
Most of all, SchoolMint Grow provides a truly custom platform that can be fitted to your school or district’s goals, even matching the unique terms your school or district uses on a daily basis to talk about coaching.
Request a free demo to get your school started on the path toward happier teachers, improved instruction, and better learning today!