The , published Thursday by the left-leaning , polled 309 K-12 teachers from 38 states and Washington, D.C., with fewer than five years of experience in February about educator retention. 

The issues that have been driving teachers away have worsened in recent years, said Weadé James, one of the survey report’s authors. 

“Teachers are expected to be all things to their students. Not just an instructor, but also a counselor … and then when you factor that into the changes we’ve seen in our economy — teachers cannot afford to live,” she said. “We’ve seen this issue become more prominent in the last 10 or 15 years.”

Nearly 70% of respondents said they have considered quitting or have already left their teaching job. When asked why, 77% said working conditions, including student behavior; 73% chose lack of support, such as professional development; and 69% said insufficient compensation. Other reasons included low student achievement and limited advancement opportunities.

While nearly two-thirds said they received resources or programming from their school during their initial year in the classroom, the majority still felt unprepared to properly teach English learners and students with disabilities.

“Many induction programs are one year,” James said. “You get that intensive support in your first year only, and [schools] neglect to recognize that new teachers are still developing and honing their skills through year five.”

About 80% of respondents said their induction programs included mentorship, and 78% said they received professional development. After their programs ended, teachers felt the most prepared to foster relationships with students, provide data-informed instruction and assess progress in learning.

When it came to compensation, about 64% of teachers surveyed said they disagree or strongly disagree that their pay reflects their area’s cost of living. Only 16% said they are adequately paid for the work they do, while 15% said their salary is high enough to support their family.

Respondents were asked to rank policy issues in order of importance for improving early-career teacher retention. Their top three were pay, benefits and mental health support. Teachers surveyed also want access to affordable housing, high-quality professional development and career advancement.

The most popular solution to low pay, chosen by nearly half of respondents, was to increase salary floors for all positions. With the national average starting teacher salary at $46,526, many educators are making less than what they need to live comfortably in any state, according to the survey. Salary floor increases were in New Mexico, where teachers now make between $55,000 to $75,000, depending on their license.

Other suggestions for improving compensation included eliminating student debt, giving additional pay for performing extra duties and providing raises for teachers in hard-to-staff schools and subject areas.

Teachers surveyed said an increase in sick time would be the best employee benefit a school could offer. Respondents also wanted more paid time off, lower health insurance costs, better insurance coverage, parental leave and a retirement account with employer contributions.

The survey found that teachers with access to paid maternity or parental leave were 11% less likely to consider quitting than those without either option. 

The most common suggestion about how to support teacher well-being was to include time off for mental health days in employee contracts. In 2022, Illinois that allowed teachers to use sick time for mental health days. 

Teachers surveyed said they also need mandated planning time during the day — a change that can improve working conditions, said report co-author Paige Shoemaker DeMio.

“When teachers don’t have enough time in their days to do other aspects of their job — planning for the instruction, grading, contacting parents, analyzing student data — that is really impactful on their working conditions,” she said. “It’s causing a lot of stress, and it’s also causing teachers to spend a lot of time outside of their day doing additional work.”

“I had nothing, no resources,” Defreese said. “I built the curriculum from scratch.” 

Though Defreese was the lead teacher in her 11th- and 12th-grade English classes — designing and delivering lessons, grading student work and offering feedback — she was not operating alone. Technically, she was still an apprentice. Her first year in Beech Grove was part of a partnership with local Marian University, a residency program where she’d agreed to be the “teacher of record” at the school while still receiving training and taking courses to earn her master’s degree in teaching. 

During her first year, Defreese had both a mentor teacher at the high school plus professors at Marian providing her with ongoing coaching and training.

Marian professors said the design of the program, which began in 2019, was intended to increase the skill set of new teachers by exposing them to the research on learning, but also to get teachers “on their feet” and into classrooms sooner. “We have a teacher shortage,” said Karen Wright, director of residencies and clinical experiences at Klipsch Educators College at Marian. The one-year residency, she said, “gives an opportunity for us to truly partner with our community as well as fully train our candidates.”

It covers the $21,000 tuition for a new teacher’s master’s degree, plus provides a living stipend that ranges from $18,000 to $39,000, depending on teacher qualifications.

Local schools and the university see the arrangement as a win/win: understaffed schools get qualified teachers into classrooms quickly, and new teachers get ongoing coaching and support to hone their skills.

Marian University is one of a growing number of programs overhauling how teachers get trained, moving away from short, uneven practical experiences in classrooms to something more closely resembling a medical residency. Residents do more of the day-to-day work of a licensed teacher but in a more junior position, under the supervision of more experienced teachers. 

Apprentice teachers take education courses at night and on weekends while spending their days working directly with students, through tutoring and academic intervention as well as full-time teaching. And unlike traditional programs, apprentice teachers often get paid for their time.

Though the number of residency, apprenticeship and mentorship programs is hard to quantify, experts say the model is not just in university programs, but in non-traditional, alternative certification and “” programs as well. 

Program leaders say longer residencies are happening in part due to the profession’s rising demands and changes in the field. Some residency programs focus on specific targets, like equipping teachers with the research— such as on the science of reading —  to understand how learning works; others look to create a more diverse workforce or address chronic teacher shortages. 

The apprenticeship model has promise, said Suzanne Donovan, executive director of the incubated at the National Research Council. Programs like SERP — the Strategic Education Research Partnership — are looking to add a research element to new teacher residency programs, making early teaching look much more like young doctors training in a research hospital.

“I’m convinced it’s the thing that could make education a system that continuously improves in the way that,” she said. 

New teachers now outnumber any other group

improving student teaching is one of the most efficient ways to strengthen student achievement and teacher retention overall. Over the last 30 years, novice and first-year teachers have grown to make up the of the workforce, researchers say, outnumbering teachers who’ve worked for five, 10 or any other number of years or more.

According to a 2017 analysis, about 7% of all teachers, or 245,000 out of 3.5 million, are either first-year or novice teachers. In 1987, by contrast, those just entering the field made up 3% of the teacher workforce. 

Since new teachers tend to be less effective than experienced ones, and leave in higher numbers, especially the that work in high-poverty schools, the student teaching experience becomes critical to success. Teachers in training who have positive student teaching experiences with effective, experienced mentor teachers to teach. 

But according to a 2023 report from EdResearch for Action, many state regulations come up short, offering bare minimum requirements ranging in quality. Only 27 states require at least 10 weeks of student teaching under a mentor teacher in the building; even fewer, the report says, mandate a student teacher work full-time during those weeks. Few programs set criteria for what student teaching should include. Mentor teachers often receive , and if they are paid at all, receive an average $200 to $250 stipend. 

 “The frequency and quality of support provided to teacher candidates by mentor teachers and field instructors vary significantly and are often inadequate,” researchers wrote.

“People are not paying enough attention to this issue,” Dan Goldhaber, director of the at the American Institutes for Research, told The 74. “There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit when it comes to making student teaching better.” 

Studies have shown, for example, that a for novice teachers reduced teacher attrition within the first few years. 

�ҴDZ���󲹲����’s links mentor teacher quality to how effective new teachers are once they get in front of students. While only about 5% of working teachers volunteer to be mentors, student teachers who do get highly effective mentor teachers perform substantially better once they’re in classrooms. 

“If you work with a very effective, two-standard-deviations-above-average mentor teacher, you end up looking almost like a teacher who has two years of teaching experience instead of a novice,” Goldhaber said.

But several obstacles stand in the way of higher quality training for novices, said Matthew Kraft, an education economist at Brown University. Teacher compensation continues to be a factor, and districts and universities can’t pay for long training periods like in medicine. No such thing exists for educators. 

“It’s alluring to characterize teaching as medicine, but we’re not going to have anything close to that until we have something that even approaches medical pay,” Kraft said. “Those things go together. You train many, many years to become a doctor, not only because it’s necessary, but because there are returns to that multi-year investment in your education.” 

Getting into the nitty-gritty of teaching 

Some new residency and apprenticeship programs are paying more attention to breaking down the steps of teaching. They’re spending more time on research and practical tools in the way new doctors practice the “how” while learning the “why” of treating patients. 

When professors overhauled the student teaching program at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, in 2020, school of education dean Douglas Cost said they needed better measures to know whether their clinical teacher training was doing a good job preparing teachers for the classroom. Teacher licensure was the bare minimum.

“Accreditation is an important goal,” Cost said. “But it doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty of teaching. Understanding the science behind learning has given us a real lever to begin thinking about what makes a good teacher.”  

Cost and colleagues adopted , an evidence-based educator curriculum focused on improving student learning. It gives new teachers specific techniques like connecting students’ prior knowledge to what they’re learning, or how to make sure all students are thinking about the material. 

“Our professors gave us a template for designing our lesson plans, based on prior knowledge, gaps in knowledge, how to get students up to speed who might have gaps,” said Sarah Cardoza, a former resident and social studies teacher at Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska. “What do you want students to know, and how do you know if they know it? It takes that simple concept and gives you a roadmap for it.” 

Cardoza said her first year as a resident teacher, her class had eight students with mandated special education support, three English language learners and several Ukrainian refugees  — a lot for a new teacher to handle. 

“I appreciated having a plan for how you are going to handle those situations when everybody’s needs are so different,” she said.

New teachers often don’t have the experience to know how to execute these techniques in a classroom full of students, said Zach Groshell, an independent coach and teacher trainer in Seattle, Washington. Giving them step-by-step specifics — like how to gather students on the rug in an organized way or how to capture attention with a simple arm gesture — might seem basic, but can make the overwhelming first days of teaching much more manageable. 

“The generalities of ‘build relationships,’ ‘have a positive classroom climate,’ ‘plan your lessons effectively,’—they’re just too nebulous and vague for new teachers to act on them,” Groshell said. “You need to get more specific.” 

A  ‘gradual release’ to full teaching responsibility 

Traditional student teaching offers new teachers two stark realities: practice lessons in controlled environments, and then full responsibility in a classroom of students. But residency models emphasize “gradual release” to full independence, especially in hard-to-staff areas like special education. 

“My first year as a teacher, I cried almost every day,” said Geri Guerrero-Summers, a special education teacher at Mariner High School in Everett, Washington. New teachers went from “you’re going to observe” to “jump right in,” she said. “Student teaching was unpaid. … It’s really a rough type of process in becoming a teacher.”

Guerrero-Summers now works as a mentor teacher with the Washington Education Association’s , the first teachers’ union to step into training and licensing teachers. Originally funded with federal pandemic relief money, the union residency launched in 2023 and has recently obtained status as a registered apprenticeship program with the U.S. Department of Labor, which comes with an investment of $3.4 million. 

“We strive to make sure our residents are classroom ready, no matter where they’re placed,” said Jim Meadows, dean and director of educator career pathways center at WEA.

Future educators begin with 18 weeks working as a paid assistant in special education classrooms, often called a paraeducator, followed by seven weeks of classes, finishing with 36 weeks of clinical rounds, slowly taking over responsibilities as full-time teachers. 

Apprentices spend time in a variety of special education settings and age groups. The residency was created to address a specific challenge, an of special education teachers in Washington state. A found that 1.5% of special ed teachers were unqualified to teach, nearly three times the state average for other types of teachers. in the state make up more than all other vacancies—including STEM teachers and English language teachers—combined. 

Gradual release has been critical for learning the detailed skills of a special educator, said current resident Beck Williams. For example, writing, reading and interpreting Individualized Education Programs, which lay out a student’s classroom supports and accommodations and their learning goals, are covered in coursework but look much different when working with families and young people.   

“In special education teacher training, there’s not enough practice with IEPs and parent interaction,” said Williams’ mentor teacher, Angela Salee. Special education teachers often have to play several roles in IEP meetings, advocating for the student’s best interest while explaining accommodations to other teachers, administrators and families. 

In Mississippi, where have a teacher shortage, alternative licensure programs like the Mississippi Teacher Corps offer two-year residencies and accompanying master’s degrees to get more teachers up to speed as quickly as possible. 

Residents jump right into classrooms and start teaching summer school. They plan lessons and figure out classroom management, all under mentors and supervisors, right away. 

“Part of the difficulty of teaching is that you can’t fully prepare someone for the classroom,” said corps director Joseph Sweeney. “So part of it is that experience they need in the classroom. You have to get them on their feet to show them what it’s like.”

More than three years after the pandemic began, a crisis in teaching quality may be stalling academic recovery, new research shows. 

Faced with exhaustion, staffing shortages, and frequent student disruptions, many educators are using “outdated and ineffective” methods and content below grade level, according to a by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, part of a research project done in conjunction with the RAND Corporation. 

Researchers analyzed interviews from 30 leaders, predominantly superintendents and chief academic officers, across five traditional districts and charter systems. 

To cover extra classes amid shortages, teachers lost prep periods and opportunities to collaborate with colleagues, the report found. Many went years without feedback from principal observations, and are managing higher rates of challenging student behavior. These challenges, and a tight labor market that leans on early career educators who don’t yet have the experience to weather them, are all contributing to the crisis.

As a result, educators reverted to older, more basic strategies. For instance, students were asked to work in groups without further direct instruction from the teacher; prompted to use screens or technology unnecessarily; and were frequently disengaged. 

“Just like we’re hearing about student learning loss, these leaders were seeing that their teachers were also experiencing teaching loss,” said Lydia Rainey, who co-authored the last of four reports that explored how school leaders were responding to the pandemic with Paul Hill and Robin Lake.

Teaching quality is not solely responsible for the stall in academic progress — high dosage tutoring and technology supports, baked into recovery plans to help fill academic gaps, were ideals difficult to obtain in practice. 

It’s possible, too, that teachers’ classroom choices have been impacted by .  

“When folks are stressed or depressed, or have not fully mastered what policy is asking them to do, they will revert to what they know. And what a lot of people know is how they went to school,” Rainey said. 

Both researchers and the leaders they interviewed were shocked by how much the quality of instruction had suffered in the wake of the pandemic — something leaders didn’t anticipate when drafting recovery plans. 

“No one was thinking about this possibility, that teaching would suffer returning to school,” Rainey added. “Beyond just these leaders, this was not in the national conversation about COVID recovery, either. This was a surprise to them and to us.”

As one leader at a mid-sized, suburban district in the West summarized, there’s “a survival mode in teacher practice” right now.  For an urban charter system leader on the East coast, “It’s difficult to point to a model classroom at this point.”

Staffing and mental health crises that put teachers under daily duress also strained efforts to boost instruction quality. Leaders knew teachers “were ‘exhausted,’ and they worried about asking them to do more,” according to the report.

Beyond the classroom, a compounding challenge is making accelerated learning a nearly impossible task: ambitious school district recovery plans have gone unrealized.

“Tutoring has been difficult, retention bonuses were ineffective, technology tools that they purchased didn’t work exactly as hoped,” said Rainey.

Still, teachers were tasked with bringing pandemic learners back on track, without planned support from key interventions like quality high-dosage tutoring. 

In the 2022-23 school year, leaders diverted time and resources away from tutoring or other student interventions in order to rebuild teachers’ core skills.

The response, because resources are limited, “means there are few, if any, of the extra supports that research suggests will help the students who need them most,” the report stated. 

Researchers recommend that federal Title I funding become more flexible, so that schools can afford both to address learning and teaching loss, and encourage states to subsidize and evaluate high quality tutoring options. 

Principals could continue to ask teachers directly about what supports they need and provide regular feedback from classroom observations, Rainey said. 

They also suggested leaders leverage quality resources already in their communities, like bringing parents in to tutor as has, and consider creative ways to support students who may graduate with core gaps in knowledge, like gap year programs.  

While findings are not representative of all U.S. public schools, they do provide some explanation behind in academic performance. Systems represented in the report serve 6,000 to 40,000, predominantly students of color and large proportions of low-income students.

“These five systems are showing that they can’t get out of this on their own,” said Rainey. “This is really an all-hands-on-deck moment.”