What’s really driving educators out of Wisconsin’s classrooms
Wisconsin’s public school teachers are leaving their classrooms at higher rates than they have in more than 25 years — some to other school districts, some out of the field entirely.
We know exactly how many teachers are leaving and who they are because we analyzed Wisconsin’s publicly available database of every teacher in every school district over the past three decades.
The Badger Institute compared enrollment trends to faculty counts. We found out which sort of teachers — by age, experience and geography, for instance — were leaving. We examined which subjects are experiencing the most loss.
But numbers only go so far.
We wanted to hear from teachers themselves. To do that, we surveyed teachers who’d left some districts with especially high turnover rates, including one, Beloit, with the highest rate of teacher loss among medium- or large-sized districts in the state. Then we conducted in-depth interviews with a set of teachers willing to tell us in detail what drove them to leave.
What they told us was eye-opening, and from the accounts of guns in backpacks and capricious leadership, some common themes emerged. Teachers leave when schools are mismanaged, when disorder isn’t properly handled, when they’re prevented from doing the work they chose. Especially poignant: the affection many departing teachers still had for the places they were leaving.
Coming next will be a look at a sector of Wisconsin schools that the state’s turnover data does not cover: independent charter schools and private schools. They operate in a similar market for teaching talent but face some distinct challenges and advantages.
Also coming soon is an outline of potential policy responses to Wisconsin’s teacher turnover problem: what can we do to hang on to educators and to expand the talent pipeline?
Picking the right options starts with both defining the problem — we urge readers to see our previous work, as well as a look at whether teaching good character can improve a school’s culture — and with listening to what teachers themselves are saying.
Patrick McIlheran is the Executive Editor of the Badger Institute.
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