McKay School of Education > News > Wheatley Institution Lecturer Highlights Teacher Turnover Trends
Wheatley Institution Lecturer Highlights Teacher Turnover Trends
Teacher turnover is becoming an increasing concern in the United States. Every year more than 600,000 teachers move to another profession, retire, or change schools, according to Dr. Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania. Ingersoll was a guest lecturer at a forum presented by the Wheatley Institution, an organization with strong ties to the McKay School of Education. Ingersoll shared data that clarify some common misunderstandings on the subject of teacher turnover.
Ingersoll related statistics pertaining to job mobility in education, stating that as a nation we are more than making up for the teachers who are retiring at the end of the school year. However, he explained that the ratio of new teachers to all those leaving the field is about one to one. “We have enough supply to cover retirement, but it is much tighter for pre-retirement teacher turnover,” Ingersoll said.
Ingersoll quickly explained that we shouldn’t assume that all of the turnover is bad. “There are some people who just should not be in education,” he pointed out. Ingersoll described how in other industries the topic of turnover is quite significant. Turnover has costs, but there is also a finding that good firms promote and benefit from employee turnover.
Applying this finding to education, Ingersoll explained that it is generally understood that a good school is characterized by a good deal of community involvement, cohesion, etc. “It is more like a family,” he noted. “If we buy that, then one of the costs of employee turnover is that it removes continuity.”
With this removal problems may arise. “The data tell us that at the beginning of the school year, most of the demand is to replace those who left at the end of the past school year,” Ingersoll stated. “Most of [those individuals] did not quit because of retirement or age.” He explained that this turnover becomes a concern when you consider the size of the teaching occupation. It is the largest in the nation.
“Combine that with the average turnover rates, and you get 537,001 hires, and 621,427 leaving at the end of school year,” Ingersoll related. That translates to over one million people in job transition over a 10-month period. “That is typical,” he stated. “That is also a great deal of instability.” He concluded that, although teacher turnover is different than we had previously thought, it has deep implications for our schools and communities.
The lecture concluded with a question and answer session with members of the Wheatley Institution and prominent members of the McKay School of Education. Ingersoll’s data came from his national research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania.
29 June 2009