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Moving Schools Isn't Moving Professions

BY April 28, 2015
Quartz recently ran a piece— American Teachers, More Demoralized Than Ever, Are Quitting in Droves—that spent some time theorizing why teachers are leaving the profession “in droves.” One problem with that: half of the teachers the author references aren’t actually leaving the profession. According to the study that he cites, about half of them are simply moving schools. And while teacher turnover is certainly something to watch and report on, it isn’t fair to conflate moving schools with changing professions.
A recent report for the Alliance for Excellent Education, a policy and advocacy organization, found that about “13% of the nation’s 3.4 million teachers move schools or leave the profession every year.” Some nuance: these numbers break down to 227,016 moving schools—not leaving the profession—and 230,122 leaving the profession each year.

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