Teacher Turnover Twice as High in Lowest-Paying Texas Districts

It's an oft-heard phrase: "You don't get into teaching for the money." While the average amount of time and personal sacrifice compared to average teacher salaries certainly bears this out, debates about teacher retention, incentives, compensation, and national attrition figures also show teachers and their advocates are not keen on maintaining a low-paying status quo.

A new article from the International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership (IJEPL), a joint publication of ASCD, Simon Fraser University, and George Mason University, focuses on the connection between teacher salary and turnover rates in the state of Texas. Researchers cite lack of competitive compensation and benefits, along with poor working conditions*, as the primary reason for high teacher turnover in Texas. Not surprisingly, this is a trend that plays out across the United States and in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia.

Teachers gravitate to well-paying districts, and schools lose money continually retraining and recruiting a revolving faculty, perpetuating an inequitable distribution of effective teachers and school budget woes. This article adds one more voice to the call for competitive teaching salaries.

*For more on teacher working conditions leading to burnout and attrition, specifically as an unintended consequence of NCLB, see another recent IJEPL article.