The State Board of Education heard a major update on teacher turnover this week. The annual “state of the teaching profession report” seeks to quantify how many North Carolina teachers have left the profession, and how many schools have on-going vacancies.
Teacher turnover is improving…
First, the good news: teacher turnover is improving after hitting a long-term peak last year. This school year, the rate of North Carolina teachers leaving the profession fell, although it’s still higher than it was before the pandemic.
The draft report released Wednesday is based on data collected between March 2023 and March 2024. In that time, about 9.9% of North Carolina teachers left the profession, including retirements. That compares to 11.5% of teachers who left the profession last year and 7.8% the year before that.
…but overall teacher vacancies hit a new high.
The bad news: the number of vacancies for teaching positions across the state rose for the third year in a row.
Once the fall 2024 semester was well underway, North Carolina’s instructional vacancies hit a high of 7,141 vacancies. The Department of Public Instruction took that count on the 40th day of school. It includes nearly 3,000 vacancies in the core classes of math, English, science and social studies.
The official count of teaching vacancies is higher than what the North Carolina School Superintendents’ Association reported last fall, based on self-reports from school districts. The Association’s report also tallied non-teaching vacancies.
The official vacancy count includes classrooms that do have a teacher, but one who is not fully licensed.
“Everyone wants a fully licensed teacher in every classroom in the state of North Carolina, so the current vacancy rate tells us how far we are from that,” said Tom Tomberlin, the Department of Public Instruction’s Senior Director of Educator Preparation and Licensure.
In the last few years, the state started counting long-term substitutes and teachers who don’t have enough college credits to pursue a long-term North Carolina teaching license as a vacancy. That means the last three years of data can’t be fairly compared to the lower vacancy rates clocked in before 2021.
Fewer teachers come to the profession via a traditional route, with a degree and classroom experience
Tomberlin presented data that showed how there are now far fewer first-year teachers who have a bachelor’s degree in education and student teaching experience compared to five or six years ago.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
Traditionally licensed teachers used to make up more than a third of newly hired teachers in North Carolina. Last school year, they made up about a quarter of new teachers.
As teachers with traditional training decline, they’re being replaced by teachers who are taking an alternative path to teaching, making a career change, or being hired from other countries. Last year, nearly 9% of newly hired teachers in North Carolina schools were international teachers on time-limited contracts.
Teachers who don’t take a traditional path to the classroom are also statistically less likely to stay in the profession.
“As we see the pipeline changing dramatically, are we being responsive to the needs of that differing population of teachers?” Tomberlin asked.
State Board member J. Wendell Hall, a former interim superintendent of several districts in northeastern North Carolina, said he doesn’t think there’s any surprise as to why teachers leave.
“It’s simple to me, teachers stay in environments where they feel supported, that they feel honored, and where they feel their voice is heard,” Hall said.
