The school of hard knocks: Why teachers are walking

UNSPLASH

North Carolina’s teacher attrition rate accelerated to 11.5% in the 2022-23 academic year, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. New teachers, defined as educators in their first to third year, left at a rate of 15.1%. The national attrition rate for all teachers was 12%.

Erika Williams is still a teacher at heart — but no longer in the classroom.

After teaching science in public high schools for 18 years – 16 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg – Williams was tired and ready for change. She felt underappreciated and underpaid for a job she woke up early for, and often stayed much later than anticipated.

She quit last year.

“What drove me away was that I was just burned out,” said Williams, who also taught in Guilford and Union counties. “Mentally, I just felt exhausted, taken for granted, overlooked by my staff, and [staff] always complaining about something I was doing. It’s like they want you to spend all of your time [at school]. They want you to come in early and stay late. And you’ll hear little comments made if you’re seen leaving not long after the kids leave, so there is really just not a lot of respect and gratuity.”

Williams is far from alone in walking away.

A report by the state Department of Public Instruction, which is mandated by the North Carolina General Assembly, found teacher attrition was 11.5% for the 2022-23 academic year, a 3.7% spike over the year before.

Beginning teachers, who are defined as  in their first three years, had an attrition rate of 15.1%, which was higher than their more experienced peers.

North Carolina’s rise in attrition is similar to national trends, the report revealed, but lower than the projected national average of 12%.

“We are seeing a lot of teachers leave the profession and feel forced out because they feel disrespected and underappreciated by our state,” said Tamika Walker-Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators. “We have seen, according to the report from the Department of Public Instruction, that teachers are leaving, also known as attrition rate, has increased to the highest it has ever been.

“We are losing our teachers due to being underpaid as professionals and to the working conditions of the state of North Carolina. This ultimately affects our students all across the state.”
Attrition can be reversed, Walker-Kelly insists, by taking action at the state level to alleviate teachers’ concerns and subsequently get them back into classrooms.

“This doesn’t have to be a long-term issue,” Walker-Kelly said, “if our state legislature is committed to paying for our profession. We need committed legislatures to invest in our public schools here in North Carolina. It is up to us as stakeholders in education, but it is really up to our state legislatures to make firm commitments to doing that.”

A contributing factor is stagnant pay. Teachers complain they aren’t compensated for what they deal with daily – from unruly kids to irate parents and the pressure of preparing students exam-ready by semester’s end.

In 2024, the National Education Association reported North Carolina continues to fall on the nationwide teacher pay scale. North Carolina is 41st in average salary, down from 38th in 2022-23 and 36th in 2021-22.

North Carolina Rep. Terry Brown is particularly invested in retention. The son of teachers, he believes better treatment and fair compensation shouldn’t be difficult if lawmakers take a step back and look to the future.

“We can look at some of the things that the General Assembly has rolled back over the last 10 or so years,” Brown said. “It used to be commonplace in North Carolina, but the General Assembly has gotten rid of masters pay for educators. So, in the past if you got a higher education degree, you’d get paid more. They did away with that. They have also gotten rid of or greatly reduced teacher fellows’ programs, which help reduce a lot of financial aid burdens on teachers.

“So, we don’t necessarily have to do anything new. We’ve done these things that prioritize teachers in the past, but the General Assembly is failing to prioritize them now.”

Said Williams: “For one, the schools don’t pay more for masters [degrees]. They used to pay you about a 10% increase if you had a master’s degree, but they did away with that 10 or 11 years ago. So, there is no point of getting advanced degrees unless it is for your own growth and benefit. They don’t even want to do tenure anymore. They changed the whole system and want to pay by performance.”

North Carolina, which like most southern states, prohibits state employees from joining unions, which limits teachers’ options to collectively bargain on contracts. Without that tool, they’re at the mercy of lawmakers.

“My brother lives in Chicago,” Williams said. “[Illinois is] a union state. You can’t treat teachers any way you want, or they will go on strike. A lot of politicians make it out like teachers’ unions are the enemy. We are not the enemy. We just want to make sure that teachers across the state are getting treated fairly.”

Said Brown: “For me, the bottom line, I guess, is that I always tell people that this state has some of the best universities and the people trained at these universities who are passionate about education want to serve and work in the school. They aren’t looking to make millions of dollars or even $100,000. They want to be compensated fairly.

“If we don’t properly compensate them, they will leave North Carolina or leave the profession. We have a revolving door of teachers, and the kids end up suffering. When the students suffer, the workforce suffers. There are a lot of things we can do now that will have a long-term impact 5 to 10 years from now.”

Williams feels another pressing issue is public expectations on educators as a group. It has a top-down effect, and teachers are left to deal with everyone’s anxieties.

“Everyone is under pressure, and [teachers] are at the bottom, so we feel everybody’s pressure,” she said. “The state puts pressure on the school boards. The school boards put pressure on the superintendent. The superintendent puts pressure on the principals and administrators. Then the administrators put pressure on [teachers]. So, we are at the bottom, holding up everybody’s stress in addition to our own, and that is why we get beat down. I fully understand that everyone is dealing with pressure, but now you’re taking your frustration out on me as a teacher. Now I am having extra put on me just because I am at the bottom. Being at the bottom means we usually get all the blame.”

Williams recalled being laid off in 2010 right after signing a new contract. To lose her job — in the middle of classes, no less – was “gut-wrenching.”

“A week after,” Williams said, “there was this big news story on May 15, and I remember it saying that this was the deadline for principals to tell which teachers were being laid off. This was circling in the back of my head, but I was like, ‘I am fine, I just signed my contract.’ But, in the middle of the day, not the beginning or end of the day, right in the middle of the day they called me to the office to tell me I was laid off, then sent me back to the classroom to finish the day.”

Williams, who found work after interviewing in Gaston, Union and even her home county, Guilford, is now pursuing a PhD where she is studying applied science and technology. Her concentration is STEM education.

“I am still an educator at heart,” Williams said. “So, hopefully I can use these skills to find work as a university faculty position and I get to do research.”

Brown encourages who support teachers to contact lawmakers for change.

“I get emails all the time from my constituents,” he said. “I make sure that I prioritize what they are asking me. So, I would encourage people to reach out and let their [lawmakers] know that what they are doing for the education system isn’t working right and make sure we can fully fund it. We have the money and resources in North Carolina to do so. We just aren’t doing it.”

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