When salary is listed as a contributing factor, 93.35% of Midwestern teachers claim that their resignation is due to student behavior and progressive political activity required in their classrooms.
Tony Kinnett:
Personally, I had assumed that teacher licensure and professional developments would be a greater share of the responses.
One of the teachers who responded they were resigning due to fear of school shootings submitted their response May 25—the day after the Uvalde, Texas shooting.
One self-criticism of note is that I didn’t separate “Conservative/Republican education legislation” from “parental concerns.” Though the GOP legislative action was a direct derivative of parental distress beginning during the COVID-19 lockdowns, I should have split those. Also, I should have provided a text submission option for “If you selected ‘other’, why?” I’m rather curious as to what those responses represented.
I also should have added resignation options like, “I’ve reached retirement-age” and “inter-personal staff disagreements.” There are several others which come to mind; the options listed were found in a major publication (NPR, NEA, AFT, Chalkbeat, EdWeek, etc.) as a primary reason over the last 12 months.
I plan to coordinate with larger education groups in order to provide a larger, nationwide survey to assess teacher shortages in the fall. As always, all data and numerical information is checked and rechecked by our Data Analyst at Chalkboard Review, Daniel Elmore.
