Dean Strunk weighs in on teacher turnover

Joe McFetridge for Penn GSE

With the end of the school year in sight, many K–12 leaders are starting to worry: How many of their veteran teachers won’t be back next fall?

The Wall Street Journal’s Matt Barnum recently dove into data on teacher turnover. While teacher turnover peaked in 2022, the attrition rate remains stubbornly high.

“This is still a discouraging story,” Penn GSE Dean Katharine Strunk told the Journal. “I don’t think this level of consistent attrition is sustainable for the school system.”

Strunk is an expert on teacher labor markets as well as school and district improvement and accountability policies. She has collaborated extensively with district and state policymakers to help decision-makers formulate, design, and revise education policy.

Low pay and limited support were among the reasons teachers said they were leaving the profession, the Journal noted. Those trends are not new. Richard Ingersoll cited both in his 2018 Penn GSE study on the factors shaping the teaching workforce.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal.