May 26, 2023
Exacerbating the Shortage of Teachers: Rising Teacher Attrition in Pennsylvania from 2014 to 2023
Introduction
While media reports warned of dramatic increases in teacher attrition after the height of the pandemic in 2020-21, most states reported only slight changes in teacher attrition from 2020-21 to 2021-22. This was true for Pennsylvania, which experienced an increase in teacher attrition of just 0.8 percentage points—from 5.4% in 2021 to 6.2% in 2022.
Analyses of teacher attrition from 2021-22 to 2022-23, however, have shown large increases in teacher attrition across the US. For example, Chalkbeat has reported increases in teacher attrition of between two and three percentage points for a number of states.
In Pennsylvania, there was a 1.5 percentage point increase in teacher attrition in Pennsylvania. This was the largest increase on record for the Commonwealth led to 7.7% of all teachers in the Commonwealth leaving their positions as teachers in Pennsylvania–a total of 9,587. This was the largest number of teachers leaving on record. If the attrition rate had remained at the 2021-22 level, nearly 1,900 fewer teachers would have left the profession. If the attrition rate was the same as the average attrition rate over the prior five years, nearly 2,400 fewer teachers would have left the profession. Note that there were only 5,101 newly certified teachers in Pennsylvania in 2022.