(The Center Square) – Fewer North Carolina public school teachers are quitting, according to a new state report.
The teacher attrition rate for 2023-24 was 9.88%, down from 11.5% in 2022-23, according to the Department of Public Instruction. That equates to almost 1,500 fewer teachers who leaving their jobs than the year, out of a total of 89,972 full time teachers.
The attrition rate is still higher than the average rate over the last seven years of 8.64. percent, the state said.
“While the report shows improvement in the percentage of teachers staying compared to prior years, there are still far too many teachers leaving the profession,” Democratic Superintendent Mo Green, successor to former Republican Superintendent Catherine Trust (2021-24), said in a statement. “We need to do a much better job of keeping them in the classroom once they are hired. That starts with revering these professionals for the amazing job they do and providing them with great salaries and opportunities for growth within our public schools.”
The new report on teacher attrition is encouraging, Thomas Tomberlin, senior director of educator preparation and licensure at the Department of Public Instruction, told The Center Square.
“It still remains to be seen if we’re heading back to previous levels of attrition or what’s happening,” Tomberlin said. “It’s hard to see any trend, but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”
It’s difficult at this point to establish any what factors may have influenced the drop, Tomberlin added.
“Certainly, there have been efforts by the General Assembly to increase teacher salaries,” he said. “We are also looking at ways that we can support beginning teachers so that they stay in the profession longer. We did see elevated attrition still for early career teachers and that’s something we’re trying to look into.”
In 2023-24, the attrition rate for teachers with zero to five years of experience ranged from 11.7% to 17.5%, the report said.
First-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein has proposed increasing education spending by more than $876 million in fiscal year 2025-26 and $1.2 billion in fiscal year 2026-27, increasing teacher pay by 10.6% over the two-year period, reinstating extra pay for master’s degrees and providing teachers stipends for school supplies.
Stein’s budget proposal would raise starting teacher salaries to the highest in the Southeast, he says.
North Carolina may be the only state that conducts comprehensive studies into teacher attrition, Tomberlin said. The lack of those studies makes it difficult to pinpoint the factors that are influencing attrition nationwide, he added.
“We don’t have other states that collect the data in quite the same way that would allow us to look into some of the things they’re doing,” Tomberlin said.
