Study: Teacher retention improving some

Arkansas’ elementary and secondary teachers were somewhat less likely in this 2023-24 school year to leave the school jobs they had last year, but teacher retention — staying on the job — continues to lag below pre-pandemic levels.

Nearly 76% of teachers were “stayers” this year, better than the 74.7% in 2022-23, researchers at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville concluded in a recent follow-up study to research published in 2023.

“Although this represents a 1.1 percentage point improvement in the Stayers rate compared with the 2022-23 school year, retention remains below the pre-pandemic average,” the research team of Andrew M. Camp, Gema Zamarro and Josh McGee noted, adding: “Approximately 800 more teachers moved schools, switched roles, or exited the Arkansas public education system than we would have expected before COVID-19.”

Arkansas has 32,384 certified classroom teachers this year and 1,284 other certified staff in its 237 traditional school districts and 23 open-enrollment charter school systems, according to the Arkansas Division of Elementary and Secondary Education. The state has a public school enrollment of 475,207 students in kindergarten through 12th grades.

The research team also:

■ Reported that teacher retention rates vary across districts and subject areas, with the southern and eastern parts of the state — already affected by teacher shortages — showing the highest turnover.

■ Found that middle school teachers, in particular, show decreased retention rates

across subject areas. Middle school math saw the greatest drop in retention, 4 percentage points, to below 75% retention, between pre- and post-covid years. Retention of scarce special education teachers — down 1 point to about 73% retained — was also noted as a concern.

■ Questioned whether a change in state law — the LEARNS Act of 2023 that raises the state’s minimum teacher salary this school year from $36,000 to $50,000 — helped reverse three years of declining teacher retention rates.

■ Observed that student enrollment has declined marginally statewide while school system employee numbers slightly increased — possibly the result of special federal covid-19 relief funding that is ending and setting districts up for employee cuts.

“Teachers are the most important school-based factor for student learning and vital to preparing the next generation of Arkansans,” the research of team of Camp, Zamarro and McGee wrote in an email response to questions.

The team called their work “a timely snapshot of Arkansas’ teacher workforce.”

“Recently there have been many changes that could impact Arkansas’s teachers, including COVID-19 and the LEARNS Act,” they also wrote.

“At the same time, the state has implemented several promising programs to expand the teacher pipeline and produce day-one-ready teachers. Research on the teacher workforce is essential in making sure that the programs and policies we have in place address the challenges students and schools face,” they said.

In the study, the team categorized the different types of job turnover in the districts. Those teachers who remained in their same schools from one year to the next are “stayers.” Those who leave their schools to teach in another school or district are “movers.” “Switchers” are those who change from a teaching job to a non-teaching job in education, and “exiters” are teachers who leave the state’s education workforce.

For this 2023-24 school year, 75.8% of teachers were stayers, a figure higher than the 74.7% of stayers in the 2022-23 school year but short of the 79.9% of stayers in the 2019-20 school year, which was before the global covid-19 pandemic hit at the end of that school year.

The percentage of teachers leaving or exiting the education workforce remained relatively high this year — 9.8%. That is second only to the 10.6% that exited the profession in 2022-23. Prior to the pandemic in 2019-20, the exit rate was 8.3%.

In all, 13.4% of teachers either moved to non-teaching jobs in school systems or left education altogether this year, as did 14% last school year. Before the pandemic, that combination of switchers and exiters was highest in the 2016-17 school year and was a lower 12.1%.

“The decrease in Stayers is largely being driven by both a higher proportion of teachers moving into non-instructional roles within Arkansas public schools (i.e., Switchers) and a higher proportion exiting the education sector entirely (i.e., Exiters),” the research team wrote in the research brief.

The team looked at the data in different ways and combinations, including the overall education employee retention rates for entire districts. To that end, the team considered a teacher retained if the person continued working in the same district from year to year regardless of their changing schools or moving into non-teaching roles.

“During the past four years, most school districts in Arkansas — 134 — retained 85% or more of their teachers on average, with 29 districts retaining 90% or more of their teachers. However, some districts struggled as 41 districts retained fewer than 80% of their teachers on average,” the researchers said.

The Marvell-Elaine School District in east Arkansas’ Phillips County had the lowest overall 4-year average retention rate at 63%. As of this school year, that east Arkansas district is operating under state control and is managed by the Friendship Education Foundation that is an operator of charter schools elsewhere in the state.

The new LEARNS Act, or Act 237 of 2023, authorized the struggling school districts to contract with charter school operators to manage a district.

Interactive maps that accompany the University of Arkansas research showed that the Little Rock School District’s teacher retention rate over three years averaged 86%; Springdale, 89%; Jonesboro, 87% ; Conway, 91%; De Queen, 92%; Fort Smith, 89%; El Dorado, 80%; and Pine Bluff, 76%.

The multifaceted, 145-page LEARNS Act — initiated by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders to overhaul education — also raised the minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000 and ensured that teachers already making more than $48,000 would get raises of at least $2,000 this year.

The law also provides for $10,000 teacher merit raises. It greatly expanded opportunities for students to access taxpayer funding to apply to tuition and other private and home school expenses. It re- pealed the state’s long-stand- ing Teacher Fair Dismissal Act that provided job protections.

There were efforts over last summer to nullify the act or its parts. The rules for carrying out large parts of the law are being drafted and reviewed, but most are not yet finalized.

“We are digging into the impact” of the LEARNS Act on teacher retention, Camp, Zamarro and McGee said in response to questions.

“While we expect to have a more complete analysis later this spring, our initial results indicate that the LEARNS Act did not have large impacts on teacher retention in the first year of implementation. It’s difficult to say if this is because the law faced challenges throughout the summer or if we will see larger effects in the future.”

The team said they do see evidence that terms of the law helped keep teachers from moving into non-instructional jobs in their school system. Additionally, they said, the $50,000 minimum salary had to benefit rural, higher poverty school systems.

“The salary changes have the potential to not only meaningfully change teacher retention in districts that experienced big increases, but also make those districts more attractive to other teachers in the state. Increasing teacher pay may also make teaching a more attractive profession, attracting new entrants into teaching,” the team wrote.

As for the repeal of the Teacher Fair Dismissal Act, the team said they did not expect that to influence teacher retention, at least in the short term. They opined that school districts are more concerned with keeping employees and not with changing their personnel policies, and that the terms of the old law were not as strong as those in other states.

“We suspect that teachers’ day-to-day experiences and working conditions are unlikely to be affected by the repeal, so the change will likely not impact teacher retention behavior much,” they said.

The University of Arkansas College of Education & Health Professions post of the study “Arkansas Teacher Retention: Entering the 2023-24 School Year” may be found at https://edre.uark.edu/_resources/pdf/ rb2023-03_teacher_turnover_ brief_Dec14_2023_Final.pdf

An Office for Education Policy blog post summarizing the latest research and containing interactive maps is available at https://oep.uark.edu/arkansas-teacher-retention-for-the-2023-24-schoolyear/