Teacher turnover rate falls slightly in state schools, draft report says

The State Board of Education released a draft report that shows an 8.1 percent teacher turnover rate in the state's 115 school districts. That's down from 8.7 percent the previous year.

Posted 8:03 p.m. Feb 5, 2019 — Updated 7:06 p.m. Feb 6, 2019

The turnover rate for teachers in North Carolina fell roughly half of a percentage point during the 2017-2018 school year, according to a draft of the annual turnover report prepared for the State Board of Education.

The rate was 8.1 percent in 2017-2018, down from 8.7 percent the year before.

The board will discuss the report Wednesday and vote on whether to make it final at its meeting Thursday in Raleigh.

What the numbers mean depends on your point of view.

The Republican leaders of the General Assembly say the decline shows things are improving for teachers in the state.

Critics of the legislature say more teachers are staying in the classroom despite a lack of resources.

The draft report says the teachers who leave are less effective than the teachers who choose to stay. It does not say what the state is doing to improve teacher effectiveness.

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Other highlights:

Beginning teachers -- those with less than three years of experience -- left at a much greater rate than experienced teachers -- 12.34 percent to 7.25 percent.
Most of the teachers who left -- 54 percent -- said they did so for personal reasons that included family moves, changing careers or taking a teaching job in another state. According to the report, just 1.6 percent of teachers left the field because they were “dissatisfied with teaching.”
The attrition rate only includes teachers who left the field or left the state. Teachers who take a job in a different North Carolina school district are tallied in a figure the report calls “teacher mobility.” However, within each district, a teacher leaving is a teacher leaving whether she or he goes to another district or another state. So the average effect on districts when attrition and mobility are combined is 12.45 percent, the report says.

Public meeting

The State Board of Education holds its monthly meeting on Wednesday and Thursday at 301 N. Wilmington St., Raleigh, in the seventh floor board room. The discussion of the "State of the Teaching Profession Report" is scheduled to begin at 1:35 p.m. Wednesday.

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