EDUCATION EXODUS As I wrote recently, teacher shortage hysteria has been with us since 1920. Additionally, “multiple studies of teacher turnover have not found evidence of unusually large attrition,” according to a new report by the Rand Corp. Yes, polling teachers about what they plan to do as opposed to what they actually do nets very different results. The Rand report also explains, “In short, we believe it is districts’ increase in number of staff that they seek to employ rather than an exodus from teaching that is straining the teacher labor market. More than three-quarters of surveyed district leaders indicated that they have expanded their substitute and/or regular teaching staff above prepandemic levels as of spring 2022.”
Parents are abandoning schools in large numbers, but teachers are not.
School reopening time is almost upon us, and large numbers of parents have opted out of government-run schools. Over the past two school years, k-12 enrollment has declined by nearly 3%, or about 1.3 million students nationwide, according to a recent study by the American Enterprise Institute. Children who had gone to schools that were shuttered during the Covid panic have been much less likely to return to a traditional public school (TPS).