Breaking Down: Teacher Attrition from Publicly Available Resources

Research into teacher turnover in America dates back at least 100 years, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the teacher labor market highlights the need for better understanding of this issue. How- ever, there is no comprehensive national data system for tracking the teacher labor market in the United States. In this paper I present ef- forts to compile public payroll records from 13 states with over 11 million teacher by year employment records. I demonstrate how these records can be compiled and used to analyze teacher turnover across and between school districts. I find that across states between 10 and 15 percent of teachers stop teaching in their district in a given year, and the interquar- tile range across districts is approximately 5 percentage points. I conclude by discussing how this data can form the starting point for a new standard in understanding teacher retention.