Where Have All the Teachers Gone?

"Over 50 percent of the nation’s teachers and principals are Baby Boomers. During the next four years we could lose a third of our most accomplished educators to retirement. The wave of departures will peak during the 2010-11 school year, when over one hundred thousand veteran teachers could leave. In less than a decade more than half of today’s teachers – 1.7 million – could be gone.

We can’t recruit our way out of this problem. Wholesale replacement of accomplished veterans with inexperienced beginners is a bad bet. Beginning teacher attrition rates have been rising steadily for more than a decade. By some estimates, over a third of the nation’s new teachers leave the profession within three years. In some school districts half of the new hires are replaced every five years. The schools in these districts struggle to close the student achievement gap, because precious resources and time are consumed by constant efforts to rebuild their staff."
Source: Report "Learning Teams: Creating What's Next" from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future April 7 2009