All around the country, teachers come into work every morning with a large number of uncertainties. Will they have time to get through their lessons? Will they be able to skirt around issues the world is currently facing? Will a parent get upset with them for something out of their control? Will the school board have their backs if something extreme happens?  And most importantly, is worrying about it worth it? For many, the answer is no.

 

Andrew Spar, the President of the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union, said the state’s teachers are at a breaking point, describing the situation as a “mass exodus.” To Spar, the main issue driving the exodus is pay. “We’ve got to fix the pay issue.” According to the Florida Department of Education, the average pay for a teacher in the state is $51,582, which is around $14,000 less than the national average. Spar knows that pay is the biggest issue, but it’s far from the only issue teachers face every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Teachers worry about if their classrooms and library books meet unspecified criteria for eligibility because of Florida’s recently passed House Bill 1467, which requires that every book within a school meets unclear specifications that make it appropriate for an educational environment. A September report by PEN America researchers Jonathan Friedman and Nadine Johnson shows that more than 500 books have been banned by Florida school districts. The books banned frequently feature LGBTQ themes or people of color in prominent roles.

 

“Most of these classrooms will have very few books because the school districts in the state of Florida and the state of Florida itself do not provide enough resources to ensure a diverse variety of books in their classrooms,” Spar said. The law also requires teachers to post lesson plans and other class materials online for the public to see. Spar claims this legislation shows that the government lacks trust in its teachers, further pushing them to leave.

 

But it’s not just Florida. Teachers all around the country are quitting in droves, according to an August 2022 study by the Annenberg Institute at Brown University. The study found that there were up to 52,800 full-time teaching vacancies in the United States. Many teachers are leaving due to low pay, immense stress, or a combination of the two. But many smaller, harder to track issues, like potentially restrictive legislation and the culture wars, are also major contributing factors to teachers leaving, especially in states such as Florida, Texas, South Dakota, and New Hampshire.

 

In ongoing tracking by PEN America, researcher Jeffrey Sachs has shown that 40 states have introduced 194 bills limiting teachers’ instruction on sexual orientation, gender identity, American history, race, and politics. That can specifically be seen in a state such as Florida, which has recently passed one of the most talked about new teacher-related laws, the Parental Rights in Education bill or House Bill 1557, better known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. The law restricts teaching gender identity and sexual orientation until after third grade, but contains vague language about when and how those topics can be addressed and taught in higher grades. It also requires all teachers and school district staff to be mandatory reporters to parents on any personal information their children may divulge in confidence to teachers or staff members.

 

That worries Beth Lani, the director of advancement at Clearwater Central Catholic High School in Pinellas County, Florida. “I think it's taking away an avenue for the kids to express themselves [and] have a safe adult that they can talk with, an adult who maybe can guide them to a resource that would be helpful.” Although Lani works in a private school that isn’t covered by the legislation, she said that her school is seeing a record number of enrollment applications, with more than 100 students currently on a waitlist. “Not only are the teachers leaving, but the students and the parents are leaving the public schools here.”

 

Miami-Dade County School Board Vice Chairman Steve Gallon said that a small number of teachers and parents may be overstating the problem. He said that the laws are relative to “either side [of] where [they] stand on the issue.” Dr. Gallon does see that some teachers in his district want to leave the profession. “They feel like there may be some level of suppression in the classroom. You have issues regarding race and ethnicity, a bill that suggests that you can't present history in a way that [makes] some groups feel guilty about what they may or may not have done, and just the overall demand for standard accountability.”

 

Florida has more than 10,000 teaching vacancies, with 225 of those in Miami-Dade County, the state’s largest by population and the fourth-largest school district in the United States. The majority of vacancies come from underserved smaller communities in the state.

 

The shortage is just as prevalent in Texas. A Charles Butt Foundation survey found that 77% of Texas’ teachers have considered leaving the profession this year, up from 58% in 2020. In the same survey, it was found that 97% of teachers wanted a more positive work environment and that 90% want autonomy within their own classrooms, something new legislation pushes further away.

 

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Margaret Edmonson, a journalism teacher at Smithson Valley High School in Comal County, Texas, said that teachers across her state are dealing with more than they can handle. “You can scan the headlines, there have been educators who have left the profession because of the new requirements and the new constraints on teachers today as a result of [recent] legislation.” Edmonson said that Texas’ decisions on education never include input from educators. “It's not really about what's best for the classroom,” she said. “It's just about politics.”

 

The Texas Education Agency publishes reports about teacher retention, hiring, certification pathways, and the state’s teachers’ racial and gender demographics. As of last year, Texas had approximately 370,000 teachers, but more than 42,000 left before last school year, which is 9,000 more than the previous year. Texas’ hiring of new teachers has remained mostly steady over the years, even making up for the 42,000 lost last school year, but a downturn in new hires could create an even bigger crisis than they have now.

 

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Audrey Young, a member of the Board of Education for Texas’ Eighth District, foresees the situation getting worse before it can get better. Young said that the state is currently piloting the “edTPA” program, which stands for educative Teacher Performance Assessment. It aims to give aspiring teachers alternate forms of certification, but the program isn’t working. “[We] have had quite a bit of difficulty with it being assimilated because it doesn't align with what we currently have in place.” She added that Texas is exploring other options to help alleviate the problem, such as the already-in-use Pedagogy and Professional Responsibilities (PPR) exam, which also aims to give an alternate teacher certification path. The state will continue to look into other options, but these can’t be implemented until the edTPA’s pilot program ends in two years.

 

Despite constant national political upheaval and with Texas seemingly always at the center of it, the state’s teachers are beginning to reflect the classroom around them, becoming more and more diverse. White teachers have seen their representation drop by nearly five percentage points, with Latinx, African American, and Asian American teachers filling in that gap.

 

What Spar described as a lack of respect and trust for educators is what Lani calls “the straw that broke the camel’s back."

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