Elementary teacher, working at her desk in an empty classroom. She is wearing a light sweater and her brown hair is tied in a ponytail. She is marking school work with a red pen. Horizontal indoors waist up shot with copy space.

Teacher Well Being and Intentions to Leave in 2024: Findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher Survey

Doan, Sy, Elizabeth D. Steiner, and Rakesh Pandey, Teacher Well-Being and Intentions to Leave in 2024: Findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher Survey. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2024. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1108-12.html.

Throughout the United States, schools and communities have been experiencing a shortage of teachers, especially in special education, science, technology, engineering and math for some years. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem.

Many state education agencies and districts are working on aggressive tactics to recruit and retain teachers, including offering bonuses and other incentives, and building teacher “residency” programs.

This report presents selected findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher survey, an annual survey of kindergarten through grade 12 public school teachers across the United States. The findings focus on teacher well-being and a small set of high-interest factors related to teacher retention: sources of job-related stress, pay, hours worked, and teachers' intentions to leave their current jobs. The authors track teachers' reported well-being over time and compare teachers' responses with those of comparable working adults.

The findings in this report are descriptive and intended to inform federal, state, and local education leaders and policymakers about the state of the teacher workforce, although the authors note that teachers' perceptions and experiences likely vary by state and locality.

KEY FINDINGS

Teachers' reported well-being in January 2024 was consistent with that in 2023, but compared with comparable working adults, about twice as many teachers reported experiencing frequent job-related stress or burnout and roughly three times as many teachers reported difficulty coping with job-related stress.
Teachers were as likely to say that they intend to leave their jobs by the end of the 2023–2024 school year as comparable working adults.
Teachers reported working nine hours per week more than comparable working adults (53 hours per week compared with 44 hours), but they reported earning about $18,000 less in base pay, on average (roughly $70,000 compared with roughly $88,000).
Thirty-six percent of teachers considered their base pay adequate, compared with 51 percent of comparable working adults. Teachers desired a roughly $16,000 increase in base pay, on average, to consider their pay adequate.
Female teachers reported significantly higher rates of frequent job-related stress and burnout than male teachers, a consistent pattern since 2021. Female teachers also reported significantly lower base pay than male teachers, but there were no differences in the number of hours worked per week.
Black teachers were less likely to report experiencing job-related stress than White teachers, but they were significantly more likely to say that they intend to leave their job at their school. Black teachers were also significantly less likely than their peers to say that their base pay was adequate, and they were more likely to report lower base pay than their peers.