Low salaries and burnout are chasing Arizona teachers out of classrooms, survey finds

PHOENIX — A new teacher retention survey found salary issues and burnout are some of the top issues chasing educators out of Arizona classrooms.

Researchers with the Arizona Department of Public Education surveyed nearly 1,000 teachers who pulled out of schools in 2023.

“This is a crisis,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said in a news release. “It needs to be addressed immediately.”

What does the data on Arizona educators say?

There’s a severe shortage of teachers in the state. In fact, the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association found over 29.7% of teacher vacancies across the state in 2023 were unfilled. On top of that, 53.2% of the vacancies were filled by teachers who didn’t meet Arizona’s standard certification requirements.

To understand what’s causing this shortage, the Department of Education surveyed 945 teachers about their reasons for leaving.

Officials found over 24% of survey respondents cited wanting or needing higher salaries as the top reason why they left the classroom.

Arizona ranks 32nd for average teacher salary at $60,275, more than $9,269 below the national average, according to the National Education Association.

Ranking No. 2 in the list of factors playing into teachers’ decisions to leave classrooms was burnout, with 22% of respondents citing it.

Why are Arizona teachers leaving the classrooms?

Here were the other most influential factors:

• Personal life reasons: 19%
• Student behavior and discipline problems: 16%
• Not feeling respected as a teacher: 14%
• Moving residences or location issues: 14%
• Issues with administration: 13%
• Dissatisfied with the teaching profession: 7%
• Pursued a job outside of K-12 teaching: 7%
• Feeling unsafe in the school or classroom: 4%
• Dissatisfied with large classrooms: 3%
• Better benefits: 3%

Other reasons included affordable housing, not feeling supported by the community and not having enough autonomy over the classroom.

Who made the Arizona teacher retention survey?

The survey came from the Educator Recruitment and Retention Task Force.

Gov. Katie Hobbs issued an executive order to create this task force in February 2023.

After that, she appointed the 19-member panel. Her appointments included one parent of a child currently in school, along with education professionals from urban, rural and tribal areas.

The teacher retention task force released a summary of its findings in December 2023. Part of the findings suggested the need for more specific strategies on keeping Arizona teachers in the classroom. This recent survey focused on collecting more data to help authorities create a successful game plan.

Data from the Arizona Classroom Teacher Attrition and Retention Dashboard found that 20.7% of teachers who left Arizona schools in 2023 were in their first four years of teaching.