SC teachers are leaving classrooms at record rates, latest vacancy survey finds
A record 1,474 teacher and school-based service positions were vacant to start the 2022 school year, a survey of South Carolina’s public school districts found.
Vacancies have spiked 39% since last year and an astonishing 165% over the last three years, even as the total number of teaching positions statewide has increased just 6% in that time, according to survey data.
The sobering survey, conducted in September by the Center for Educator Recruitment, Retention and Advancement, provides the latest evidence that South Carolina’s teacher shortage is worsening as educators fed up with pay, working conditions and political rhetoric leave the profession in droves.
“This report yet again provides evidence of the crisis our school districts face across the state in recruiting and retaining teachers,” state Superintendent Molly Spearman said in a statement. “It will take time and collaboration to address these issues, and I call on our state and local leaders to come together and help us ensure that our students will have quality educators who will prepare them for college, career, and citizenship.”
Superintendent-elect Ellen Weaver declined comment on the report.
Education leaders say this year’s report puts to rest any notion that the surge in teacher departures and vacancies over the past two years is a pandemic-driven aberration.
Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association, said the new report is illuminating because vacancies skyrocketed even though teachers are no longer leaving the classroom primarily due to health concerns.
“This year was really telling that that wasn’t the situation,” she said. “We’re back. We’re full out. We don’t have a problem with that per se.”
Patrick Kelly, director of governmental affairs for the Palmetto State Teachers Association, agreed that this year’s increase in vacancies can’t be attributed to the “COVID effect,” but said teachers continue to deal with many of the additional responsibilities and heightened expectations that developed during the pandemic.
As more teachers leave, class sizes expand, discipline becomes a greater challenge and learning suffers, education advocates said. The teachers that remain, they said, are overextended and more susceptible to fatigue, burnout and low job satisfaction.
Dissatisfied educators who can find work elsewhere, especially work that pays better and is less stressful, are increasingly leaving the profession, advocates said.
“It’s a self-fulfilling cycle that as vacancy rates increase, the teachers that remain are asked to do even more,” Kelly said. “Without a shock to the system to break the cycle, the cycle starts to feed on itself.”
Breaking the cycle
Breaking the cycle won’t be easy, but advocates say there are things political leaders can do.
It begins, Kelly said, with putting an end to the damaging drumbeat of political rhetoric that has left teachers feeling discouraged, disheartened and constantly under siege.
“The climate around education has just fundamentally changed in the last three years,” he said, citing attacks on teachers and the education establishment over its purported “indoctrination” of students.
“If you go back to spring 2020, teachers were heroes. Everybody was grateful and thankful for their child’s teachers going above and beyond during school shutdowns,” Kelly said. “Now, unfortunately, teachers in too many counties in the state seem to be the villain.”
That was the takeaway for many public education advocates in South Carolina earlier this week, when elected officials raised suspicions that educators in Lexington and Berkeley counties were indoctrinating students.
On Tuesday night, the newly elected Moms for Liberty-aligned Berkeley County school board fired its Black superintendent and attorney, banned “critical race theory” and established a committee to review district materials and books for “inappropriate” content.
The next morning, a group of hardline conservative state lawmakers who advocate for greater parental control over curriculum and classroom instruction filed a lawsuit against Lexington 1 alleging the district violated the state’s prohibition on “indoctrinating students with Critical Race Theory-Derived Ideas” because it partners with an “antiracist” education nonprofit that provides curriculum support and professional development.
“If you’re going to talk about concerns about curriculum and instruction and CRT and indoctrination, so be it,” Kelly said. “But do it in a nuanced way that’s specific to an actual instance of concern instead of painting it with a broad brush.”
He said teachers feel attacked and unsupported when they invest so much time and effort in their students only to hear elected officials decrying the “education establishment” for engaging in activities that in no way resemble their reality.
“You have people asking themselves, ‘Why am I doing this?’” Kelly said. “If this is going to be the reaction and this is going to be the way people are talking about what I’m doing, why am I still doing this?”
Long-term solutions for reversing the state’s educator shortage include initiatives like raising teacher pay and improving working conditions, advocates said.
Jennifer Garrett, CERRA’s coordinator of research and program evaluation, said the educators they’ve interviewed say challenging working conditions, not pay, is the primary thing driving them from the classroom.
“Obviously pay comes into play,” she said. “But I think it’s the additional duties, a lot of times it’s those non-instructional duties that are added to their plate that is sort of that straw that breaks the camel’s back.”
SC lawmakers’ role
The South Carolina General Assembly earlier this year increased teacher starting salary minimums to $40,000 and passed legislation that guarantees educators 30 minutes of break time each day, but advocates say more needs to be done.
“It’s not so much the money, but it’s what you’re asking them to do for that amount of money,” East said. “They’re not willing to give up weekends anymore. They’re working early, late, working second jobs. All of that is just not a viable way for them to live anymore.”
In addition to long hours, “unbearable” class sizes that bring more papers to grade, more parents to contact and more discipline problems make a job in the private sector seem increasingly appealing, she said.
“When you have industry offering you more money to work in corporate America and there’s less stress, that’s what you do,” East said.
Garrett said the personnel director at one well-regarded district told her companies are actively recruiting teachers in hopes of getting them to jump ship.
“It’s no secret that educators feel underpaid, undervalued (and) the culture’s not great,” she said. “So these private companies are targeting teachers on social media because they know they have great transferable skills that can transfer from the classroom to the private sector.”
Kelly said he’s hopeful the General Assembly’s recent decision to revive a task force to examine the state’s growing teacher shortage and offer recommendations for addressing it will pay dividends in stemming the tide of teacher departures.
The task force, which will review teacher salaries, job incentives and educator certification, preparation and support, is being led by the governor’s office. It met for the first time last month to review the status of recommendations made five years ago by an earlier iteration of the group.
“I think the work of that task force will be critically important,” Kelly said, adding he was encouraged by Speaker Murrell Smith’s statements expressing his support for advancing the group’s findings.
While the General Assembly awaits the task force’s recommendations, there are a number of things it can do in the new year that Kelly considers “low-hanging fruit.”
First, he said, it could extend parental leave benefits to teachers, who weren’t included in a law passed last year with bipartisan support that provides state employees up to six weeks of paid leave following the birth, adoption or fostering of a child.
Kelly also hopes the Legislature will look carefully at reducing class sizes, which he said should improve teacher working conditions and student outcomes.
“South Carolina stands out like a sore thumb in the Southeast with respect to class sizes,” he said. “We can get more in line with our neighbors.”
Passing a state lottery scholarship program for high school students who aspire to careers in education is another simple solution that should have bipartisan support and will help with teacher recruitment, Kelly said.
While lawmakers last year failed to pass a bill introduced by Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey, R-Edgefield, and Sen. Tom Young, R-Aiken, that would have extended existing lottery scholarships to students majoring in education, Kelly said it was more an issue of timing than actual opposition to the concept.
Other key findings
Convincing high school and college students to pursue careers in education nowadays is difficult.
The number of people graduating college with education degrees has been declining for decades and some universities have chosen to shutter their schools of education due to waning interest.
The reduction of education school graduates in South Carolina is apparent in the survey data released this week, which found a record-low 17% of teachers hired in South Carolina this year were recent graduates of state education schools.
That’s significantly lower than it’s been at any point in the last 15 years, when recent graduates have comprised between 21% and 36% of new hires.
“Young people don’t want to be teachers,” East said. “They see the time that it’s gonna take and they see the money they’re gonna make” and decide to pursue other options.
With fewer recent college graduates available to take teaching jobs, more positions are being filled by alternatively certified teachers and foreign educators who spend a few years teaching in South Carolina on temporary work visas, data show.
Another striking trend is the increase in teachers leaving one district for another. Teacher transfers rose a remarkable 39% over last year, according to survey data.
East said the spike in transfers indicates more teachers are “shopping around” for a district that offers better support or perks like higher salaries and better benefits.
A research project underway at the University of South Carolina has found teachers who transfer between districts as opposed to leaving the profession often do so because of school or district leadership, Kelly said.
He said it’s not entirely clear whether teachers are fleeing what they perceive as unsupportive districts or being attracted to highly supportive ones, but local leadership plays a significant role in the moves.
“The story there is that leadership matters,” Kelly said. “School boards and the way they talk about educators matters and administrator support matters.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2022 at 5:00 AM.