WICHITA, Kansas — First came the school year where a killer virus sent everybody home early. Then the maddening online year. Followed by the half-and-half year.
Amid all that, teachers — or public schools writ large — became the enemy. Hostility boiled over about wearing masks, banning library books or teaching about history and race. And fears continued about gunmen storming classrooms.
Many teachers, principals and superintendents found themselves burned out, or merely worn out, and they’re calling it quits — heading for retirement or other jobs.
Now Kansas finds itself facing the most severe teacher shortage it’s ever known. Roughly 4% of teaching jobs — about 1,400 — are unfilled, and by the time the first bell rings this fall, it’s likely to be worse, not better.
“Forty years ago, there were up to 100 applicants for every (teaching) job in Kansas,” said Education Commissioner Randy Watson. This fall, even large districts will be lucky to get 10, he said. “We’ll have shortages.”
The problem has been building for years. But new research by the RAND Corporation shows that the COVID-19 pandemic increased teachers’ levels of stress and burnout and may be accelerating the exodus.
The RAND think tank’s national survey of teachers and principals in January found educators faring far worse than other working adults on several indicators of overall well-being.
Nearly three-fourths of teachers and 85% of principals complained of frequent stress from their jobs. That’s more than double most adults. Fifty-nine percent of teachers and 48% of principals say they’re burned out.
Nearly a third of teachers and principals said they were likely to leave their current job by the end of the school year, an increase since RAND’s survey in 2021. Teachers of color were more likely than white teachers to say they intended to leave.
For several years now, the survey has painted “a picture of stress and of some job dissatisfaction for many educators,” said Elizabeth Steiner, a policy researcher and co-author of the report.
The RAND survey found that supportive school environments — in which teachers are involved in decision-making and have positive relationships with their colleagues — lead to better well-being and a decreased likelihood of leaving the profession.
“They still love their jobs, want to be there for their students … love teaching, love leading schools,” Steiner said. “For many of them, it’s the context that they are teaching in, not teaching itself, that they find to be stressful and difficult.”
Cindy Deutsch retired this spring after teaching kindergarten for 37 years in Wichita. Early in her career, she had lots of flexibility and independence in the classroom, she said. Not now.
“We’re micromanaged a lot, where we’re told exactly what we’re supposed to be teaching, when we’re supposed to be teaching it,” she said.
A major frustration was an intense focus on testing even the youngest students, Deutsch said. When she started teaching, there were four categories to mark on kids’ report cards for reading and writing. Last year, there were more than 20.
