ASU research finds high dissatisfaction among Arizona's K–12 educators

New research at Arizona State University has found deep dissatisfaction among Arizona's K–12 educators, who cite overwhelming workload and low pay as top frustrations.

Researchers at the Morrison Institute for Public Policy gathered data from more than 7,500 current educators in Arizona and found that nearly two-thirds of them have considered leaving their profession, but overwhelmingly, they stay because they believe they’re making a difference in their students’ lives.

While the statistics in the report show discontent, the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU is six years into an initiative to change the way the teaching workforce is structured. The college’s Next Education Workforce initiative is helping schools create teams of educators around shared rosters of students.

The new model is intended to relieve some of the pressure expressed by educators in the one-teacher, one-classroom model.

The Morrison Institute’s Educator Retention Report, commissioned by the Governor’s Educator Retention Task Force, set out to analyze why educators stay in the classroom or leave the profession.

The project used a combination of a survey, focus groups and individual interviews to reach a whopping 7,788 educators in the state. In addition, 732 educators who recently left the profession for reasons other than retirement were included. Every county in Arizona was represented.

Some of the findings were:

• More than two-thirds, or 69%, of current educators said that they have considered leaving in the last year. 
• Nearly three-quarters, 72%, cited salary and benefits as the top reason for considering leaving. In 2021–22, the average salary for educators in Arizona, $54,580, was 13% lower than the national average of $62,700, making Arizona the state with the third-lowest average teacher pay in the country.
• Other reasons for considering leaving were dissatisfaction with teaching assignments or other factors related to the classroom, 31%, and a lack of school community support, 30%.
• Why do they stay? An overwhelming majority, 92%, said they feel they make a difference in their students’ lives. 
• The top solution cited for retaining educators: increase salaries, chosen by 96% of respondents.
• Other solutions were: ensure that educators have adequate preparation time, 91%; decrease class sizes or student load, 86%; reduce health care premium costs, 83%; increase retirement benefits, 82%; provide incentives to retain high-quality leadership, 79%; increase support from parents and community members, 78%; and reduce workload, 78%.

According to the Arizona School Personnel Administrators Association, teacher vacancies have risen for nearly a decade. In the 2023–24 school year, there were 7,518 teacher openings in Arizona. Thirty percent of teacher vacancies remained unfilled, and 53% were filled with teachers who did not meet the minimum requirement for state certification.

The ASU researchers, who completed the data collection over the summer in 2023 in time to present it to stakeholders before the 2024 legislative session, were surprised at how many educators they reached, according to Alison Cook-Davis, research director of the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.

“This is already a group that is super tapped out and has a lot on their plate,” she said.

“So many people were eager to respond and so much of the data was complete. Never have I seen so many full, complete survey responses. It really felt that educators wanted their voice to be heard.”

The data from the survey, focus groups and interviews all told the same story, according to Kristi Eustice, assistant research director of the Morrison Institute.

“As I reflected on the aggregation of data, a lot of what the educators talked about really came down to respect. These educators want to be treated as the professionals they are and they want competitive salaries and benefits,” she said.

“They want respectable workloads that are outlined in their contracts. They want to have support staff that are qualified that can help them. They want to be able to meet the needs of their students. The bottom line is this general feeling that they're not respected by administration, by the larger society and the parent communities.”

Cook-Davis said that the classroom experience has changed over the past few years.

“The fact that many would not recommend the profession to others or their own children is a very big change. Teaching has always been a very highly respected and regarded profession,” she said.

“But I do think that there has been a big shift post-COVID. There's this big mountain they're climbing with trying to catch up with learning and being able to support kids.

“I do think that this is an opportunity to think about the professionalization of education and educators' (needs) going forward.”

The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at ASU is reframing the issue, according to Carole Basile, dean of the college.

“My belief is that we have to design a new education workforce,” she said.

“Right now, we prepare educators as if every student is the same and every teacher is the same. We have a one-teacher-one-classroom model and it’s ‘We’ll hand you 25 kids and expect you to be all things to all the kids at all times.’

“That job is not humanly possible.”

The Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College is approaching the issue as a workforce-design challenge.

“We’re trying to move away from the idea that this is a teacher shortage-recruitment-retention problem,” she said.

The college’s Next Education Workforce initiative is helping schools redesign the education-staffing model to create teams of educators around shared rosters of students. Currently, the college is working with 143 schools in 17 states on this design, which would include specialists such as STEM experts or special education teachers on the teams. Now in its sixth year, the initiative is reaching 27,000 pupils.

Recent early-stage research by the college’s Center on Reinventing Public Education is encouraging. Teachers in the Next Education Workforce model in Mesa Public Schools were slightly more likely to remain in their schools the following year compared with teachers in non-team classrooms, and were more likely to plan to stay in the profession for five years.

In September, Basile testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce about the initiative, which would develop better ways for prospective teachers to enter the profession, specialize and advance. One important factor is paying teacher candidates.

“The work teacher candidates perform in schools is work. Work should be compensated,” she said in her testimony.

“Many teacher candidates work other jobs to support themselves and, in many cases, their families, as they complete coursework and their professional experiences. This is a major cause of stress and burnout.”

Basile said the Morrison Institute’s survey results were not surprising because “the system isn’t changing fast enough.”

“On the policy side, there needs to be a willingness to change the model,” she said.

“It’s about giving permission and incentives at whatever level of government.”