Teacher turnover in special and general education: attrition

Teacher Turnover
Corporate Attrition
NonBusiness
Health Care
13.2%
17.2%
Special Ed
General Ed
10.1%
9.7%
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25%
Annual Corporate Attrition Percent
Figure 3. Annual corporate attrition
percent for public school teachers in
special and general education in
comparison with other occupation fields.
Corporate attrition is defined by leaving
an employer, such as a corporation or
school district. Percents shown represent
the mean attrition in 1991, 1994, and
2000. Teacher data from Teacher Follow-
Up Surveys, NCES, USDE. Other
occupation data from the Employer
Surveys by the Bureau of National Affairs
(BNA), Inc.
rate than did employees from non-business employers nationally. In fact, the corporate attrition
rate of public teachers was actually lower than for non-business occupations during the 1990s.
Reasons for Leaving Teaching
As shown in Table 1, there is a variety of main reasons given by public school teachers for
leaving teaching. To secure sufficient sample size for detailed analyses of this phenomenon, we
aggregated attrition data across three TFSs during the 1990s. Even so, the samples for some of
the particular reasons for leaving by SETs were small (i.e., less than 30). Therefore, only the
subtotals for the five categories of reasons shown in Table 1 were considered.
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