Updated research in longitudinal study on the elementary and secondary teaching force by Richard Ingersoll, professor of education and sociology in the education policy division at Penn’s Graduate School of Education, reveals how it has been transformed over the last 30 years. The new edition of “Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force,” Dr. Ingersoll finds that America’s schools are hiring more teachers than ever but struggle to keep them in the profession. He shows that students are more likely to have teachers who are beginners, and that those teachers are more likely to be women and minorities. And above all, Dr. Ingersoll describes an unstable profession that raises real questions about how well the nation’s school systems function.

According to Dr. Ingersoll, “Too often researchers, school leaders, and policymakers are still operating under false assumptions about who goes into teaching and how teaching careers unfold. If we want to improve student performance, we must understand this new reality.”   

Among Dr. Ingersoll’s key findings:

• Between 1987-1988 and 2015-1016, the number of teachers in public, private, and charter schools increased by more than three times the rate of student enrollment increases. This increase is tied, in large part, to reforms that the public has demanded.
• 44 percent of new teachers leave within five years.
• Public school teachers have gotten younger. In 2007-2008, the modal or most common teacher was 55 years old. In 2015-2016, the modal age ranged from mid-30s to mid-40s.
• The modal teacher has one to three years of experience, a sharp decline from the 15 years of experience the modal teacher had in 1987-2988.
• Over 76 percent of public school teachers are women, high even for a profession that has been historically female dominated.
• While there remains a parity gap (51 percent of public school students are minorities, and only 19.9 percent of their teachers are), there has been a dramatic  surge in minority teacher hires. But these same teachers are among the most likely to leave the profession.
• About half of all teacher turnover takes place in 25 percent of public schools. High-poverty, high-minority, urban, and rural public schools have among the highest rates of turnover.