Teacher Attrition and Mobility in the Pandemic

In this flash brief, we frame the magnitude of teacher attrition during the pandemic, including from the 2020–2021 school year to the 2021–22 school year, using publicly available data on the public teaching workforce in Washington. Specifically, we compare attrition rates during the pandemic to attrition during pre-pandemic years, spanning the 1984–1985 school year to the 2018–2019 school year. We also report the relationship between attrition rates and district vacancies and compare changes in teacher turnover rates to differences in these rates between different kinds of schools.