Tackling Teacher Turnover: Post-pandemic Trends Among Missouri’s Early-Career Teachers

By: J. Cameron Anglum, Ph.D.

Missouri’s teacher mobility is highest among its early-career teachers, especially those in their first five years of teaching in the state’s public schools. In 2023–24, more than one in five early-career teachers departed their school districts or Missouri public education altogether, modestly less than the pandemic-era high the year prior but substantially higher than long-term trends. The most recent cohorts of new, early-career teachers are leaving Missouri public schools faster than earlier cohorts, placing additional strain on the capacities of teacher preparation programs across the state to produce an increasing number of new teachers. To improve teacher turnover and address chronic teacher shortages in the subject matters and school contexts in which they occur, increased focus should be devoted to early-career teachers through new policy reforms and school labor practices.

Key Points:

• Several studies have connected teacher turnover to declines in student outcomes.

• First-year teachers are 70% more likely than the average teacher to leave Missouri public education.

• Fewer and fewer teachers persist through their early-career years, with only six in ten reaching their sixth year in Missouri public education. 

• Attrition rates among new teachers have worsened almost every year over the last 10 years. 

• Early-career charter school teachers leave their positions much more frequently than  teachers in traditional public schools, in some years twice as likely. 

• Policymakers and education leaders should strategize ways to improve early-career teacher working conditions, training, and professional opportunities.