K-12 Teacher Recruitment and Retention Policies in the Higher Education Act: In Brief

The K-12 teacher workforce is relatively large—each year, about 4 million teachers are employed in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Turnover in many of these schools is high relative to earlier periods—16% of teachers left their school in the 2021-2022 academic year. This figure follows federal statistical trends that show a steady rise in teacher attrition since the late 1980s.

In addition, there is evidence that teacher quality standards have been lowered in order to fill open positions. Teacher shortages and high turnover raise a number of recruitment and retention issues that may be of interest to policymakers.