The Dropout Rate No One is Talking About

There is frequent talk about the national drop out rate. From a quick google search, it seems that the national dropout rate is around 7% or 8% (https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=16 and http://www.statisticbrain.com/high-school-dropout-statistics/) I should probably do more research on this, but I was looking for a quick estimate. This is an important number, and something that does merit the concern and effort of our education system. But there is another dropout rate that concerns me, and that is the rate at which teachers leave the teaching field.

According to The Atlantic between 40% and 50% of teachers leave the field within their first 5 years of teaching. By the way, I am about to hit my four year anniversary of teaching. Maybe some of them enter education planning on it being a temporary career, but I don't think that this is the case for the majority of teachers. I think that this is another matter that is something that should be investigated and worked to correct. When a teacher leaves, they take their experiences and expertise with them. We have no way of capturing that and sharing it with future teachers. We also have a huge demographic of teachers who will be retiring in the next 10 years and we need experienced teachers to fill these positions. I believe that teachers need more administrator support, quality professional development, time to prepare, and then be left alone.

The motivation behind this post is I recently heard that we will have to begin documenting why individual students get Ds and Fs and what I have done individually to help these students. I am not disagreeing with the need to help these students individually, but I am concerned about the documentation and it being something that takes away from my time to prepare for doing what I love, teaching!

If you have any comments about this topic or further research, please share in the comments below. I am not an expert in this field, but every time I see a fellow teacher leave the teaching field I feel a sense of loss.