Originally published in Bridge Michigan on May 2, 2025.
When my son’s favorite teacher resigned to become a nanny, it felt like a personal loss. In other years, both of my kids had teachers leave classrooms midyear to focus on family. These experiences are not just unfortunate — they reflect a growing crisis in our education system.
Interest in teaching, and teachers’ job satisfaction, have reached their lowest levels in 50 years, with just 12% reporting high satisfaction in 2022 compared to 52% in 2001. Unsurprisingly, these perceptions about teaching have led to chronic teacher shortages and record rates of teacher turnover.
What have we done about this problem? As a researcher who studies school leadership, teacher retention, and recent teacher shortages in Michigan, I’ve seen the same pattern play out again and again: We ring the alarm about teacher shortages and address them by making it easier to become a teacher — waiving certain requirements and opening alternate routes to teaching. The problem is that these teachers often receive less training and support, leave at higher rates than traditionally certified teachers, and are replaced by novice teachers. That creates lasting, negative effects on schools and students. This is often called the “leaky bucket” problem: you pour in new people to keep it full, but end up creating new holes in the process.