As schools across the country struggle to fill job vacancies at the start of the new school year, a new survey is shedding light on how educators feel about their profession – with results that may have concerning implications for the state of the teaching in the years to come. 

What You Need To Know

  • A new study conducted by Merrimack College and the nonpartisan EdWeek Research Center surveyed over 1,300 of the nation’s teachers earlier this year to gauge work and pay satisfaction, among other issues 

  • The survey found just 12% of teachers report feeling “very satisfied” with their job; the previous low of 33% occurred in 1986, according to data from the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher

  • Those who reported higher rates of dissatisfaction were likely to work longer hours than their satisfied counterparts; much of the unhappiness stemmed both from pay disparity and a perceived lack of respect from the public 

  • Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently acknowledged the exodus from the teaching profession is likely due to low pay and lack of respect in an interview with Spectrum News 

The recently released study, conducted by Merrimack College and the nonpartisan EdWeek Research Center, surveyed over 1,300 of the nation’s teachers earlier this year to gauge work and pay satisfaction, among other issues. 

In previous years, the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher tracked teacher satisfaction in public education from 1984 - 2011, the last year for which comprehensive data is available. At the time, 39% of teachers said they felt “very satisfied” with their profession. 

The Merrimack College survey, which aims to provide comparable data for the profession in 2022, found just 12% of teachers now report feeling “very satisfied” with their job. The previous low of 33% occurred in 1986, per MetLife data. 

Of course, satisfaction among teachers varies widely by demographic profile. Older, white male teachers with more than 20 years of experience tend to be happier in their roles, while the survey said the “profile of the least satisfied teacher is a female Millennial middle school teacher with three to nine years of experience.” 

Those who reported higher rates of dissatisfaction were likely to work longer hours than their satisfied counterparts. 

“The survey results suggest a deep disillusionment of many teachers who feel overworked, underpaid, and under-appreciated, with potential implications for a once-in-a-generation shift in the teaching profession,” researchers wrote in part. 

Much of the unhappiness stems both from pay disparity and a perceived lack of respect from the public. 

In 2011, nearly 77% of teachers reported feeling that their community treated them as professionals. That number decreased to 46% in this year’s survey. 

“I feel that media, parents, and even some students feel that they can speak [to] our situation without even having a true sense of what massive amounts of work we do,” one Oregon elementary school teacher wrote in response to a survey question, adding: “Pay is low, student learning discrepancies are higher than ever after online learning, and it feels like not a lot is being done to remedy this. It probably sounds like a broken record when I say I feel overworked and underpaid and it feels like a pattern of disrespect.”

Black teachers were more likely than white or Hispanic teachers to feel respected by their communities, according to the Merrimack survey; 71% of Black teachers said they felt respected by the general public compared to 43% of white teachers and just 40% of Hispanic teachers. 

Women, who dominate the teaching profession, were less likely overall to feel respected than male teachers, with 45% of female teachers saying they felt respected by the general public compared to 52% of male teachers. 

Teacher salaries are yet another area where teachers feel dissatisfied, with over half of respondents saying they “strongly disagreed” with the statement: “My salary is fair for the work I do.” Just 26% either strongly or slightly agreed that their salary fairly compensated them for their work, down from 35% in 2011. 

Some of that dissatisfaction likely stems from the fact that teacher salaries have not kept up with rising costs of living, goods and other prices – or wages from other industries. 

A recent report from the Economic Policy Institute tracked the average weekly wage for public school teachers with at least a bachelor’s degree working a full-time job since 1979. At the time, the average weekly salary for a teacher was $1,052 (adjusted for inflation) while other college graduates received an average salary of $1,364 per week, representing a 23% difference between the two group’s earnings. 

The split shrunk slightly in the mid-1990s, though complete data was unavailable for 1994 and 1995 – but by 1996, the wage split between teachers and other college graduates reached 15% with respective salaries at $1,319 and $1,564. 

In the 25 years between 1996 and 2021, teachers' weekly wages rose by 0.3% in inflation-adjusted terms, increasing just $29 to an average $1,348 a week over the course of those two-plus decades. With non-teachers now making an average weekly salary of $2,009, the wage gap sits at nearly 23.5%, which represents the “largest difference” recorded by EPI since it first began tracking the data in the late 1970s. 

With job dissatisfaction and low salaries already rising in 2019 among teachers, the pandemic kicked off the largest drop in education employment ever. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of people employed in public schools dropped from almost 8.1 million in March 2020 to 7.3 million in May. Employment has grown back to 7.7 million since then, but that still leaves schools short around 360,000 positions.

And EPI posited that the continued wage gap might further exacerbate the teacher shortage – findings that were supported by the Merrimack College survey, which found that 55% of teachers who reported feeling “very dissatisfied” with their jobs are planning to leave the profession altogether in the next two years.  

“The financial penalty that teachers face discourages college students from entering the teaching profession and makes it difficult for school districts to keep current teachers in the classroom,” EPI’s report read. “Trends in teacher pay coupled with pandemic challenges may exacerbate annual shortages of regular and substitute teachers.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona acknowledged the exodus from the teaching profession is likely due to low pay and lack of respect in an interview with Spectrum News. 

“At the end of the day, it's not just about money, it's about respect, it's about acknowledging the important work that they do,” Cardona said when asked why teachers are leaving their jobs. 

"Teachers have gone from in-person learning one day to totally virtual the next," he said. "While we recognize our teachers have bent over backwards, we really have to make sure that as we're reopening schools, we're listening to what our parents and teachers have to say."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.