Educator turnover rates in Alaska have increased overall, beyond levels preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data from the Institute of Social and Economic Research, or ISER. It comes as the state continues working on ways to improve teacher retention and recruitment in the state.
Dayna DeFeo is the director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research, a clearinghouse for education-related work with ISER. She said at a State Board of Education Meeting on Wednesday that the teacher and principal turnover rate has generally risen beyond rates seen before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re seeing just a fairly steady, consistent upward trend,” she said. “We’re going to see this pattern no matter how we splice the data.”
In 2024, 17% of teachers and 27% of principals left their school districts. While turnover decreased during the pandemic, the new data marks an overall increase since 2013. The research builds on previous work from Regional Education Laboratory Northwest, which studied turnover rates in 2019 and 2021. While principal turnover is generally higher than teacher turnover, DeFeo said the trend depends on the type of community.
“When we start to dig into the data, they show that educator turnover is not a monolith,” she said. “It looks different. It looks different in different places, it looks different in different contexts. And as we develop policies and as we develop programs to interrupt these patterns, it’s kind of useful to look at the nuances of these data.”
For example, in 2024, principals left schools at a higher rate than teachers in communities outside of cities. But the opposite is true for urban schools, where about 30% of teachers left as opposed to 21% of principals.
According to a University of Alaska report to the state Legislature, teacher turnover rates statewide sat above the national average between 2012 and 2021. High turnover is associated with negative student outcomes.
The state has been working on improving teacher retention since at least 2020. That includes a teacher apprenticeship at the University of Alaska Anchorage and Fairbanks campuses. University of Alaska Southeast also expects to begin a principal training program next fall.
DeFeo said in an interview with KTOO on Thursday that her team plans on surveying teachers in February to see which factors play into their decisions to leave.
“What we can see pretty clearly is who stays and who goes. We can do that very accurately,” she said. “What we don’t know all the time is, why? Why they make those choices.”
ISER plans to publish a full report on turnover rates next spring.