70% Of L.A. Teachers Have Considered Leaving The Profession: Study

LOS ANGELES, CA — Golden State teachers are increasingly leaving their professions amid rising housing prices and over-work throughout the pandemic, a new study revealed.

Nearly 70 percent of teachers in Los Angeles have seriously considered leaving the profession, according to a new report from United Teachers Los Angeles, which surveyed more than 13,000 teachers in the city.

“I am leaving — this is my last year," a teacher, who wished to remain anonymous told UTLA. "I cannot take the stress and burnout of this job anymore. Over the last 8 years, teachers have been expected to shoulder more and more of the burden without adequate respect, compensation or resources. I can’t do it anymore."

Ahead of the pandemic, authors of academic articles and policy papers warned of a national teacher shortage.

A report released by the Economic Policy Institute found that the wage gap between teachers and other professionals with similar certifications had hit a new high, nearly 24 percent, in 2021.

"During the pandemic, this crisis has moved from a warning to an acute, everyday reality. Veteran educators are retiring in massive numbers. Early and mid-career educators are burned out and have been pushed to their breaking point. And the educator labor pipeline is running dry," researchers wrote in the report.

And it's not just Los Angeles, across the nation, school districts are suffering from a shortage of experienced teachers as the profession has consistently lost educators to better-paying opportunities, according to the study, titled "Burned Out, Priced Out."

UTLA's study, conducted in June, also revealed that nearly 60 percent of veteran educators with 20 or more years of experience cannot afford to live in the community where they teach.

In Los Angeles, the average teacher earns 22% less than the average bachelor's degree-holding worker, according to the study.

According to a wage penalty study conducted by UTLA, in the last five years, the average annual salary for a bachelor’s degree-holding worker in L.A. was between $94,000 and $101,000 while an LAUSD teacher’s salary was between $74,000 and $79,000.

And many teachers have also reported having to work several jobs to stay afloat. To make ends meet, 28 percent of educators have worked a second job, the UTLA report found.

Angeleno high school English teacher Gina Grey told The Guardian that she had to work a second job as an Instacart shopper and delivery person when she first started teaching.

“It was so stressful, but necessary in order to be able to cover the pay gap. The compensation was just a lot lower than expected,” Gray told the newspaper. "In Los Angeles county, especially in LA, the costs are enormous. Most teachers can’t even afford rent, let alone to purchase property with just a teacher’s salary"

In a job sector that is already known for offering lower wages, teachers have also been hit with state-imposed testing, "micromanaged" performance metrics, school privatization and defunding.

"We're at a critical crisis right now where you have educators bearing the brunt in this profession of not being treated as professionals," Cecily Myart-Cruz, the president of UTLA, told The Guardian.

The authors of the report detailed five core solutions that they believe would fix the issue: pay increases, smaller class sizes and more student support, end the over-testing of students, equity for schools and expanding community schools and targeted support systems.

"Educators, students, and families have dealt with the consequences of the deliberate underfunding of public education and social services for decades," according to the report. "During the pandemic, these long-standing inequities were laid bare, and the demands on educators have driven the educator shortage to crisis levels."