The education field needs a jolt.

No, make that JOLTS, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You wouldn’t know it from our the discourse over public schools, but according to the most recent results, public education has some of the lowest rates of job turnover in our economy. In fact, public education workers, mainly teachers, have lower turnover rates than employees in every other industry except the federal government.

First, as shown in the JOLTS data, public schools have much lower rates of job openings, hire rates, quit rates, and voluntary and involuntary separations than every industry except the federal government.

We know that teacher churn in general is harmful to students. But research suggests that schools aren’t losing their top teachers; rather, teachers who leave their schools or the profession tend to be lower-performing than the ones who stay. It would not be a productive use of resources to reduce turnover rates for low-performing teachers.

State data suggest that it is much higher in some places than in others, rather than being some sort of universal issue.

Read the full article on teacher turnover by Chad Aldeman at The 74