Compared to average workers in the United States, teachers exhibit higher levels of job-related stress, with roughly half of teachers showing signs of burnout. For policymakers and school leaders, some promising levers to lower teacher burnout are salaries, work schedules, and working conditions. This brief describes the findings of a new impact…

Teachers are stressed. The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of mindfulness breathing strategies on teacher stress. This study used mixed methods in an explanatory sequential design. In phase one, quantitative data was collected. An experimental group was formed with 12 high school teachers from the same high school, teaching grades…

While it is commonly believed that teachers take more absences than other professionals, few empirical studies have systematically investigated the prevalence of teacher absences in the U.S. This study documents the level of teacher absences and compares it with other college-educated workers. Using the Monthly Current Population Survey between…

Extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine, cause major disruptions, with teachers struggling to uphold educational provision. The study presented here aimed to substantiate and experimentally confirm the effectiveness of providing teachers with psychological support in extreme situations in order to…

Teacher quality is the most important school-related factor influencing student achievement, and closing the growing pay gap between teachers and other college graduate professionals is critical to public education. This report provides an update to a series that has tracked public school teacher wages and compensation over the last two decades.…

We develop a unifying conceptual framework for understanding and predicting teacher shortages at the state, region, district, and school levels. We then generate and test hypotheses about geographic, grade level, and subject variation in teacher shortages using data on teaching vacancies in Tennessee during the fall of 2019. We find that teacher…

This report presents selected findings from the 2024 State of the American Teacher survey, an annual survey of kindergarten through grade 12 public school teachers across the United States. The findings focus on teacher well-being and a small set of high-interest factors related to teacher retention: sources of job-related stress, pay, hours…

This correlative study examined the role of teacher qualities and working conditions in 4th- and 8th-grade Turkish students' mathematics achievement in TIMSS 2019. Teacher qualifications were defined based on the teacher questionnaire used in TIMSS 2019 and were discussed in three categories: personal characteristics, teacher qualifications, and…

We study changes to teacher working conditions from 2016-17 to 2022-23, covering school years before, during, and after the COVID pandemic. We show working conditions were improving leading into the pandemic but declined when the pandemic arrived. Perhaps more surprisingly, the pandemic was not a low point: teacher working conditions have…