All of that stress while working for low pay seems to have pushed a lot of teachers to question their jobs. Nearly one in five survey respondents said that they intended to leave their jobs by the end of the 2023-24 school year. That’s “commensurate,” Steiner said, with rates of other workers, but it could still signal trouble. While Steiner noted that not all teachers who say they’re going to quit actually follow through, she said “it’s a measure of teachers’ job satisfaction” and “an early marker of attrition.” Other data has found high actual turnover rates among early childhood teachers. In Virginia, 35% of teachers serving children from birth through 5 years old left between fall 2023 and fall 2024. In Louisiana, about 37% of early childhood educators working one school year are gone by the following one, according to a working paper published by Annenberg Institute.