BOULDER, CO (December 17, 2024)—In this month's episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña interviews University of California Santa Cruz professor Lora Bartlett about her new book Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World. Based on their study of the attitudes and experiences of 75 teachers across nine states from spring 2020 to summer 2022, Bartlett and her Going the Distance co-authors Allison Thompson, Judith Warren Little, and Riley Collins identified key factors affecting teacher retention and career commitment in K-12 education during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study revealed the impact of the COVID pandemic on teacher retention. In early 2020 at the start of the study, none of the teachers Bartlett and her co-authors followed planned to leave the profession. By the final year of the study, 2022, 20 percent of study participants left the profession. Additionally, many current teachers became what Bartlett terms "outgoing stayers"—teachers actively planning their exits or staying only due to practical constraints like healthcare needs or retirement timing.
Bartlett emphasizes that even before COVID-19, the teaching profession was at a "50-year low" in terms of respect, professional satisfaction, and salary levels. The pandemic exacerbated these challenges, particularly during the contentious debates about school reopenings and teachers' classification as "essential workers."
The work of Bartlett and her co-authors offers important insights about crisis response in education. Bartlett notes that effective crisis response requires not just protocols and preparation, but also the freedom for professionals to adapt to emerging needs. She draws parallels between the conditions needed for effective emergency response and those required for quality teaching: deep technical expertise, experience, contingency plans, and the autonomy to adapt to changing circumstances.
Based on her work with teachers, Bartlett advocates for fundamental changes in how schools approach teacher professionalism. She emphasizes the importance of creating conditions that support teachers' adaptive capacity and professional judgment, while increasing meaningful teacher participation in school decision-making processes. Her and her co-authors’ research suggests that schools need to move away from rigid, tightly coupled systems of control and instead foster environments that encourage teacher collaboration and respect for professional expertise. These changes, Bartlett argues, are essential for building sustainable and resilient educational systems capable of responding to future challenges.
A new NEPC Talks Education podcast episode, hosted by Christopher Saldaña, will be released each month from September through May.
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