Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Dropping out
Education | Jobs | Public Sector
March 29, 2023 – K–12 schools in the United States are struggling to retain teachers, with annual turnover rates at about 8 percent. School leaders leave at similar rates, but for very different reasons, find senior partner Jake Bryant and coauthors. Teachers cite pay and workloads as top reasons to depart, while school leaders are more likely to cite lack of meaning in their work.
Interactive
To read the article, see “K–12 teachers are quitting. What would make them stay?,” March 2, 2023.
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Visual form
Paired bar-chart sequence.
Layout / body structure
The visual is a two-step sequence. Reader moves panel by panel, with one step focused on reasons to stay and the other focused on reasons to leave, and within each step the paired bar groups compare teachers with school leaders across the same set of reasons.
What is being compared
It compares teachers and school leaders in US K – 12 education, separating the reasons each group gives for staying in their role from the reasons each group gives for leaving.
Measurement system
The measures are percentage shares by response category, so each paired set of bars shows how strongly one reason is cited by teachers versus leaders and how large the gap is between those two groups.
Visible structure inside the graphic
Each panel uses side-by-side bar groupings rather than a single summary line. The stay view clusters reasons such as meaningful work, colleagues, compensation, well-being, flexibility, and career development, while the leave view clusters inadequate compensation, unsustainable expectations, uninspiring leadership, lack of community, lack of meaning, and weak geographic ties.
Main takeaway from the visual
The shows that teachers and school leaders leave at similar rates but for different reasons. Teachers cluster more strongly around pay, workload, and leadership concerns, while school leaders show stronger concern around meaning, community, well-being, flexibility, and location.
Key standout values or extremes
Across the paired comparisons, the gap between teachers and leaders is never smaller than 11 percentage points and reaches as high as 47 percentage points. The biggest separation appears where teachers over-index on compensation and unsustainable work expectations while leaders over-index on meaning, flexibility, and community.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
The reader moves through two states of the graphic: a reasons-to-stay panel and a reasons-to-leave panel. That step change is central to the page because the same two respondent groups are compared differently in each view.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart is the full visual on this page.