Pre-K public school teachers are twice as likely to be stressed out compared to adults with similar backgrounds in other jobs, according to a Rand survey of 1,427 pre-K teachers in 2024 as reported in The 74. Studying adults of prime working age with bachelor’s degrees who put in at least 35 hours a week, teachers in public school-based pre-K were generally more stressed, says Elizabeth Steiner, senior policy researcher at RAND and a lead author on the report.
Two top stressors: dealing with student behavior and addressing students’ mental health.
Low compensation is another top stressor. Pre-K teachers earned nearly $7,000 less, on average, than teachers in K-12 positions and $24,000 less than similar adults in other kinds of jobs, according to the survey.
Administrative work taking up hours outside of teaching is another stress point. Pre-K teachers reported working eight more hours, on average, each week than they were contracted for.
The result of these stressors: nearly one in five survey respondents said that they intended to leave their jobs by the end of the 2023-24 school year.
Other data indicates high turnover rates among early childhood teachers. In Virginia, more than one in three (35%) of teachers serving children from birth through 5 years old left their jobs between fall 2023 and fall 2024. In Louisiana, about 37% of early childhood educators who work one school year are gone by next, according to a working paper published by Annenberg Institute.
Pre-K teacher turnover comes at a time states are heavily investing in preschool. The percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds enrolled in preschool for the 2022-23 school year reached an all-time high of more than 1.6 million, and 35% of 4-year-olds now attend a program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER)’s 2024 State of Preschool Yearbook. States that have enacted new universal preschool programs helped to “push the nation to these record high percentages,” the report says. More funds than ever are bankrolling the enrollment increases: states spent $11.73 billion on preschool in 2022-23, an all-time high, according to the report.
States considering expanding pre-K should account for how they’re supporting and trying to retain their newest teachers to avoid the negative impact of teacher churn on students. States that want to expand pre-K learning are going to need to recruit more new teachers and hold onto them. Well-being is very important in that retention, according to researchers.
The RAND findings are troubling because “public school-based pre-K teachers are just one piece of the overall pre-K landscape,” says Steiner. Teachers in other environments, such as center- or home-based child care programs, which cities and states sometimes include in their preschool systems, are likely to be faring even more poorly, according to research.
If states want to expand preschool enrollment, “part of a successful expansion would be supporting staff and ensuring that they are retained in their jobs to get the best benefits for students,” Steiner says.
The 74
