Contextualizing Teacher Burnout Coverage With Research

Low pay. Lack of autonomy. Little support. And no time.

Anyone who is familiar with the education world is well aware of the issues educators routinely face – and the result, which is typically called teacher burnout. 

While the number of teachers saying they experienced burnout is lower now than it was during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is still very high compared to other professions. And teacher turnover rates, while also less than during the pandemic, still have not returned to pre-pandemic rates. That is the bad news. 

The good news is that there’s an increasing amount of research examining teacher burnout and effective ways to address it.

It can be difficult, however, to figure out ways to report on the issue substantively and frequently; the goal of this explainer is to help journalists find more ways to deeply report on the topic. This includes better understanding what burnout is, how it affects teachers and what can be done to help alleviate it. 

Data and Background

Not surprisingly, the pandemic increased rates of educator burnout.

A June 2022 Gallup poll reported that K-12 teachers had a far higher burnout rate (at 44%) than any other profession or industry, including health care and social services. And a 2024 Pew Research study found that only 33% of teachers said they were very or extremely satisfied with their job, compared to 51% of all U.S. workers.

In the past few years, different studies have seen slight increases and decreases in teacher burnout, but the overall findings shows that while many educators can still find joy and meaning in teaching, too many feel under constant pressure, squeezed for time and without the support they need logistically and emotionally.  

Most prominently, a 2024 study out of Brown University, “The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession,” stated that, based on four concepts – occupational prestige, interest among students, the number of individuals preparing for entry and on-the-job satisfaction – “the current state of the teaching profession is at or near its lowest levels in 50 years.” 

The authors, Matthew A. Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University and Melissa Arnold Lyon, an assistant professor of public administration and policy at the University of Albany, found that, while the downward trend wasn’t steady over the past half-century, a sustained decline began around 2010.

The past few years have shown some slights up and down: The EdWeek Research Center, which has conducted a survey of teacher morale since 2024, has seen a small decrease in teacher morale since last year. In 2024, on a scale running from 100 to -100, morale was -13. In 2025, it was +18, and this year, it dropped to +13.

Slightly better news came from RAND’s 2025 State of the American Teacher Survey. Select findings showed the share of teachers who reported burnout dropped to 53% from 60%, and 16% of teachers in 2025 said they plan to leave their jobs, falling from 22% in 2024. 

But these relatively small variations do not contradict the reality that many teachers feel overwhelmed and unappreciated in their jobs. In fact, teachers are more likely than similar working adults to report experiencing poor well-being on every indicator,” stated the RAND study, which is issued annually. These indicators include frequent job-related stress and difficulty coping with it, depression and burnout.

And even though the RAND study found that the turnover rate – teachers who resign and retire, decreased to 7% from its peak of 10% during the coronavirus – it is still higher than the estimated pre-pandemic rate of about 6%.

Within the profession, Black educators were more likely to say they plan to leave their jobs than their white colleagues, and female teachers were more likely to report feeling job-related stress and burnout than male teachers or similar working adults of either gender, according to the report.

Other findings: early career educators tend to leave the profession more frequently than those who have been teaching longer; STEM and special education teachers are more likely to leave than those in other disciplines, and private and charter school teachers turnover more frequently  than public school teachers.

What Is Burnout?

Although people tend to throw the term around casually, there is a commonly used burnout scale – applicable to all professions – created by two professors, Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson. 

The Maslach Burnout Inventory, as its known, includes 22 questions that explore the three dimensions of burnout: emotional exhaustion (overextended, drained and used up without any source of replenishment); cynicism or depersonalization (a loss of idealism); and a decline in feelings of competence and productivity at work.

While workload can be a cause of burnout, Maslach and others researchers have found, there’s less likelihood of it if people feel productive and enjoyment, even if putting in long hours. Rather, other factors contribute, such as lack of control over work, low pay, lack of support by supervisors and colleagues, workload inequality and a conflict between personal values and what the work requires.

Research on teacher burnout – which is a global issue – has been increasing for decades. From the late 1970s through 2012, scholars published a handful of articles on teacher burnout; that number rose in 2012 to 24, according to a journal article by two Malaysian professors. Scholarly research on burnout peaked in 2022 with 103 articles published. 

This growth in research indicates “increasing academic recognition of teacher burnout as a critical research area,” the journal article’s authors wrote. 

They also theorized that “the sharp increase in publications after 2012 may also coincide with global education policy shifts, such as the expansion of standardized testing, teacher accountability measures and workload intensification. These changes have contributed to rising stress among teachers and may have driven the academic community to further investigate the burnout phenomenon. The peak in 2022 could reflect accumulated post-pandemic pressures and heightened awareness of occupational well-being during COVID-19 recovery phases.”

What’s Causing Teacher Burnout?

Even though schools and districts vary widely, across surveys and reports the causes of teacher burnout are remarkably similar. 

Lack of administrative support, excessive workloads, inadequate compensation, student discipline problems and mental health needs are often cited. Here is a breakdown of some of the top issues:

Staff shortages and not enough administrative support time

Teachers say too often their planning period isn’t protected because they’re called in to substitute for someone else’s course, or they need to hold meetings with parents, or help out somewhere else in the school, said Anthony Pendola, a former teacher and now associate professor of educational leadership at Auburn University. 

Short of hiring a lot more staff, some schools or districts have hired a permanent floating substitute teacher, so regular teachers aren’t always on call, Pendola said. “Right now, schools are incentivized to just have somebody else cover – it’s cheaper for them.”

Constantly having their free time interrupted or ignored isn’t just a workload problem – it makes educators feel like “they don’t have autonomy; they’re not respected as professionals,” added Pendola, who has written about burnout.

Student discipline and restorative justice 

Timothy Pressley, an associate professor of education psychology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia, has researched issues affecting teachers, including burnout and student misbehavior.   

“We’ve done several focus groups and studies and interviews with teachers throughout the last five, six years,” Pressley said.

Problems with student misbehavior are “skyrocketing. It’s more violent, but it’s also students not being able to self-regulate, not being able to stop talking, not knowing how to communicate with their peers, especially right after the pandemic,” Pressley added.

One nationwide trend that may make a dent in this area: cell phone bans. Early research shows that cell phone bans improve teacher well-being, but there has to be uniform enforcement. Otherwise, it becomes a logistical nightmare for teachers, adding rather than alleviating stress.  

But for many teachers, discipline isn’t just about the students, but also how their schools are implementing and overseeing discipline programs and policies.

For example, restorative justice and its implementation in schools is an issue that came up repeatedly in The State of Teaching 2026 findings, said Holly Kurtz, director at EdWeek Research Center. The practice – which focuses on repairing harm and taking accountability rather than punishment and discipline – has become increasingly common in K-12 schools. A 2024 EdWeek Research Center survey found that 48% of educators said their schools or districts are using the approach.

Research has shown that restorative justice, when implemented well, can be highly effective in reducing student arrests, expulsions and students’ perceptions of their own school climate. But if administrators and staff are not well-trained and given the time and backing to implement and run the programs, then they won’t succeed. 

As an opinion piece in The 74 noted, “neutral-to-negative results come about when schools cherry-pick restorative practices – a restorative circle here, a peer mediation there – without fully committing to a schoolwide culture shift. When this happens, schools end up neither assigning consequences (as traditional discipline would do) nor truly addressing underlying issues (as restorative justice ought to do).” 

EdWeek’s 2026 survey didn’t ask specific questions about restorative justice, but respondents often made comments on the topic in the general response section, Kurtz said. 

Some educators said they didn’t like it; some said no one was running their program. It was part of a general sense that too often parents and administrators are “not helping out the teacher and being a partner in student discipline,” she added. “Teachers wanted principals to be better advocates for their needs.”

The complexities of teacher pay

Pay is an important and perennial issue, but not as clear-cut as it seems. 

The average teacher’s salary is $72,030, according to a 2025 review by the National Education Association. While low pay is typically at or near the top when teachers are asked what would make the biggest difference in improving their morale. But, Kurtz said the correlation between higher pay and better morale is complicated, as hers and other research has shown.

As is often the case with salaries, it’s the comparative more than the absolute that seems to make a difference. “We did see that people who felt like their salary was at least as good as their close family members and friends were more likely to have positive morale,” she said. 

There’s no question that better pay, more free time and better administrative support have a real impact, Pendola said. “But underneath, there’s a layer of ‘I don’t know what my purpose is anymore.’”

Covering Teacher Burnout 

Writing about teacher burnout can be challenging. Journalists need to balance not minimizing structural problems that teachers have relatively little control over – such as pay scales, staffing and class sizes – with evaluating more immediate efforts to provide support and recognition to improve educators’ well-being.

Take wellness initiatives: There are few rigorous studies on these; one meta analysis does show psychological approaches, such as mindfulness and stress management, can be helpful, but it is difficult to measure and to implement successfully. Time-strapped teachers aren’t always eager to take on one more program or class.

When teachers were asked in 2024 which wellness initiative would improve their morale at work A LOT, the top choice (56%) was “permitting/encouraging mental health days,” Kurtz said. Below that was improvement in the school’s physical environment, including heating, air conditioning and lighting. Kurtz shared other findings: Only 22% said mindfulness, yoga and similar activities. Respondents had 12 options and could choose as many as they wanted. 

There’s research that supports mindfulness and similar practices, such as yoga, said Pressley, the associate professor, “but the biggest problem with mindset interventions is it falls on the teacher to do it.”

Questions to ask educators and administrators

• What does teacher turnover look like in your district?
  
  Some information may be available through human resources or require an analysis of several databases. Typically numbers of teacher supply and demand are available on a state dashboard or report card, but not all states collect them. The Learning Policy Institute and the National Center for Education Statistics (at least until recently) offered a national picture
  
• What wellness initiatives do your schools offer? How many teachers actually use them? Are they initiatives backed by evidence-based research?
• What process do schools have to handle student discipline? Who is in charge of it, and what impact has it had in terms of reducing suspensions and expulsions?
• What local, state or federal policies might directly affect educators?
  
  Jackie Mader, senior early childhood education reporter for The Hechinger Report said, “When I see efforts to deregulate child care, or pull back some of the laws, or raise ratios in classrooms, that can send a warning sign to me that this will likely affect teachers in some way. How could this possibly contribute to burnout?”

Resources

• American Federation of Teachers, particularly its program “Beyond Burnout.”
• Center for the Study of Child Care Employment conducts research on the early care and education workforce as well as offers technical assistance.
• Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University, which through its Next Education Workforce program, looks at ways to reinvent teacher staffing.
• Education Writers Association member journalist Kristen Griffith wrote a resource on using data to better cover the teacher workforce.
• Educators for Excellence conducts an annual survey of teachers.
• Learning Policy Institute’s 2024 state-by-state analysis of factors influencing teacher shortages, supply, demand and equity.
  
• Local teachers’ union branches
• National Council on Teacher Quality tracks teacher contracts, collective bargaining agreements and other information – including teacher turnover – in 145 school districts across the country.
• National Education Association provides many resources, including a database on teacher pay.

Other experts 

• Richard Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at University of Pennsylvania
• Daniel Losen, an expert on school discipline and disparities at National Center for Youth Law
• Gema Zamarro Rodriguez, a professor of education reform and economics at University of Arkansas

Other ways to find sources

• Higher education researchers at local colleges, depending on their focus, can be well-connected to teachers and administrators in your region. They often have research specific to the area.
• Many teachers congregate on social media. Check out Facebook and Reddit, among other sites. Pressley noted that these can be a particularly good place to learn about teachers planning to leave and specific concerns.