Today, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) released the 2016 Georgia K-12 Teacher and Leader Workforce Report. The report provides a snapshot of the current K-12 teacher and leader workforce created at the request of the Alliance of Education Agency Heads (AEAH). A working group of senior staff members from each state education agency met in summer 2016 and developed the outline for the report. It uses data from the Georgia Department of Education, the Georgia Professional Standards Commission, and the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia.  The report includes summary statistics on teacher and leader workforce characteristics, production, retention, and retirement eligibility.

Some of the key findings include:

Overall Workforce Characteristics

  • During the 2015-2016 school year, Georgia’s public education workforce consisted of 110,059 employed teachers and 8,449 employed leaders.
  • There are 189,468 valid certificate holders in the state. 62.5% of all current certificate holders during the 2015-2016 school year were employed as a teacher or leader, and 13.4% of all current certificate holders were not employed in the Georgia public education workforce.
  • Almost half of the teacher workforce had ten or fewer years of experience working in Georgia public education.

Teacher and Leader Production

  • During the 2015-2016 school year, 19,428 teacher and leader candidates were enrolled in Georgia preparation programs.
  • 75% of teacher and leader candidates were enrolled in public in-state programs, 15% were enrolled in private in-state programs, and 10% were enrolled in alternative preparation programs.
  • 66% of completers in traditional educator preparation programs in 2014-2015 were employed as teachers as of October 2015. 85% of completers in alternative preparation programs in 2014-2015 were employed as of October 2015.

Mobility

  • 9.2% of teachers moved schools from the prior year. Half moved within district, and half moved between districts.
  • 10% of leaders moved schools from the prior year. Most moved between schools within the same district rather than between districts.
  • Teachers and leaders with less experience were more likely to move.
  • High poverty schools had more than double the teacher mobility rate of low poverty schools.

Retention

  • 90.8% of teachers remained in teaching from the prior year. Retention was only slightly lower for early career (have five or fewer years of experience) teachers (88.6%).
  • 86.2% of leaders from the prior year remained a leader.
  • High poverty schools retained fewer teachers and leaders than low poverty schools.

Retirement

  • As of June 2016, there were 198,992 active members in the Teachers Retirement System of Georgia (TRS). (This includes all education staff, not just teachers and leaders.)
  • 51% of all active teacher/leader/staff TRS members were not vested in the retirement system (have fewer than ten years of service credit).
  • 49% of all active teacher/leader/staff TRS members had at least ten years of service credit, but the majority of these members were not yet eligible for retirement.
  • 10.1% of active participants were eligible for retirement or early retirement.

To view an infographic of the teacher workforce findings, Download this pdf file. click here . 

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