Entry and Exit of Baltimore City Teachers Before and After COVID

In 2022, after increasing pressures from the COVID pandemic and a shifting political climate, the nation’s largest teachers’ union warned that over half of teachers were considering exiting the teaching profession. National news media warned of a coming “mass exodus” of teachers. Locally, the Baltimore Banner reported in summer 2022 that Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) alone had more than 1,000 vacancies to fill prior to fall, and district administrators warned parents to expect teacher shortages.

More recent national and local work suggests that such anecdotal and survey evidence in the media is often not supported by administrative data and that reports of a teacher exodus are often exaggerated or incorrect. In this report, Entry and Exit of Baltimore City Teachers Before and After COVID, researcher Jane Arnold Lincove reviews administrative data on teacher employment to investigate whether Baltimore City Schools has experienced changes in teacher supply due to COVID.

This report seeks to provide policymakers, educational stakeholders, and the public at large with a clearer picture of teacher exit and entry from City Schools both before and during COVID, by tracking entry and exit over time from 2016 to 2022 using a state database of public school teachers and their employment over time.

Descriptive evidence on teacher entry and exit from 2016 to 2022 illustrates that teacher retention rates in City Schools actually improved over pre-COVID levels. However, the post-COVID period also saw an increase in the number of new teachers hired with temporary teaching certificates. This suggests that City Schools faces new challenges to recruit and develop the next generation of teachers for Baltimore students.

Key takeaways from the report’s analysis are:

• Compared to pre-COVID years, City Schools retained more teachers after the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021.
• City Schools maintained high levels of teacher diversity during and after COVID. The percentage of Black teachers increased, and the percentage of male teachers remained stable.
• The number of City Schools teachers exiting to other Maryland districts fell by over 50% in post-COVID years.
• The rate of teacher mobility within City Schools also fell during the pandemic leading to substantially increased retention rates in many schools and fewer schools with retention below 50%.
• COVID saw an increase in the rate of teachers entering with a temporary teaching certificate. By 2022, 1 in 5 teachers had a temporary certificate, up from 1 in 9 in 2016.
• City Schools is increasingly recruiting new teachers from Maryland’s public HBCUs and from out-of-state institutions.

DISCLAIMER: This research was supported in part by the Maryland Longitudinal Data System (MLDS) Center. We are grateful for the assistance provided by the MLDS Center. All opinions are the author’s and do not represent the opinion of the MLDS Center or its partner agencies.