NCAE president Tamika Walker Kelly on what’s causing our state’s high teacher attrition rate

As several news stories have reported in recent weeks, North Carolina public schools have been enduring a sizable and troubling exodus. Education officials disclosed that the state experienced a teacher attrition rate of 11.5% between March 2022 and March 2023. That means that more than 10,000 of the state’s teachers left the profession in that time period.

This kind of sobering news is nothing new for the state’s public education system in recent years – a system that has been repeatedly battered by disinvestment and partisan attacks from the political right. And still, despite it all, thousands of dedicated and hard-working educators continue to soldier on – ever hopeful that at some point legislative leaders will listen to their pleas and reverse their destructive course. And earlier this week NC Newsline caught up with one of their leaders, the President of the North Carolina Association of Educators, Tamika Walker Kelly.