The teaching profession—a workforce of nearly 3 million individuals—has been pressure-tested over the last few years. The lingering impacts of the pandemic—a spike in student absenteeism, deteriorating academic scores, and the persistent challenge of behavior and discipline—significantly impact how teachers feel about their profession, and their future in it.
New uncertainties have entered the picture too. President Donald Trump’s administration has threatened to cut funding and resources to public education if educators don’t toe the line ideologically when teaching about concepts like race and gender.
Still, new data suggest some of these structural or political challenges seem to be in the rearview for teachers—or at least impacting them less. In what at least two outside researchers and several teachers called a surprise, Education Week’s Teacher Morale Index registered a score of +18 for the 2024-25 school year.
That’s a significant improvement from the -13 score registered in 2023, the index’s debut year. At the state level, scores ranged from -14 in New Hampshire to +47 in Georgia. (The index’s scale runs from -100 to +100, where negative scores indicate a less positive attitude towards the profession.)
“I can see it potentially go up a bit in the 2023-24 school year,” said Laura Fuchs, a social studies teacher at a public school in the District of Columbia, and one of the respondents to this year’s survey.
But Fuchs, a veteran educator added that while morale had ticked up, the large jump in morale levels didn’t entirely match up with the ground reality. (The District of Columbia had a Teacher Morale Index score of 8.)
“We still have pretty high turnover in the District. So even if people are feeling good about the profession, they’re not feeling good enough to stay put,” Fuchs said.
How the Teacher Morale Index works
The Teacher Morale Index relies on answers to three survey questions. They gauge teachers’ confidence and satisfaction in their jobs at present, how they felt a year before, and how they will feel a year from when the survey is administered.
On all three questions, this year’s index shows a higher score than last year, said Holly Kurtz, the director of the EdWeek Research Center.
It’s definitely possible that reopening schools post-COVID and returning to more normal routines positively impacted teacher morale, said Kurtz, adding that the EdWeek Research Center had not changed its survey methodology between the two consecutive surveys.
The survey results, when broken down into regional subgroups, also follow a similar pattern. For instance, the Northeast region had the lowest morale overall in both 2023 and 2024. But in 2024, its scores never dipped below the regional average of -15 from the previous year.
That lends credence to the notion of genuine improvements in morale, though Kurtz cautioned that more data points, over several successive surveys, are needed to establish an upward trend in teacher morale.
The national morale numbers came as a surprise to the three teachers interviewed by Education Week—who represented early, mid-career, and retirement phases in the profession. Burnout due to disciplinary issues in school, or one-sided policy mandates from their school district, were common grievances.
Anthony Swierzbinski, a middle school social studies teacher from Delaware, said that his morale was higher now compared to the period between 2020 and 2022, but it’s still impacted by issues such as lax discipline, disrespect from parents, and a “lack of support” from the school’s administrators. (Delaware had a Teacher Morale Index score of 19.)
“We have more responsibilities without any extra compensation,” Swierzbinski added. He was one of the respondents to this year’s survey.
The EdWeek Research Center administered the survey online in fall 2024. A total of 2,592 teachers participated. The data were weighted and scaled using 2020 national and state-level teacher-population counts and years of experience, and aligned with the known population parameters for K-12 public school teachers in the United States. The weighting procedure adjusted for two key dimensions: geographic distribution (to ensure state-level representation) and teaching experience.
Teacher morale is difficult to capture
Teacher morale is a complex metric to capture because it fluctuates. It’s usually higher at the beginning of the school year in August or September, but starts to dip towards October or November.
Morale also fluctuates across different stages of a teacher’s career. It’s higher between the first and third year of teaching, dips between years 3 and 9, and starts to tick up again as teachers reach retirement age. And it’s dependent on the subject: elementary and social science teachers, for instance, tend to have lower morale than English/language arts teachers.
These factors make it harder to interpret what seems like an upswing in teachers’ feelings about the profession.
Doris Santoro, a professor of education at the Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, said that even the national election could have impacted how teachers responded to the survey. (Santoro was not involved in the creation of the survey and did not review the results beforehand.)
The survey was fielded from August to November 2024, coinciding not only with Trump’s campaign to limit the powers of the U.S. Education Department, but also with now-former Vice President Kamala Harris becoming the Democrats’ nominee for president.
“I’d be curious about any Kamala effect on this [the Index score],” said Santoro.
Teachers, as a group, tend to favor Democrats, though their political beliefs are complex. (Many consider themselves moderates.) Neither Harris nor Trump emphasized education much on the campaign trail, but Harris was on record as supporting LGBTQ+ youth and opposing efforts to restrict how topics like race are taught.
The new survey could also reflect what Santoro called a “little bit more stability and less policy churn.”
“When you look at the tenure of teachers relative to the tenure of leaders and policymakers, it’s the teachers who are watching all of this upheaval go on, … may be that there was a degree of stasis that was at least giving teachers the sense of, ‘well, at least I can teach right now,’” said Santoro.
Could states’ moves to boost pay have helped?
At a state policy level, an increase in teacher compensation could have also tipped the morale scales, said Matthew Kraft, an associate professor of education and economics at Brown University. Teachers’ salaries increased by an average of $2,055 in 2024, though that was still well below their average desired raise of $16,000, according to the RAND Corp.’s State of the American Teacher survey.
“It’s not the only thing that matters by a long shot, but that’s the most tangible policy change that occurs to me in the near term,” said Kraft, when asked what might explain higher morale.
Kraft was quick to add that other factors could also lift or dent morale; teachers could be happy with their compensation but frustrated by a rigid teaching environment. There’s strong evidence, too, that a teacher’s job satisfaction is also dependent on how much positive impact they can make in their students’ lives.
The level of respect that we afford to that profession does not seem to have recovered in any kind of macro way.
“In that context, the [lack of] support of the administration or the resources necessary [to help students], or even the kind of public respect that they hope to receive through this critical work, could really undercut morale,” Kraft said.
For both Kraft and Santoro, though, the upswing in teacher morale was “surprising.”
Kraft noted that other research incorporating many more data points and gauges point to an overall decline in teachers’ job satisfaction level over a decade, starting in 2010. “The level of respect that we afford to that profession does not seem to have recovered in any kind of macro way,” Kraft added.
Teachers could also have new worries this year, which may have seemed more distant at the time of the survey, according to Santoro. Pandemic relief funding, which helped school hire more paraprofessionals and counselors, is waning. Moving forward, teachers may fear jobs cuts or fewer supports to help students or their families, said Santoro.
“I anticipate a precipitous drop in next year’s survey,” she said.
Feeling heard: a core component of morale
Santoro said research on teacher morale needs to get more “fine-grained” to reflect the realities of the job. Teachers should be asked about their morale at frequent intervals—maybe even a few days apart.
Given the personal nature of the job, Santoro said a teacher’s response to a question about their morale could depend on what they’re dealing with at that moment—they might have dealt with a difficult parent that morning or, conversely, had a productive meeting with their peers.
Teacher morale also shifts as they spend more time in class. Swierzbinski, the teacher from Delaware, said that he’s established clear boundaries in his classroom about respectful behavior and cellphone usage. For newer teachers, though, setting up these boundaries could be challenging, he added.
“When I was younger, I wanted to make a difference. Now I don’t want to fight those battles,” said Swierzbinski, referring to the early-years enthusiasm that many teachers display towards their role. Now, he “just wants to come and do his job.”
For some teachers, experiencing low morale prompted them to seek new jobs. Carey Peterson, a high school teacher from Illinois, said that a new position he took three years ago came with a higher pay and more respect and consideration from his current administration.
“When teachers feel appreciated, heard, and fairly compensated, it changes everything,” said Peterson. He added that the higher morale levels in the index could also reflect changes that schools have made after the pandemic. (Illinois’ Teacher Morale Index score stands at 36.)
When teachers feel appreciated, heard, and fairly compensated, it changes everything.
Districts began to “adjust salaries and look after teacher needs more seriously,” Peterson added.
Peterson’s hunch is shared by Macro Tirillo, an assistant principal at John Wallace Middle School in Newington, Conn., who believed that overall, teacher morale is high in his 600-student middle school. The school has invested in mental health support not just for students, but for teachers too. And over his 20-year career, Tirillo’s landed on one factor that shapes teacher morale: feeling heard by their administrators.
Tirillo and his boss have built in more informal ways to check on teachers’ morale through their professional development sessions or grade-level meetings. While he’s concerned about possible budget cuts and what the new federal administration has in store, Tirillo said it’s up to the administrators and teachers to make sure they’re not giving up.
“How do we continue down the path of resilience? To work together to find ways to make it successful for students and for each other?” he said. “I think that will determine teacher morale.”
