With teacher shortages affecting schools nationwide, educators share how pay, parents, politics and the pandemic have led some to leave the profession.

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There is no national teacher shortage. Many classrooms have all the educators they need and in some cases never had vacancies to begin with.

Yet shortages in many others persist. Staffing levels can vary significantly by state, district, school, subject and grade level.

The National Center for Education Statistics has been regularly surveying a nationally representative sample of schools about various topics, including staff vacancies, in the COVID-19 era. According to its latest School Pulse Panel survey, from October, nearly half (45%) of public schools have at least one vacant teaching position, about the same rate as when the survey was conducted in January. The average number of vacancies per school, however, dropped from slightly more than three in June to two this October.

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