Teacher Working Conditions and Dissatisfaction Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

With a goal of contextualizing teacher job dissatisfaction during the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we contrast teachers’ experiences with the decade and a half leading up to the pandemic. We draw on nationally representative data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and National Teacher and Principal Survey from the 2003–04 to 2020–21 school years. Through descriptive and regression analysis, we show that (1) increases in teacher dissatisfaction beginning in the 2015–16 school year persisted into the 2020–21 school year, (2) levels of dissatisfaction during the pandemic were not equal across subpopulations of teachers, and (3) positive working conditions consistently predicted lower job dissatisfaction, including in the 2020–21 school year.