Many Michigan teachers are thinking about leaving the job, and one of the biggest reasons they gave is one that may be hard to fix: pay.
A new poll from the Michigan Educator Workforce Initiative found that 56% of the teachers surveyed are thinking about leaving the profession within five years. About 25% are thinking about leaving within a year, according to the group and Chalkbeat. The group works on the state's teacher pipeline. It shared the results on August 25, 2026, at a media roundtable, according to Chalkbeat.
Pay was one of the biggest factors, but fixing it is not simple. Brian Stryker of Impact Research, the firm that ran the poll, said decisions about pay are made at the local level, according to Chalkbeat. That means one of the biggest concerns teachers raised is mostly decided by local districts, not by the state or the group that ran the poll.
Only 32% of teachers strongly agreed that they feel fairly paid for their work, according to Chalkbeat. Stryker said the pay concern is not the same for everyone. The longer a teacher has worked, the more fairly paid they feel, he said. So newer teachers feel it most. He also said the wish to leave is not just about older teachers near retirement. "That is also true of newer teachers, teachers in the middle of their career. You also see it across elementary, middle, and high school," Stryker said.
Teachers gave other reasons too. Chalkbeat reported that they cited too little training for new teachers and barriers to new ideas in the classroom.
Teachers also face growing pressure, according to Chalkbeat. Students are doing poorly on state and national exams as Michigan slides lower in national rankings, and lawmakers are adding new mandates for teacher training in reading methods.
One local report, WWMT, counted the near-term number a different way. It said that of the teachers who might leave within five years, 45% would consider leaving within a year. The two counts line up. About 45% of the 56% group works out to roughly 25% of all teachers surveyed.
Some findings were more hopeful. According to Chalkbeat, 54% strongly agreed that their school is a great place to be a teacher, and 48% strongly agreed that Michigan is a great place to be a teacher. At the same time, 46% strongly agreed that they often feel expected to be "all things to all people at all times." And 39% strongly agreed that they have rigorous, standards-aligned materials for the grades and subjects they teach.
Jack Elsey, the group's CEO and founder, saw the results as both progress and a warning. "If we want our state to move out of this perpetual threat of losing half of our teacher workforce over the next five years, we should listen to our teachers," he said at the roundtable. He said the state has made progress in recent years but still has a ways to go, according to Chalkbeat. CJ Walker, a teacher at Concord Community Schools, said in a news release, "If we want to reverse this retention crisis, we must value our teachers both via compensation and support."
If the results hold up, Chalkbeat reported, they could shake the profession and make teacher shortages worse. That risk is bigger in hard-to-staff areas like special education.
About the poll: Impact Research ran it with help from UpONE Insights, according to Chalkbeat. They surveyed a representative sample of 300 Michigan teachers from May 29 to June 30, 2026. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percentage points, so the numbers could be a few points higher or lower.