Ryan Wilpula always imagined retiring from the Highlands School District after spending decades as a high school English teacher there. But in January, after 23 years of teaching, he submitted his resignation. “Teaching has always been in my blood,” Mr. Wilpula said. “It was a tough decision but I just, for my own wellbeing, it was time to go and I was lucky enough to find a way out.”

That tough decision is one that teachers across the country also face. A survey conducted last year by the National Education Association found that 55% of them were considering quitting. In Pennsylvania, the number of teachers leaving classrooms has risen to alarming rates.

An assessment by the Penn State Center for Education Evaluation & Policy Analysis found that 7.7% of Pennsylvania teachers, or a total of 9,587, left their positions between the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years.

That number has slowly risen over the past two years — reaching 5.4% in 2020-21 and 6.2% in 2021-22 — and exceeds the 7.5% attrition rate recorded in 2014-15. This makes it the largest number of teachers leaving on record.