The Teacher Follow-Up Survey:

The Teacher Follow-Up Survey (TFS) is a follow-up survey of public and private elementary and secondary school teachers who participated in the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) during the previous school year. The purpose of the survey is to determine how many teachers remained at the same school, moved to another school, or left the profession. Historically, the TFS has also been conducted the school year following the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), the predecessor survey to the NTPS.

The major objectives of the TFS are to:

• measure the attrition rate for teachers;
• examine the characteristics of teachers who stayed in the teaching profession and those who changed professions or retired;
• obtain activity or occupational data for those who left the position of a K-12 teacher;
• obtain reasons for moving to a new school or leaving the K-12 teaching profession; and
• collect data on job satisfaction.

Information collected on this survey will help policymakers, researchers, and other education leaders to:

• measure teacher retention and attrition;
• understand the effects of school policies and practices on teachers’ decisions to remain in or leave the profession; and
• describe how teachers feel about the workplace conditions in their current position relative to last year’s teaching position.

The last administration of the TFS occurred in 2021-22 and was administered to a sample of teachers who completed the NTPS in 2020-21. The 2021-22 questionnaires are online and can be downloaded from the NTPS Questionnaires page. Questionnaires for previous collections of the TFS following past SASS administrations are available online and can be downloaded from the SASS Questionnaires page.