Teaching history and government at Ames High School for 30 years, retired teacher Kirstin Sullivan has observed a shift in the profession.

Sullivan said for many, becoming a teacher feels like a calling, and it’s not for the faint of heart. She said teaching has become increasingly exhausting with workloads increasing without an adequate increase in support.

These strains have led to increasing numbers of teachers leaving the Ames School District and schools across the state. A study done in Iowa in 2024 revealed a shortage of approximately 1,000 teachers in the state.  

“In the last few years in my district, there was a mass exodus of teachers, which was very uncommon,” Sullivan said.

The increasing teacher vacancy rate is a trend nationwide, with a 2022 study by Brown University finding approximately 52,800 vacant teaching positions across the U.S.

Sullivan said part of the stress falling on teachers comes from the increasingly politicized environment of teaching, which she sees as a major issue.

“Education is one of those things that shouldn’t be politicized because it’s for everybody. It’s a leveler,” Sullivan said. “It takes the poorest kid and gives them a chance.”

This phenomenon began prior to COVID-19, but the pandemic exacerbated the issue. Now, more teachers are quitting than before, and the gap between teacher openings and hirings is widening.

The Iowa legislature has passed sweeping laws reshaping the landscape of education. Some examples of these laws include House File 802, which limits lessons on systemic racism and sexism, and Senate File 496, which prohibits instruction relating to gender identity and sexual orientation from K-6 classes.

Iowa Rep. Elinor Levin, D-Iowa City, a former teacher, said these bills — along with other legislation targeting public schools — make teaching in Iowa more difficult.

“When we see bill after bill that is demonizing public school teachers, that is suggesting that teachers are trying to enact some sort of a radical agenda rather than just trying to wrap care around Iowa’s kids,” Levin said. “It makes it a really hard place to be a teacher.”

On top of this divisive legislation, new education bills are currently being debated at the State Capitol in Des Moines. This includes legislation prohibiting school districts from taking action against teachers who refuse to use a student’s preferred name and requiring Iowa schools to show a three-minute video of fetal growth and development.

Beyond the state level, President Donald Trump has proposed eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, which provides funds for low-income students on the K-12 and higher education levels, along with funding for students with disabilities, school-provided meals, and more.

“I’d like it to be closed immediately. Look, the Department of Education is a big con job,” Trump said to reporters on Feb. 12. In his 2024 campaign platform, Trump justified this stance with the claim that the U.S. spends more per pupil than any other nation yet is on the bottom on international educational rankings.

However, neither of these claims are true. In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rankings of education, the U.S. ranks 20th out of the 40 OECD member nations, and according to the National Center of Education Statistics, the U.S. does not have the highest per pupil cost in the world.

Moms for Liberty says policies aimed to protect kids

Jennifer Turner was inspired to begin the Polk County chapter of Moms for Liberty after learning some third grade classrooms in the Johnston Community School District were partaking in a virtual field trip called, “A Kid’s Play about Racism,” which sought to explain systemic racism.

Turner — whose son is biracial — said she felt this kind of coursework being taught in Johnston could alienate her son.

“I don’t want my biracial son to go sit in this class and be singled out because to his classmates, he wasn’t different,” Turner said.

Turner launched her chapter of the conservative advocacy group that focuses on K-12 education in July 2021.

Moms for Liberty of Iowa, which consists of six chapters including Turner’s, released a list of priorities for this legislative session. Among these priorities were removing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion positions from K-12 schools, which the organization said indoctrinates children and diverts schools’ focus away from education. This action could be achieved through the passing of House Study Bill 155, which is currently being debated in Des Moines.

Amber Williams, treasurer of the Polk County chapter of Moms for Liberty, said the fundamental goal of the organization is to restore and enhance parental rights in K-12 education and return curricula to what she describes as, “the basics.”

“When we’re focused on social issues, when do we have time for the curriculum?” Williams said.

Williams said she hopes this goal could be achieved through House Study Bill 84, which would remove all gender studies lessons from K-12 curricula. This would act as an extension of Senate File 496.

Williams and Turner both said these bills are not based on anti-LGBTQ+ ideology but rather are targeted at removing sexually explicit content from school bookshelves. They said such content  includes descriptions of sex between biological men and biological women, and they said the bill is not a full ban but rather limits what is accessible in schools.

“We don’t touch public libraries, and we don’t want books banned,” Turner said. “We just want — in our school walls, that our tax dollars pay for  —  that our kids are not seeing photos of blowjobs.”

They said current curricula focus too greatly on gender studies and systemic racism and paints a disturbing picture of America, arguing that certain lessons, like the history of violence against Native Americans and their displacement, are not age-appropriate for younger students.

“At the end of the day, we think that our students — our children — should be proud to be American, and that is the piece that is missing from our education today,” Turner said. “We are teaching the bad and none of the good.”

Levin, however, argued altering curricula to exclude lessons on racism, sexism, and gender studies won’t benefit schools but will instead harm them.

“The fact that we have kids in our schools who are just trying to get through the day and be happy, and teachers who support them and allow what is seen as divisive and indoctrinating is, in my view, disingenuous,” Levin said.

Teachers say politicized policies harm schools

Joshua Brown teaches special education and social studies at Goodrell Middle School in northeast Des Moines. Brown is currently on release from this position to serve as president of the Iowa State Education Association, a union that represents over 50,000 educators across the state.

Brown said ever since the first Trump administration, teachers and the state education association have increasingly had to combat political rhetoric implying public school teachers are some kind of enemy. This rhetoric, Brown said, became exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the nation became increasingly polarized regarding COVID-19 mitigation efforts.

Brown said this polarization fostered a “you’re either with me or against me,” attitude among the general population, which he said hindered compromise and conversation in the public school sphere.

Brown said the conservative legislation targeting schools purposefully distracts from what the government should be doing, which he said is working with schools to ensure students are gaining access to education to prepare them for an ever-changing technological world.

Sullivan said certain bills, like House File 802 which limited lessons on racism and sexism in Iowa classrooms and forbade teaching that the U.S. or Iowa is systemically racist, made teaching her curriculum more complicated.

As a history and government teacher, Sullivan said it was hard to avoid teaching systemic racism, as it comes into play when understanding the reason for the 14th Amendment — equal protection under the law — and strict scrutiny.

For students to understand curricula, especially for those enrolled in AP classes, Sullivan said these lessons must be taught, and teachers shouldn’t feel threatened by the law for doing so.  

Sullivan said the political debates about what teachers should and should not be doing add to a workload that has  already made heavy through understaffing and poor administration. It exhausts teachers, she said.

Since the beginning of her career, Sullivan has said support for teachers has waned, workloads have increased, and the profession has become increasingly politicized and divisive. All the while, pay has remained low. This, Sullivan said, is what she believes is leading to many teachers having had enough.

“People don’t go into teaching for the money,” Sullivan said. “They tend to go into it because they believe in the work. They believe in the calling. But I think more and more you’re going to see people move away from education because it is not worth the money to have to put in the work and have so many things fall on you and not be appreciated even in an incidental way.”

Future teacher finds hope in students

Kylie Edwardson, a fourth-year elementary education major at Iowa State University and current student teacher, said ever since the first grade, she knew she was going to be a teacher.

“I would just come home and teach my American Girl dolls,” she said.

Edwardson said she has never seriously considered doing anything else with her life and, like Sullivan, she believes that becoming a teacher is a calling.

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But in recent years, Edwardson said the prospects of becoming a teacher have become increasingly frightening as new legislation targets public school classrooms across Iowa and the nation.

Area Education Agencies funding came under threat last year when Reynolds proposed lowering the funding public schools receive for AEA programs.

Ultimately, most of AEA program funding was retained, but Edwardson still fears what the future of AEA in Iowa may look like, along with programs for students with disabilities on the federal level, as Trump’s administration proposes terminating the U.S. Department of Education.

Edwardson’s sister uses a wheelchair and is nonverbal. At school, she is able to receive speech and occupational therapy — programs that are provided on the state level by AEA and on the federal level by Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs.

Edwardson worries an uncertain future for AEAs coupled with the possible termination of the federal Department of Education will result in her sister and students like her across the nation losing access to those services.

Edwardson said she understands why teachers in Iowa are leaving but is sad to see them go.

She is hoping as she enters the profession she will receive guidance from school districts and fellow teachers on how to best navigate the changing political climate of the classroom but also acknowledges that if this climate worsens, she may choose to teach in another state.

“I’ve been here a long time, and I would love to stay here to be around my family, but unfortunately, I have already started to look into teaching in other states,” she said.

Josie Babcock, a first-year student at the University of Iowa studying English and creative writing with the hopes of becoming a teacher, also said if legislation continues to target public schools, she may look to teach outside of Iowa.

“If it gets bad enough to where it’s going to severely affect my job or how I teach my students, then if it’s best for me, I’ll do what I have to do,” Babcock said

Like Edwardson, Babcock said now is a scary time to enter the profession of teaching, especially after witnessing how legislation impacted and frustrated her own K-12 teachers.

“I see so many teachers quitting or leaving their jobs, so it does make me scared for what I might have to go through,” Babcock said.

Babcock said teaching is the only career she’s ever wanted to pursue, and her passion has kept her motivated despite the stressors. She said another one of her motivations is knowing that no matter how politicized classrooms become, it is essential for communities to have access to education.

Like Babcock, Edwardson is determined to teach. She currently works as a student teacher, and her inspiration to keep going, she said, is her students.

“I just love every single one of them, and to be able to be such a role model for so many students, I think that’s something that’s so beautiful that not many people can say that they do.”