James Treuthardt is a 2022 Summer Research Intern for the D.C. Policy Center. In this role, he has worked on research surrounding teacher recruitment and retention in the District.
James is a Fellow at the Urban Leaders Fellowship. Prior to joining the D.C. Policy Center, he worked as a 6th grade science teacher at Uplift Luna Middle School in Dallas, Texas.
He holds a B.J in Journalism and a B.B.A in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin.
In the 2021-2022 school year, D.C. public and public charter schools retained an average of 74 percent of their teachers, compared to a national average of 84 percent. However, some areas of D.C. have faced lower teacher retention than others, with greater shares of teachers in Wards 6, 7, and 8 choosing to leave their schools.
D.C. has not escaped the national substitute shortage facing districts across the country. According to public salary data published by District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS), the number of substitute teachers on the payroll has dropped from a peak of 987 in the first quarter of 2020, to 501 in the first quarter of 2022 (data are not available for public charter schools). While enrollment has shrunk in DCPS schools by four percent since 2019, the decrease in substitutes has outpaced that.