Why Are So Many Teachers Quitting? The Hidden Crisis in America’s Classrooms

 

More and more teachers are leaving the profession, not quietly and not because they’ve stopped caring. It’s the opposite. They’re walking away because they care too much and are being crushed by a system that keeps asking more while offering less.

One of the clearest signs something is broken? The number of high school students who can’t read. Not struggling with tough material or falling a little behind. We’re talking about teenagers who can’t read at even a basic level. Some can’t sound out simple words. Others are unable to understand a short paragraph.

And this isn’t rare. It’s not one school or one district. It’s happening across the country, in classrooms where teachers are being asked to do the impossible. Teach grade-level content to students who are reading years behind, all while managing behaviour, preparing students for standardised tests, and dealing with endless admin.

There’s no magic fix for this. Teachers know that. They’re creating extra materials, staying after hours, trying to bridge gaps that have been widening for years. Some of those gaps were there long before the pandemic. Others deepened during school closures and remote learning. Now, it’s the teachers who are being asked to patch everything up without any real support.

The heartbreak comes from watching kids who’ve already lost faith in school. Kids who act out, not because they don’t want to learn, but because they’ve been left behind for so long they’ve stopped trying. Teachers see it in their faces. The shame, the frustration, the disconnect.

And after a while, it becomes too much. Not because they don’t want to help, but because they no longer believe they can. They’re exhausted. Not just tired, but emotionally spent from carrying a burden that isn’t theirs alone. They’re tired of being blamed for poor results when the problems start long before those students walk into their rooms.

Some stay. They keep showing up, doing everything they can. But many others are saying they’ve had enough. Not because they don’t believe in the job, but because they no longer recognise it.

A Missed Refill, A Life Lost: When Insurance Isn’t Enough

 

Cole should have turned 24 this year. His parents should have been celebrating with him, maybe having cake, maybe just laughing about something small. Instead, they’re left marking the day with memories. Two years on, they’re still asking the same question: how did a young man with insurance end up dying from a preventable asthma attack?

Cole had a job. He had health coverage through his employer in Wisconsin. He also had asthma, a condition he managed with daily medication. That management relied on a specific inhaler, one he thought would be covered like it always had been.

But when he went to the pharmacy to get a refill, he was told it would now cost over $500. The preventive inhaler that had once cost around $67 had suddenly become out of reach. The reason? OptumRx, the pharmacy benefit manager, had removed it from their list of covered drugs. His doctor wasn’t notified. He wasn’t given a proper warning. According to his parents, no one offered a proper alternative.

He walked away with just an emergency inhaler, the kind meant for last-minute attacks, not day-to-day control. Days later, that inhaler was found empty next to his bed. He’d died of a severe asthma attack alone in his room.

The pharmaceutical company behind the decision says $5 copays were technically available, and that instructions were sent to Walgreens to contact Cole. Walgreens has expressed condolences but hasn’t shared details, citing privacy. His parents say none of that information ever reached their son.

They didn’t even know he was struggling with access until they got to the ICU and heard it from his roommate. There’d been no warning signs, no clue anything was wrong. Just one missing refill that changed everything.

Cole’s story now sits at the centre of a broader investigation, part of NBC’s “The Cost of Denial” series. It highlights a grim truth: insurance doesn’t always mean protection. When a covered drug is removed, even temporarily, it can leave patients stranded without real-time solutions. For Cole, there was no buffer. No one stepped in. No safety net caught him.

His parents have since had his tattoo inked onto their own wrists. It's a quiet reminder, one that carries a simple message: keep going. Remember, live. But underneath that is something heavier. A frustration that hasn’t faded, and a grief shaped not just by loss but by the knowledge that it didn’t have to happen.

This wasn’t about neglect or recklessness. It was about a young man doing the right thing, playing by the rules, only to be let down by a system that shifted the goalposts without telling him.

And that’s what stays with you. Not just the loss, but the silence around it.

Suspended Grammy CEO Claims Awards Ceremony Is ‘Rigged’

 

In early 2020, Deborah Dugan, the CEO of the Recording Academy, the organisation behind the Grammy Awards, shocked the music world with serious accusations. She publicly claimed that the Grammy Awards were rigged. Her statement questioned the fairness and transparency of one of the biggest nights in music.

Dugan’s concerns focused on the nomination process. She suggested that some artists and songs were being favoured because of personal connections or business relationships with people on the Academy’s board. This, she said, created a conflict of interest and undermined the integrity of the awards. The suggestion was that decisions were not always based purely on merit or talent but on who you knew.

Her time as CEO was short. She was appointed in August 2019 but by January 2020, just days before that year’s Grammy ceremony, she was put on administrative leave. The Recording Academy said the suspension was due to a formal allegation of misconduct. Dugan responded by filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accusing the Academy of retaliation and discrimination. She insisted she was trying to bring much-needed change to the organisation, especially in making the awards process more open and inclusive.

The situation sparked a lot of discussion about how the Grammys are run behind the scenes. Many people praised Dugan for speaking out and shining a light on problems that had been whispered about for years. Critics of the Grammy Awards have often argued that the process lacks transparency and that some artists or genres are overlooked unfairly. Dugan’s claims brought those issues into the public eye.

Since then, the Recording Academy has made some changes. They removed secret committees that used to decide nominations and introduced measures to improve diversity and fairness.