August 22, 2023 • 24 mins
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools commissioned the Harris Poll to conduct a national survey of public school teachers to gain insight on their experiences, thoughts, and motivations for staying or leaving the classroom. Both charter and district teachers shared their reality in the classroom—and the majority of educators agree, something needs to change in order to recruit and retain teachers. The National Alliance’s senior vice president of communications and marketing, Debbie Veney, the senior advisor for school support, George Parker, and Rebecca Purser the research manager at Harris Poll joined the Get Schooled on Public Education podcast to discuss the findings.
Episode Takeaways:
Featured in the Episode
George Parker
Senior Advisor for School Support
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-parker-3b518033/
Rebecca Purser
Research Manager at Harris Poll
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-purser1/
Debbie Veney
The National Alliance’s Senior Vice President of communications and marketing
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-veney-8969a93/
Quotes
“Quality teaching and learning rely on this foundation. Without it, education's quality suffers."- George Parker
"In the face of challenges, teachers are embracing adaptation to provide an enriching educational journey that complies with the law."- Debbie Veney
"Driven by a passion to make a difference in children's lives, teachers find their strength tested by the school environment, which can either uplift or challenge their commitment to this noble profession."-Rebecca Purser
Chapters
00:06 - Introduction
02:53 - Exploring Insights from a US District and Charter Teacher Survey
04:01 - Navigating Data Complexity: Unveiling Key Insights in Education
06:20 - Fostering Teacher Respect, Support, and Effective Discipline Solutions
08:12 - Addressing the Core Issue: Prioritizing Student Behavior Solutions
11:24 - Unveiling the Numbers: Teachers' Perspective on Cultural Shifts
13:28 - Nurturing and Sustaining Teacher Motivation Over Time
16:10 - Unveiling the Passion and Values of Charter School Educators
18:07 - Autonomy and Innovation: Catalysts for Teacher Motivation
19:26 - Agility and Efficient Policy Implementation in Charter School Settings
22:11 - The Unique Teacher Experience Offered by Charter Schools
23:32 - Conclusion
Produced by Heartcast Media
https://www.heartcastmedia.com
Episode Takeaways:
- Teachers feel that something needs to change in public education in order to retain and recruit educators
- Teachers want their voices to be heard and valued by those who can take action on their feedback
- Many charter school teachers say they are as or more motivated than when they initially entered the profession
Featured in the Episode
George Parker
Senior Advisor for School Support
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-parker-3b518033/
Rebecca Purser
Research Manager at Harris Poll
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-purser1/
Debbie Veney
The National Alliance’s Senior Vice President of communications and marketing
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/debbie-veney-8969a93/
Quotes
“Quality teaching and learning rely on this foundation. Without it, education's quality suffers."- George Parker
"In the face of challenges, teachers are embracing adaptation to provide an enriching educational journey that complies with the law."- Debbie Veney
"Driven by a passion to make a difference in children's lives, teachers find their strength tested by the school environment, which can either uplift or challenge their commitment to this noble profession."-Rebecca Purser
Chapters
00:06 - Introduction
02:53 - Exploring Insights from a US District and Charter Teacher Survey
04:01 - Navigating Data Complexity: Unveiling Key Insights in Education
06:20 - Fostering Teacher Respect, Support, and Effective Discipline Solutions
08:12 - Addressing the Core Issue: Prioritizing Student Behavior Solutions
11:24 - Unveiling the Numbers: Teachers' Perspective on Cultural Shifts
13:28 - Nurturing and Sustaining Teacher Motivation Over Time
16:10 - Unveiling the Passion and Values of Charter School Educators
18:07 - Autonomy and Innovation: Catalysts for Teacher Motivation
19:26 - Agility and Efficient Policy Implementation in Charter School Settings
22:11 - The Unique Teacher Experience Offered by Charter Schools
23:32 - Conclusion
Produced by Heartcast Media
https://www.heartcastmedia.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:06):
Hello, and thank you for tuningin to the Guest Schools on Public Education
podcast. I'm your host, BritneyBaker, and remember charter schools are free,
public and open to all. Ninetyseven percent of public school teachers say
they wish people understood how demanding itis to be a teacher. That's according
to new research about teacher sentiment onpublic education conducted by the Harris Hold The
(00:31):
National Alliance Public Charter Schools commissioned anational survey of pre kindergarten through twelfth grade
public school teachers, and here todiscuss the findings, I'm delighted to introduce
the author of the report. Wehave Debbie Beanie. She's our senior vice
president of Communications in Marketing at theNational Alliance. We also have George Parker,
(00:54):
who is no stranger to the podcast. He hosted our episode for Teacher
Voice. George is the senior Advisorfor School Support at the National Alliance,
and he also spent thirty years asa math teacher in DC public schools and
served as the president of the WashingtonTeachers Union for about six years. We
(01:15):
also have Rebecca Purser. She isthe research manager at the Harris Pole and
an expert on this new study.Rebecca has extensive experience in K through twelve
education research. Thank you all forbeing a part of today's discussion. I'm
so excited to have you all.Awesome, We're great, We're happy to
(01:36):
be here, Brittany. Of course, if the report is entitled Listen to
Your Teacher, An Analysis of TeacherSentiment on the State of Public Education,
We'll start with you, Debbie.Why do you believe it was important to
talk to teachers? This is Ithink the most important topic right now facing
(01:57):
public education, and we're hearing allthe headlines about teacher shortages and teacher resignations
and teacher dissatisfaction, and it reallyfelt to me like we weren't listening enough
to what teachers were actually saying aboutthis. So there's a lot of talk
about teachers, but not enough talkto teachers and not enough listening to them.
(02:21):
I agree, and I one thingthat came out of the study that
stands out to me is that itis important to seek solutions from teachers as
it relates to challenges in the classroom. Let's dive a little bit into the
background information. Rebecca, can youwalk us through the methodology yeah, absolutely.
So there's a lot of fine printwith the methodology, of course,
(02:44):
but I'm going to hit some ofsort of those highlights that I think are
important to know. So for thissergey, we sergey twelve hundred and eleven
US public school pre K through twelveteachers, and of that overall sample,
we had about a two thirds onethird split of district to versus charter school
teachers, So we had eight hundredand eleven district school teachers four hundred charter
(03:05):
school teachers. The survey was aboutfifteen minutes long, was all administered online
through Harris's secured servers, and theway that we sample at the Harris Poll
is by using panel sample providers.So basically what that means is that we
work with panels that store demographic informationabout their respondents and then they're able to
(03:27):
really target certain types of respondents fora survey. So they knew, for
example, that these were teachers,they were able to reach out to teachers
to participate in the survey. Ifthey chose to participate, they went through
an opt in and then also ascreening so that we could make sure you
know, not only that there areteachers, but they were specifically those district
and charter teachers that we were lookingfor in that pre K through twelve setting.
(03:51):
Another important piece of methodology that Ialways like to speak to I'm a
bit of a broken record on thisby now, probably Debbie, but is
about the rating that we use theHarris Poll, and I think that that's
really important because it tells us thatthese results are representative and projectable to larger
teacher populations. So all of thedata, all the findings that we're going
(04:14):
to talk about, have been weightedto be representative of charter teachers of district
teachers respectively. And then any timewe speak to the total teacher population,
that has also been weighted to berepresentative of what that sort of real world
proportion is of charter teachers versus districtteachers. And then the last little bit
is about statistical significance and the waythat we conduct our analysis. So there's
(04:41):
a couple of areas where we lookedat, you know, really some of
those overall teacher findings, but alsowhat's unique to some of these different teacher
populations. And so anytime we talkto differences or some of those distinctions between
teacher groups, safe to assume thatthose are all going to be statistically significant
differences. You know, when weget our data back, it's a ton
(05:02):
of data. It's a lot towade through. So that's really sort of
sort of how we interpret what's thesticking point, what's something that's really worth
looking at, is whether or notit's statistically significant or not. There's lots
more fine print about the methodology thatis also in the report, I know,
but Harris team is always here toanswer any other questions about methodology for
(05:24):
sure. Thanks so much, Rebecca. Okay, let's dive into some of
our findings. We learned that something'sgot to change. Of all teachers surveyed,
ninety nine percent say something needs tochange in public education in order to
recruit in retain teachers. And overthe past few years, teachers have reported
(05:45):
feeling worried or anxious, burned out, and overwhelmed when it comes to a
student behavior, Seventy four percent ofteachers say they experience discipline or behavioral issues
in the classroom. And on thetopic of compensation, seventy five percent of
teachers believe providing better benefits and paywill increase teacher retention. George, with
(06:13):
your experience in the classroom and asunion president, what comes to mind when
you hear this data? Wow?You know. I think one of the
things is that the data in thereports kind of confirms what I've always felt
in my experiences as a classroom teacher. I know that we said nine is
seven percent of teachers indicated that theywish people understood how difficult the job is.
(06:42):
In my thirty years of the classroom, I felt the same is that
if you don't know, you don'tknow. But if you want to really
see what the experience it's like,you get in there and you have some
of that teaching experience, so youknow it's a difficult job. But I
in reading the report, I gotout of it that teacher, first of
all, want to be respected,they want to be heard. One of
(07:04):
the things that I love about thisreport is that I think it's one of
the more comprehensive reports. You hearall the time about there as a teacher
shortage, and you talk about teacherpay, but I think this report dug
into it got into what teachers arefeeling and what motivates teachers in et cetera.
And I just love that. Ithink the report shows that teachers know
(07:30):
will in the crisis, and educationis in the crisis in this country.
And the term that something has tochange, it's so true. The problem
is going out what that change hasto be and to get everybody to buy
into it. I think that oneof the big elephants that has been in
(07:55):
teacher classrooms for years that we didn'ttalk about, came out in this particular
the survey, and that was studentdiscipline and behavior was the number one issue.
And guess what I left the unionabout ten years ago, and guess
what it was the number one issueten years ago. I guess one of
(08:16):
the most surprising things in the reportfor me is that we still haven't figured
it out that teachers are telling us. The teachers are telling us very clearly
in this report we need help withstudent behavior. I think the report shows
that I think seventeen to twenty percentof teachers feel that they spend at least
(08:39):
seventeen percent of their time dealing withdiscipline in the classroom. When I was
WTU president Washington Teachers Union president,we used to do a survey every year,
and every year I was surprised thatmoney was not the number one issue.
It was student discipline and behavior,and so to find that ten years
(09:00):
later that is still number one,it means we got some work to do
to address it. I did alittle calculation, and I don't want to
talk too long. I do havea tendency to do that sometimes, but
I did a mathematical calculation. Itaught in middle school. In middle school
generally had forty five minute classes,right, So I did a calculation.
If a teacher uses twenty percent ofhis or her time dealing with student behavior,
(09:26):
that's the equivalent of nine minutes ofthat forty five minutes per day.
So if you look at taking fivedays per week every week, that means
that kids are losing forty five minutesof instruction of time due to the teacher
having to deal with misbehavior. Whenyou add that up to one hundred and
eighty days of schooling, that meansstudents are missing thirty six days of instruction
(09:52):
based on behavior. It hasn't beendealt with very well, and I think
that most districts still as a reallyhot political issues and don't wish to issue
and don't wish to deal with itbecause it requires some tough decisions, It
requires alternative educational settings for students.It requires the resources that can support those
(10:13):
alternative educational settings. It just requiresthe political will to understand that there must
be a minimal classroom quality of environmentin order for quality of teaching and learning
to go on. And if youdon't have that, then you're not You're
going to diminish the quality of teachingand learning that goes on. So I
(10:35):
am glad to see the student disciplineand behavior issue coming to the top and
teachers concerns. I think the challengeis what do we do about it?
Absolutely? I agree in classroom managementand making sure the students are able to
get what they need. Get whatthey need does start also with having control
(10:58):
over the classroom and making sure thatit is a safe environment, so that
it's very important. Thank you formaking those points, George. Another fine
thing from the report is that teacherswant to keep politics out of the classroom,
and ninety one percent of teachers feellike they are caught in the crossfire
of a culture war. Debbie,could you elaborate on this data point leading
(11:22):
Absolutely, this is another topic thatwe hear a lot about in the popular
media, and we know that theirnumber of school districts in actually states that
have enact to different policies related toculture, and teachers are in real time
(11:43):
having to figure out how to makeadjustments in the classrooms demixture that they're complying
with the law whilst also really makingsure that they can give the best educational
experience to their students. And therehave been certainly experiences where teachers I've felt
pulled a little bit like they're inthe middle of a cultural war, and
(12:03):
I was curious to understand what didthat actually look like in terms of numbers.
So anecdotally, I've seen like clipson the news, and I've read
some some articles, but it wasreally important to be able to work with
the Hero's Poll to put some numbersaround that. And I was surprised to
see that it was so large,and also that it was so consistently the
(12:26):
case across different populations of students ofteachers. So I would have guessed that
there probably wouldn't have been that high, and there might have been some people
that were okay with it. Iwas a little bit surprised that so many
people were pulled into it, andthen nobody likes it pretty much, And
(12:48):
ninety seven percent of teachers which decisionmakers would listen to their opinions or perspectives.
Rebecca, you all ask teachers ifthey are planning to stay in the
classroom, and thirty nine percent ofteachers indicated they have seriously considered leaving the
profession in the past or are planningto do so by the end of the
(13:09):
year. So we learned from someof our educators teaching scenes like a good
idea at the time, but challengessuch as the ones that we highlighted earlier
have caused those feelings to change forsome of those teachers. Rebecca, can
you elaborate more on that finding.Yeah, absolutely, So this is really
(13:31):
a key takeaway that is supported bykind of a blend of a couple of
different data points. So the firstis around why teachers said that they joined
the profession in the first place.So we asked them what initially motivated them
to want to become a teacher,and the most common answer was because they
like helping children learn. It wasalso pretty clear that this definitely isn't a
(13:54):
profession that people are drawn to forsort of some of those fells and whistles
like pay and benefit, because thosewere some of the least cited motivations for
why teachers went into the profession.But sort of that strength of the initial
calling to the teaching profession and someof that purpose driven passion might be fading
over time is really sort of whatwe saw, and I think that that's
(14:16):
part of, you know, teachersbeing exposed to and experiencing some of the
reality of what it means to workin the public education system. So what
we asked is we asked teachers whetherthey feel more less or as motivated today
about being a teacher in comparison towhen they first joined a profession, and
the results were really telling, particularlyfor district teachers. So we saw about
(14:39):
two thirds of teachers overall saying thatthey felt less motivated today to be a
teacher than when they initially joined theprofession. But when we start to look
at that by district and charter teachers, that's where you really start to see
what that overall two thirds is coming. So actually, most charter teachers are
(15:01):
saying that they feel more motivated toteach now. Over half say that they
feel more motivated to teach now.Over eighty percent say that they feel at
least as motivated, if not more, and only fifteen percent of district teachers
say the same. So really thatlarge number of the overall teachers saying that
they feel less motivated now is reallybeing driven by a lot of the district
(15:24):
teachers responses. And so you sortof see this trajectory here for teachers,
like they're coming into their profession becausethey really feel drawn to children and like
they want to make a difference inkids' lives. But kind of depending on
what schools setting they're in, thatcan it seems to be maybe a make
or break for whether or not they'regetting sort of eaten down a bit in
(15:46):
this profession. And I think thatyou know, some drop in motivation in
your career, I think we canall relate to this a little bit.
Some of that can be natural overtime, or it's just a shift,
doesn't necessarily have to be a drop, but I think it's pretty sobering to
see how much that's impacted teachers,just given how critically important they are to
(16:07):
the future of this country. ThanksRebecca, and let's continue on the topic
of motivation. Another finding we learnedfrom the report is that there's something special
or unique about the experience of charterschool teachers. And as you mentioned,
seventy nine percent of charter school teacherssay they are as or more motivated than
(16:29):
when they initially entered the profession,and charter school teachers are significantly more likely
to report feelings that their current schoolsculture aligns with their values and beliefs and
education. And this personally resonates withme. When I taught at a public
charter school, one of our corevalues was justice. And it's not justice
(16:53):
as you would think in the traditionalterm. Justice basically meant that you are
giving your student whatever it is thatthey need to succeed. So say,
for instance, if they're having challengeswith or if you're having challenges with their
behavior, you would respond and usetools in a way that they are receptive
(17:15):
to, you know, from learningthe child, the things that that child
responds more to. That would beus, you know, giving them justice
as far as trying to correct thatsituation in a way that would best fit
them, even in instruction, tailoringthe lesson to reach each student based on
(17:36):
their learning style. So that's onething that we had in our classroom,
well within the whole school. Justiceand that's something that I really also pushed
in my classroom. So the nextquestion is just open to anyone based on
the data. Are there any othertopics that came up to share the unique
(17:56):
experience of charter school teachers? Okay, I can jump in on that.
So one of the things that stuckout to me was how many teachers felt
like their voices were being heard intheir school settings by their administrators, that
(18:21):
they had autonomy in their classrooms.So to two points on that. One
it's something that's desired by teachers acrossthe board, that's not surprising to hear
to me. And two that therewas something special about the charter environment that
allowed teachers to be able to getmore of that. Now, this is
not what the research will show,but I am going to hypothesize that perhaps
(18:45):
because those conditions exist more often incharter schools, that that might be tied
to overall satisfaction that teachers have,and that it might also be related to
the motivation that we see over time. We take a group of people that
are coming into this because I wantto save the world, and that's what
all teachers do. And if youhave the restrictions removed from you to be
(19:07):
able to try different things, tobe innovative, to feel that you're not
only able to lean on what happensin your classroom, but on your whole
school. That's pretty powerful and Ihave to think that that makes teachers feel
like the professionals that they are.And I'd like to add add us a
(19:29):
little bit more to that. Ithink one of the things that helps to
generate more job satisfaction for charter schools, it's just a structure. What I
found is in my experience both asa classroom teacher Nsdor, president of the
DC Teachers Union, most school districtsend up being a big bureaucracy and they
(19:52):
set policy for the big selection ofschools that they have, which means that
school policy for large districts is notgeared to address the needs of specific schools,
whereas when you have a charter school, charter school leader can focus on
that one, two or three schools. So it is that those teachers,
(20:15):
they can set policy quickly, theycan implement policy real quickly. I think
that is an advantage that charter schoolshave is that they're smaller. You have
less bureaucracy that's involved, and theteacher becomes more important. One of the
reasons that I think school districts don'tinclude teachers voices a lot is because they
(20:38):
see teachers and students as the classroompeople, but not the policymakers. The
school districts have to get back toseeing teachers as the doctors. You know,
if you went into a hospital withan illness, you wouldn't want someone
writing a prescription who has never examinedyou. Well, technically, what happens
in education to hey is that wegot policy makers and politicians making decisions about
(21:03):
what goes on in the classroom withoutever talking to the doctor. I used
to tell the Board of Education inDC, no one can tell you what
mister Parker needs and his ninth grademath class better than I can, because
I know what Keishan, Kevin Tunisha, I know what their needs are in
(21:26):
my class, but you never listen. So it is important. I think
the concept of this report listening toyour teacher is a pathway that politicians and
policy makers are smart. They woulduse that to say, let's start talking
to the teachers, because that iswhere the real solutions lie. I agree,
(21:48):
Rebecca, I can just I canjust jump in and bark that up
a little bit. The thing thatreally stood out to me was, you
know, we saw some of theselike overarching much tricks of what was different
between district and charters. So motivationamong charter teachers as higher, satisfaction among
charter teachers as higher. But whyAnd I think that where we really it
(22:10):
came full circle for me and startedto make sense, was looking at really
sort of those like day to dayin their everyday environment aspects that were different
between charter and district teachers. Sonot only things about the school as a
whole, so the overall sort ofyou know, quality of instruction at the
school, academic rigor at the schoolaccountability systems, but also in the individual
(22:33):
role of each teacher. So likeDebbie spoke to, some of those things
like autonomy, their level of flexibility, how adaptable they can be in their
classrooms, those were consistently higher interms of satisfaction among charter teachers. And
I think that that was what really, like I said, sort of made
everything come full circle of making senseof like it's really about some of the
(22:56):
systems and structures and also just theoverall you know, the environments that they're
in at day to day that makea difference for these different teacher groups.
Absolutely, and charter schools are frommy experience and just in general, provides
(23:18):
a very unique experience for teachers andstudents where teachers have more autonomy in the
classroom and students experience a lesson thatis specifically tailored to them. And I
want to encourage everyone listening to readthe full report Listen to Your Teacher,
an Analysis of Teacher sentiment on theState of public Education. It is available
(23:40):
on Public charters dot org Slash Publications. Thank you to Debbie Beanie, our
senior vice president of Comms and Marketingat the National Alliance, George Parker,
our senior advisor for School Support atthe National Alliance, and Rebecca Purser,
research manager at the Harris Pool Thanksfor listening to this episode and remember charter
(24:00):
schools are free, public and opento all. I'm your host, Brittany
Baker. Have a great day.Produced by Hardcast Media.
Hello, and thank you for tuningin to the Guest Schools on Public Education
podcast. I'm your host, BritneyBaker, and remember charter schools are free,
public and open to all. Ninetyseven percent of public school teachers say
they wish people understood how demanding itis to be a teacher. That's according
to new research about teacher sentiment onpublic education conducted by the Harris Hold The
(00:31):
National Alliance Public Charter Schools commissioned anational survey of pre kindergarten through twelfth grade
public school teachers, and here todiscuss the findings, I'm delighted to introduce
the author of the report. Wehave Debbie Beanie. She's our senior vice
president of Communications in Marketing at theNational Alliance. We also have George Parker,
(00:54):
who is no stranger to the podcast. He hosted our episode for Teacher
Voice. George is the senior Advisorfor School Support at the National Alliance,
and he also spent thirty years asa math teacher in DC public schools and
served as the president of the WashingtonTeachers Union for about six years. We
(01:15):
also have Rebecca Purser. She isthe research manager at the Harris Pole and
an expert on this new study.Rebecca has extensive experience in K through twelve
education research. Thank you all forbeing a part of today's discussion. I'm
so excited to have you all.Awesome, We're great, We're happy to
(01:36):
be here, Brittany. Of course, if the report is entitled Listen to
Your Teacher, An Analysis of TeacherSentiment on the State of Public Education,
We'll start with you, Debbie.Why do you believe it was important to
talk to teachers? This is Ithink the most important topic right now facing
(01:57):
public education, and we're hearing allthe headlines about teacher shortages and teacher resignations
and teacher dissatisfaction, and it reallyfelt to me like we weren't listening enough
to what teachers were actually saying aboutthis. So there's a lot of talk
about teachers, but not enough talkto teachers and not enough listening to them.
(02:21):
I agree, and I one thingthat came out of the study that
stands out to me is that itis important to seek solutions from teachers as
it relates to challenges in the classroom. Let's dive a little bit into the
background information. Rebecca, can youwalk us through the methodology yeah, absolutely.
So there's a lot of fine printwith the methodology, of course,
(02:44):
but I'm going to hit some ofsort of those highlights that I think are
important to know. So for thissergey, we sergey twelve hundred and eleven
US public school pre K through twelveteachers, and of that overall sample,
we had about a two thirds onethird split of district to versus charter school
teachers, So we had eight hundredand eleven district school teachers four hundred charter
(03:05):
school teachers. The survey was aboutfifteen minutes long, was all administered online
through Harris's secured servers, and theway that we sample at the Harris Poll
is by using panel sample providers.So basically what that means is that we
work with panels that store demographic informationabout their respondents and then they're able to
(03:27):
really target certain types of respondents fora survey. So they knew, for
example, that these were teachers,they were able to reach out to teachers
to participate in the survey. Ifthey chose to participate, they went through
an opt in and then also ascreening so that we could make sure you
know, not only that there areteachers, but they were specifically those district
and charter teachers that we were lookingfor in that pre K through twelve setting.
(03:51):
Another important piece of methodology that Ialways like to speak to I'm a
bit of a broken record on thisby now, probably Debbie, but is
about the rating that we use theHarris Poll, and I think that that's
really important because it tells us thatthese results are representative and projectable to larger
teacher populations. So all of thedata, all the findings that we're going
(04:14):
to talk about, have been weightedto be representative of charter teachers of district
teachers respectively. And then any timewe speak to the total teacher population,
that has also been weighted to berepresentative of what that sort of real world
proportion is of charter teachers versus districtteachers. And then the last little bit
is about statistical significance and the waythat we conduct our analysis. So there's
(04:41):
a couple of areas where we lookedat, you know, really some of
those overall teacher findings, but alsowhat's unique to some of these different teacher
populations. And so anytime we talkto differences or some of those distinctions between
teacher groups, safe to assume thatthose are all going to be statistically significant
differences. You know, when weget our data back, it's a ton
(05:02):
of data. It's a lot towade through. So that's really sort of
sort of how we interpret what's thesticking point, what's something that's really worth
looking at, is whether or notit's statistically significant or not. There's lots
more fine print about the methodology thatis also in the report, I know,
but Harris team is always here toanswer any other questions about methodology for
(05:24):
sure. Thanks so much, Rebecca. Okay, let's dive into some of
our findings. We learned that something'sgot to change. Of all teachers surveyed,
ninety nine percent say something needs tochange in public education in order to
recruit in retain teachers. And overthe past few years, teachers have reported
(05:45):
feeling worried or anxious, burned out, and overwhelmed when it comes to a
student behavior, Seventy four percent ofteachers say they experience discipline or behavioral issues
in the classroom. And on thetopic of compensation, seventy five percent of
teachers believe providing better benefits and paywill increase teacher retention. George, with
(06:13):
your experience in the classroom and asunion president, what comes to mind when
you hear this data? Wow?You know. I think one of the
things is that the data in thereports kind of confirms what I've always felt
in my experiences as a classroom teacher. I know that we said nine is
seven percent of teachers indicated that theywish people understood how difficult the job is.
(06:42):
In my thirty years of the classroom, I felt the same is that
if you don't know, you don'tknow. But if you want to really
see what the experience it's like,you get in there and you have some
of that teaching experience, so youknow it's a difficult job. But I
in reading the report, I gotout of it that teacher, first of
all, want to be respected,they want to be heard. One of
(07:04):
the things that I love about thisreport is that I think it's one of
the more comprehensive reports. You hearall the time about there as a teacher
shortage, and you talk about teacherpay, but I think this report dug
into it got into what teachers arefeeling and what motivates teachers in et cetera.
And I just love that. Ithink the report shows that teachers know
(07:30):
will in the crisis, and educationis in the crisis in this country.
And the term that something has tochange, it's so true. The problem
is going out what that change hasto be and to get everybody to buy
into it. I think that oneof the big elephants that has been in
(07:55):
teacher classrooms for years that we didn'ttalk about, came out in this particular
the survey, and that was studentdiscipline and behavior was the number one issue.
And guess what I left the unionabout ten years ago, and guess
what it was the number one issueten years ago. I guess one of
(08:16):
the most surprising things in the reportfor me is that we still haven't figured
it out that teachers are telling us. The teachers are telling us very clearly
in this report we need help withstudent behavior. I think the report shows
that I think seventeen to twenty percentof teachers feel that they spend at least
(08:39):
seventeen percent of their time dealing withdiscipline in the classroom. When I was
WTU president Washington Teachers Union president,we used to do a survey every year,
and every year I was surprised thatmoney was not the number one issue.
It was student discipline and behavior,and so to find that ten years
(09:00):
later that is still number one,it means we got some work to do
to address it. I did alittle calculation, and I don't want to
talk too long. I do havea tendency to do that sometimes, but
I did a mathematical calculation. Itaught in middle school. In middle school
generally had forty five minute classes,right, So I did a calculation.
If a teacher uses twenty percent ofhis or her time dealing with student behavior,
(09:26):
that's the equivalent of nine minutes ofthat forty five minutes per day.
So if you look at taking fivedays per week every week, that means
that kids are losing forty five minutesof instruction of time due to the teacher
having to deal with misbehavior. Whenyou add that up to one hundred and
eighty days of schooling, that meansstudents are missing thirty six days of instruction
(09:52):
based on behavior. It hasn't beendealt with very well, and I think
that most districts still as a reallyhot political issues and don't wish to issue
and don't wish to deal with itbecause it requires some tough decisions, It
requires alternative educational settings for students.It requires the resources that can support those
(10:13):
alternative educational settings. It just requiresthe political will to understand that there must
be a minimal classroom quality of environmentin order for quality of teaching and learning
to go on. And if youdon't have that, then you're not You're
going to diminish the quality of teachingand learning that goes on. So I
(10:35):
am glad to see the student disciplineand behavior issue coming to the top and
teachers concerns. I think the challengeis what do we do about it?
Absolutely? I agree in classroom managementand making sure the students are able to
get what they need. Get whatthey need does start also with having control
(10:58):
over the classroom and making sure thatit is a safe environment, so that
it's very important. Thank you formaking those points, George. Another fine
thing from the report is that teacherswant to keep politics out of the classroom,
and ninety one percent of teachers feellike they are caught in the crossfire
of a culture war. Debbie,could you elaborate on this data point leading
(11:22):
Absolutely, this is another topic thatwe hear a lot about in the popular
media, and we know that theirnumber of school districts in actually states that
have enact to different policies related toculture, and teachers are in real time
(11:43):
having to figure out how to makeadjustments in the classrooms demixture that they're complying
with the law whilst also really makingsure that they can give the best educational
experience to their students. And therehave been certainly experiences where teachers I've felt
pulled a little bit like they're inthe middle of a cultural war, and
(12:03):
I was curious to understand what didthat actually look like in terms of numbers.
So anecdotally, I've seen like clipson the news, and I've read
some some articles, but it wasreally important to be able to work with
the Hero's Poll to put some numbersaround that. And I was surprised to
see that it was so large,and also that it was so consistently the
(12:26):
case across different populations of students ofteachers. So I would have guessed that
there probably wouldn't have been that high, and there might have been some people
that were okay with it. Iwas a little bit surprised that so many
people were pulled into it, andthen nobody likes it pretty much, And
(12:48):
ninety seven percent of teachers which decisionmakers would listen to their opinions or perspectives.
Rebecca, you all ask teachers ifthey are planning to stay in the
classroom, and thirty nine percent ofteachers indicated they have seriously considered leaving the
profession in the past or are planningto do so by the end of the
(13:09):
year. So we learned from someof our educators teaching scenes like a good
idea at the time, but challengessuch as the ones that we highlighted earlier
have caused those feelings to change forsome of those teachers. Rebecca, can
you elaborate more on that finding.Yeah, absolutely, So this is really
(13:31):
a key takeaway that is supported bykind of a blend of a couple of
different data points. So the firstis around why teachers said that they joined
the profession in the first place.So we asked them what initially motivated them
to want to become a teacher,and the most common answer was because they
like helping children learn. It wasalso pretty clear that this definitely isn't a
(13:54):
profession that people are drawn to forsort of some of those fells and whistles
like pay and benefit, because thosewere some of the least cited motivations for
why teachers went into the profession.But sort of that strength of the initial
calling to the teaching profession and someof that purpose driven passion might be fading
over time is really sort of whatwe saw, and I think that that's
(14:16):
part of, you know, teachersbeing exposed to and experiencing some of the
reality of what it means to workin the public education system. So what
we asked is we asked teachers whetherthey feel more less or as motivated today
about being a teacher in comparison towhen they first joined a profession, and
the results were really telling, particularlyfor district teachers. So we saw about
(14:39):
two thirds of teachers overall saying thatthey felt less motivated today to be a
teacher than when they initially joined theprofession. But when we start to look
at that by district and charter teachers, that's where you really start to see
what that overall two thirds is coming. So actually, most charter teachers are
(15:01):
saying that they feel more motivated toteach now. Over half say that they
feel more motivated to teach now.Over eighty percent say that they feel at
least as motivated, if not more, and only fifteen percent of district teachers
say the same. So really thatlarge number of the overall teachers saying that
they feel less motivated now is reallybeing driven by a lot of the district
(15:24):
teachers responses. And so you sortof see this trajectory here for teachers,
like they're coming into their profession becausethey really feel drawn to children and like
they want to make a difference inkids' lives. But kind of depending on
what schools setting they're in, thatcan it seems to be maybe a make
or break for whether or not they'regetting sort of eaten down a bit in
(15:46):
this profession. And I think thatyou know, some drop in motivation in
your career, I think we canall relate to this a little bit.
Some of that can be natural overtime, or it's just a shift,
doesn't necessarily have to be a drop, but I think it's pretty sobering to
see how much that's impacted teachers,just given how critically important they are to
(16:07):
the future of this country. ThanksRebecca, and let's continue on the topic
of motivation. Another finding we learnedfrom the report is that there's something special
or unique about the experience of charterschool teachers. And as you mentioned,
seventy nine percent of charter school teacherssay they are as or more motivated than
(16:29):
when they initially entered the profession,and charter school teachers are significantly more likely
to report feelings that their current schoolsculture aligns with their values and beliefs and
education. And this personally resonates withme. When I taught at a public
charter school, one of our corevalues was justice. And it's not justice
(16:53):
as you would think in the traditionalterm. Justice basically meant that you are
giving your student whatever it is thatthey need to succeed. So say,
for instance, if they're having challengeswith or if you're having challenges with their
behavior, you would respond and usetools in a way that they are receptive
(17:15):
to, you know, from learningthe child, the things that that child
responds more to. That would beus, you know, giving them justice
as far as trying to correct thatsituation in a way that would best fit
them, even in instruction, tailoringthe lesson to reach each student based on
(17:36):
their learning style. So that's onething that we had in our classroom,
well within the whole school. Justiceand that's something that I really also pushed
in my classroom. So the nextquestion is just open to anyone based on
the data. Are there any othertopics that came up to share the unique
(17:56):
experience of charter school teachers? Okay, I can jump in on that.
So one of the things that stuckout to me was how many teachers felt
like their voices were being heard intheir school settings by their administrators, that
(18:21):
they had autonomy in their classrooms.So to two points on that. One
it's something that's desired by teachers acrossthe board, that's not surprising to hear
to me. And two that therewas something special about the charter environment that
allowed teachers to be able to getmore of that. Now, this is
not what the research will show,but I am going to hypothesize that perhaps
(18:45):
because those conditions exist more often incharter schools, that that might be tied
to overall satisfaction that teachers have,and that it might also be related to
the motivation that we see over time. We take a group of people that
are coming into this because I wantto save the world, and that's what
all teachers do. And if youhave the restrictions removed from you to be
(19:07):
able to try different things, tobe innovative, to feel that you're not
only able to lean on what happensin your classroom, but on your whole
school. That's pretty powerful and Ihave to think that that makes teachers feel
like the professionals that they are.And I'd like to add add us a
(19:29):
little bit more to that. Ithink one of the things that helps to
generate more job satisfaction for charter schools, it's just a structure. What I
found is in my experience both asa classroom teacher Nsdor, president of the
DC Teachers Union, most school districtsend up being a big bureaucracy and they
(19:52):
set policy for the big selection ofschools that they have, which means that
school policy for large districts is notgeared to address the needs of specific schools,
whereas when you have a charter school, charter school leader can focus on
that one, two or three schools. So it is that those teachers,
(20:15):
they can set policy quickly, theycan implement policy real quickly. I think
that is an advantage that charter schoolshave is that they're smaller. You have
less bureaucracy that's involved, and theteacher becomes more important. One of the
reasons that I think school districts don'tinclude teachers voices a lot is because they
(20:38):
see teachers and students as the classroompeople, but not the policymakers. The
school districts have to get back toseeing teachers as the doctors. You know,
if you went into a hospital withan illness, you wouldn't want someone
writing a prescription who has never examinedyou. Well, technically, what happens
in education to hey is that wegot policy makers and politicians making decisions about
(21:03):
what goes on in the classroom withoutever talking to the doctor. I used
to tell the Board of Education inDC, no one can tell you what
mister Parker needs and his ninth grademath class better than I can, because
I know what Keishan, Kevin Tunisha, I know what their needs are in
(21:26):
my class, but you never listen. So it is important. I think
the concept of this report listening toyour teacher is a pathway that politicians and
policy makers are smart. They woulduse that to say, let's start talking
to the teachers, because that iswhere the real solutions lie. I agree,
(21:48):
Rebecca, I can just I canjust jump in and bark that up
a little bit. The thing thatreally stood out to me was, you
know, we saw some of theselike overarching much tricks of what was different
between district and charters. So motivationamong charter teachers as higher, satisfaction among
charter teachers as higher. But whyAnd I think that where we really it
(22:10):
came full circle for me and startedto make sense, was looking at really
sort of those like day to dayin their everyday environment aspects that were different
between charter and district teachers. Sonot only things about the school as a
whole, so the overall sort ofyou know, quality of instruction at the
school, academic rigor at the schoolaccountability systems, but also in the individual
(22:33):
role of each teacher. So likeDebbie spoke to, some of those things
like autonomy, their level of flexibility, how adaptable they can be in their
classrooms, those were consistently higher interms of satisfaction among charter teachers. And
I think that that was what really, like I said, sort of made
everything come full circle of making senseof like it's really about some of the
(22:56):
systems and structures and also just theoverall you know, the environments that they're
in at day to day that makea difference for these different teacher groups.
Absolutely, and charter schools are frommy experience and just in general, provides
(23:18):
a very unique experience for teachers andstudents where teachers have more autonomy in the
classroom and students experience a lesson thatis specifically tailored to them. And I
want to encourage everyone listening to readthe full report Listen to Your Teacher,
an Analysis of Teacher sentiment on theState of public Education. It is available
(23:40):
on Public charters dot org Slash Publications. Thank you to Debbie Beanie, our
senior vice president of Comms and Marketingat the National Alliance, George Parker,
our senior advisor for School Support atthe National Alliance, and Rebecca Purser,
research manager at the Harris Pool Thanksfor listening to this episode and remember charter
(24:00):
schools are free, public and opento all. I'm your host, Brittany
Baker. Have a great day.Produced by Hardcast Media.
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