Eric.ed.gov – Listen to Us: Teacher Views and Voices

Education policymakers and leaders often say that the opinions and observations of teachers are among the most important information to help explain and understand what is happening in schools. Teachers’ voices can inject a sense of classroom and school-level realism into those discussions and add clarity and credibility to issues that are often clouded by competing interests. The Center on Education Policy (CEP), in an effort to gather and amplify teachers’ voices about current education issues and their own profession, conducted a national survey of public school K-12 teachers in the winter of 2015-16. The survey focused on a strategic set of issues for policymakers, educators, business leaders, and the public, including teachers’ views on their profession, standards, testing, and evaluations. The nationally representative sample surveyed for this report included elementary, middle, and high school teachers of a range of subjects in a variety of communities across the nation. The survey responses presented in the report tell a great deal about how teachers are managing the many changes currently taking place in public schools. The responses portray a profession that is increasingly complex and under pressure: nearly all states have new, more rigorous academic standards in place along with school accountability systems that revolve around student assessment results. Many states also evaluate teachers using student test scores. For many teachers, this recent political and pedagogical upheaval in public education has made the profession more challenging and less rewarding. The survey aimed to learn more about teachers’ views on these and other issues. Following Summary and a Commentary, the report is organized into the following sections: (1) The Teaching Profession; (2) Standards and Assessments: Teachers of Math and ELA; (3) Standards and Assessments: Teachers of Other Subjects; (4) Testing Time; and (5) Teacher Evaluation. Key findings appear at the beginning of each part of the report.