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Thursday, January 3, 2008
No Teacher Left Behind
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I received an e-mail this morning from the folks at Education Week, alerting me to their annual Quality Counts report, which they’ll release publicly next Wednesday.
Every year, reporters and researchers at the publication grade states on their education policies and practices. They also typically focus articles in the special issue on a particular theme, which this year appears to be teaching.
According to the press release, researchers analyzed “the best thinking and current practices” in the teaching field and found that states could be doing more to strengthen the profession.
Coincidentally, the other day I was nosing around the Georgia Professional Standards Commission’s Web site and stumbled upon this online survey of the state’s public school teachers.
Apparently the purpose of the survey, conducted last school year, was to understand what makes teachers leave the classroom so education officials can reduce turnover.
With the exception of annual raises, teachers seemed to be generally satisfied with their heath and retirement benefits, base compensation and opportunities to earn extra cash or advance their careers.
Student discipline and motivation and parental or administrative support also don’t appear to be major factors for most of the 21,000 educators who responded to the questionnaire.
So what was the biggest problem?
President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.
In fact, 68.6 percent of the teachers surveyed said the effects of the law were either “one of the worst” or just plain “bad” aspects of their jobs. That was, by far, the most negative response to any of the questions.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure what state officials can do about that one. But what would happen if those teachers (or parents, for that matter) actually got together and demanded a change?
