Does Teacher Opinion Matter?

Sorry for my sudden disappearance -- I've been off trying to deal with more important issues.

The NY Times ran an article this morning about the survey the UFT recently conducted of NYC teachers (UFT press release here, full results here). In short, it seems that teachers don't particularly like Chancellor Klein.

Methodological concerns aside, I wonder if these results matter.

I think a strong argument can be made that teachers' feelings about a particular reform will greatly influence how they implement said reform, but I wonder about their feelings toward things that are more removed from their immediate situation. Does a teacher's love or hatred for Joel Klein affect how they go about their daily business? Does it make them less satisfied with their jobs? Does it make them less likely to implement reforms he pushes? Or is "Chancellor Klein" too much of an abstraction to matter much when teaching a roomful of kids?

Someone Asked What Teachers Think?

As a former teacher, it is my personal bias that teachers are not frequently enough included in the policy-making process. It seems like we often analyze everything except for what teachers think. Meanwhile, it seems like an awful lot of reforms fail b/c teachers don't adopt them.

Well, a team from Education Sector just released the results of a national teacher survey. More than one blog post will be devoted to this, but for this one I'd like to look at the opinion questions that resulted in the most lopsided responses (>70% agreeing with one side). For the sake of brevity, I'll summarize each question, but I'll put the actual number from the survey next to it and you can read the full question from the report if you want more information (and let me know if my summary is unfair).

-81% of teachers agree that negative press coverage prevents the most talented people from entering teaching (9)

-80% agree that teachers are "rarely consulted about what happens in their school" (6)

-86% agree that teachers are required to do too much paperwork

-85% say that more prep and planning time is a good or excellent idea to help recruit better teachers into the field (14)

-78% of teachers say the same about easing rules on coming out of retirement (15)

-71% say that offering "substantially higher starting salaries in exchange for smaller pensions when they retire" is only a fair or poor idea for helping to recruit better teachers (16)

-80% strongly or somewhat favor giving "Teachers who work in tough neighborhoods with low-performing schools" financial incentives (23)

-79% said the unionization of the teaching force was not a consideration in choosing a career (37)

-84% say the same about the considerable job protection in teaching (38)

-75% agree that "Teachers facing unfair charges from parents or students would have nowhere to turn without the union" (46)

-75% agree that "Without collective bargaining, the working conditions and salaries of teachers would be much worse" (48)

-77% agree that "Without a union, teachers would be vulnerable to school politics or administrators who abuse their power" (49)

-76% say that unions "Effectively negotiate contracts, salary, and benefits on behalf of teachers"(54A)

-84% say that unions "Protect teachers through due process and grievance procedures" (57A)

-79% say that unions "Regularly inform teachers about their benefits, rights, and responsibilities" (60A)

More on this later but, at first glance, it appears that teachers think that:

1. they aren't given enough respect
2. their time isn't allocated in the best way possible
3. unions are doing some good things

Randi Weingarten

Randi Weingarten gave the keynote address at a conference on performance incentives here last night. If you're thinking that it's odd for the head of a large teacher's union to be addressing a roomful of education economists you are correct. She essentially walked into the lion's den, confronted the lions, and lived to tell the tale. Whether you agree or disagree with her politics, you have to be impressed with her moxy.

My previous experience with Randi was limited to newsclips of her leading rallies, so I was pleasantly surprised by both the mechanics and the substance of her speech. She focused on two issues: bridging ideological divides to focus on what helps children (which, depending on your ideology, is either highly ironic or very fitting for a union head to say) and incorporating teachers in all reforms. She argued that the start of a pilot incentives program has gone smoothly in NYC because teachers had a role in its creation and management and because they were being rewarded rather than demeaned.

I think the strongest argument she made was that it is virtually impossible for most reforms to succeed without teacher buy-in. She asked a rhetorical question to the effect of "why would any teacher implement a reform in which they do not believe in their classroom?" To me, this is something too easily forgotten.