Newspaper
What do teachers want?
Supportive principals more than higher salaries.
Digital media more than textbooks.
Evaluations based on how much their students learn, rather than principals' observations.
Those are a few findings from what's thought to be the largest-ever survey of American public-school teachers, sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Scholastic publishing company.
Over the phone and online, about 40,000 teachers answered questions about what they need to help more students achieve, and what they think about issues such as merit pay, testing and common learning standards.
The results offer a rich look at the challenges and frustrations of teachers and underscore how deeply many care about their work. Seven out of 10, for example, reported that they attend student events at night or on weekends.
For the Gates Foundation, the goal was to highlight teacher opinions on how best to improve the nation's schools — a debate taking place in school districts and state capitols across the nation.
"We wanted to put teacher's voices front and center in the debate around education reform," said Vicki Phillips, the Gates Foundation's education director. "Teachers are on the front line of this work every day ... it doesn't make sense not to be talking to teachers."
Harris Interactive conducted the survey from mid-March through mid-June last year. Teachers weren't told who sponsored the survey.
Enough teachers responded that the results were broken out by state, and sometimes by age, or the median