Photo courtesy Gates Foundation
Want to hold onto your best teachers? Put good principals in your schools.
For years, teachers have been telling me that a good principalsomeone who is supportive, focuses on improving instruction, and creates a healthy school climateis the single most important factor in their choice of schools to work in.
Now a national survey of 40,000 teachers confirms my anecdotal-based opinion.
The survey, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, found that 68 percent of teachers said “supportive leadership” is essential for retaining good teachers, as opposed to only 45 percent who rated higher salaries as important.
That comes as no surprise to me. Without a good principal or an enlightened central office, a school can become a lousy place to work. No teacher is going to sit in a classroom every day if the principal won’t intervene against student misbehavior in hallways or classroomsor can’t inspire a sense of meaning and progress to the work teachers do.
Conducted in conjunction with Scholastic Inc., the survey findings, Primary Sources: America’s Teachers on America’s Schools, offers some other insights into the minds of teachers:
* More than 80 percent of teachers say standardized tests have some value in measuring student performance, although they say multiple measures are important.
* Tenure isn’t an accurate measure of teacher performance, most teachers agree. Forty-two percent say tenure is “not at all accurate.”
* Most teachers don’t rate textbooks as all that valuable, and only 6 percent say textbooks “engage students in learning.” The majority (81 percent) are big supporters of “up-to-date information-based technology.”
* Most teachers work long after the school day ends. Seventy percent attend students’ afterschool and weekend events, and more than half are willing to meet with parents at students’ home
* Only half of teachers think that the 75 percent or more of their students leave high school prepared to succeed in college.
I can’t say that the findings surprise me much. But, then again, too much education policymaking is based on anecdote and when-I-went-to-school thinking.
So, if you want some quantifiable data on teacher perceptions, take a look for yourself at: http://www.scholastic.com/primarysources/download.asp.
Del Stover, Senior Editor
