Survey Finds Teachers’ Biggest Challenge Is Parents

More than 80 percent of new teachers say that to be effective, they need to be able to work well with parents. Yet communicating with and involving parents is their biggest challenge, according to this year’s MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, released last week.

Many new teachers said they lacked guidance from their principal on parent involvement, and about a quarter of the respondents said they felt unprepared to engage parents in their children’s education.

Principals surveyed, however, generally had more positive views of the steps their schools took to involve parents and prepare new teachers for that task. Seventy-one percent of principals agreed that including parents is a priority at their school, compared with 59...