Cross-posted from the Teacher Beat blog
by Stephen Sawchuk
Most teachers in Texas didn’t bother to fill out a survey on their working conditions and classroom enviornment, the Dallas Morning News reports.
Fewer than 20 percent of the state’s teachers completed the online survey, which was mandated by the state legislature in 2013. Although the state’s teachers’ associations encouraged teachers to participate, administrators’ groups felt that the survey didn’t reflect their concerns about testing or funding, and so didn’t help to get the word out, the newspaper discovered.
Among other things, the survey queried teachers on whether their class sizes were reasonable, whether they had a lot of non-instructional duties, and whether principals were supportive of teachers’ disciplinary decisions.
The low participation rates mean that most schools won’t get back results on trends within their buildings, because the state education department planned to make the results public only if more than 50 percent of teachers in each building participated.