Wake Education Partnership presents "Wake FYI"
08.17.06

FOR YOUR INFORMATION: The North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey

In 2002 North Carolina became the first state to survey all of its teachers on the conditions under which they work. The survey was developed after extensive research by the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards Commission (NCPTSC) to identify the areas which most affected the work of teachers and were most likely to get teachers to remain in teaching and ensure high achievement for all students.

 

The five domains NCPTSC identified – leadership, professional development, time, facilities and resources, and empowerment – are the same five still used to assess working conditions in North Carolina and also in other districts and states around the country which have adopted our state’s model.

 

The survey has now been conducted three times in North Carolina, most recently in spring of 2006, with school, district and state-level data providing vital knowledge on the environments in which our teachers work every day. As Governor Mike Easley has said, “Teacher working conditions are student learning conditions.”

 

In this edition of Wake FYI, we take a closer look at the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey.

 

Why Do a Survey of Teacher Working Conditions
  • Research has shown that teachers are the most important factor influencing student learning. ( For more information, see the June 15 edition of Wake FYI on teaching quality.)
  • Teacher turnover is a tremendous problem in the United States, with more than 50 percent of new teachers leaving the profession within five years.
  • National research data suggests that while compensation is important in recruiting and retaining good teachers, it is not the only or even the most important factor. The conditions under which teachers work can play a much more vital role in their decision to remain in teaching. This is particularly true for teachers in what are traditionally considered the most challenging teaching situations, such as those who work in high poverty, urban schools.
  • A 2001 study by Richard Ingersoll of Harvard University examined the top reasons for teacher dissatisfaction. His findings are shown below.
Reasons for Teacher Dissatisfaction

 

The Basics on the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey
  • The survey is administered every two years to all teachers and administrators in North Carolina .
  • The first survey in 2002 was a paper and pencil survey; in 2004 the survey was administered online for the first time.
  • All questions are multiple choice; the first survey had fewer than fifty questions and the number has increased with each administration to allow for more detailed data to be collected.
  • The majority of the survey questions have responses listed on a 1 to 5 Likert scale. This allows respondents, for example, to express whether they "Strongly Disagree" with a statement (a score of 1) up to "Strongly Agree" (a score of 5).
  • The 2006 survey contained questions in all five of the original working conditions domains (leadership, professional development, time, facilities and resources, and empowerment) as well as, for the first time, a section on mentoring for new teachers.
  • Each domain is the compilation of questions all related to the same issues. The time domain, for instance, deals with issues related to the amount of time teachers have to plan, to work collaboratively with other teachers, and to provide appropriate attention to individual students, as well as the amount of time spent outside of the work day on both instructional (grading and planning) and non-instructional (coaching teams or sponsoring clubs) duties.
  • The survey is anonymous; participants are given a random code to access the survey online and ensure the validity of the data. The code identifies a specific school, but not a specific teacher or administrator.
  • School-level reports are generated for all schools that have a 40 percent response rate.
  • The survey is supported by the North Carolina Office of the Governor and has a permanent place in the state’s budget. The governor’s office works in partnership with several organizations to create, advertise and conduct the survey, and to analyze the resulting data and create tools which schools and communities can use to have the data inform school improvement efforts at the local level.
  • In 2006 the following organizations co-sponsored the survey:
    • Office of the Governor
    • North Carolina State Board of Education
    • North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards Commission
    • North Carolina Association of Educators
    • North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
    • DonorsChooseNC
    • BellSouth
    • Center for Teaching Quality
    • North Carolina Business Committee for Education
What We've Learned from the Survey

2006 Wake County Results

  • In 2006, Wake County had a 76 percent response rate on the survey, much improved over the 38 percent response in 2004. All schools except four have a school-level report. (The four schools without a report did not have a sufficient response rate.)
  • Some of the key findings for Wake County include:

1) Leadership was by far the most important factor identified by teachers as the reason they would be willing to stay at their school and in promoting student learning at their school.

2) One-fourth of Wake County teachers do not believe their school has an effective process for making group decisions and solving problems.

3) Thirty-four percent of Wake County teachers spend more than ten hours per week outside the regular school day on school-related activities.

4) Forty-three percent of teachers believe they play no or only a small role in determining the content of professional development. This is disturbing when you take a more in-depth look at some of the data. For instance:

More than 50 percent of teachers say they need additional support in teaching special education students but only 19 percent say they have gotten ten or more hours of professional development in this area in the past two years. This figure has not changed since the 2004 survey.

5) Sixty-nine percent of teachers in Wake County believe they play no or only a small role in determining how their school’s budget is spent .

6) Fifty-six percent of teachers believe their school improvement team provides effective leadership at their school.

7) More than three-fourths of Wake County teachers agree that their school is a good place to work and learn.
Overall, my school is a good place to teach and learn.
Overall, my school is a good place to teach and learn.

8) Sixty percent of Wake County teachers indicated they were planning to stay at their school.

 

2004 State Level Data

  • The state-level analyses for 2006 are not yet ready for public distribution, however, there were powerful lessons learned from the 2004 survey.
  • Teacher working conditions made a difference in both teacher retention and student achievement . Some of the specific findings include:

1) Teachers’ views of the professional development, facilities and resources, and leadership domains were all predictors of Adequate Yearly Progress and ABC status.

2) For every one point increase on the survey results in the professional development domain, schools in North Carolina were four times more likely to make AYP, and ten times more likely to be in one of the top school designation categories in the ABCs student accountability program. They were three times more likely to make AYP for every one point increase in the facilities and resources domain.

3) Leadership was the single greatest predictor of whether middle schools made AYP. For every one point increase on the survey results in the leadership domain, middle schools were 6.7 times more likely to make AYP. In high schools the results were even more dramatic: for every one point increase on the leadership domain a high school was 48 times more likely to be in one of the top three ABCs performance designations.

  •  Teacher working conditions have “ripple effects.” All working conditions domains are significantly correlated with each other. The good news is that improving one area of working conditions can help to improve other areas. Particularly strong relationships exist between leadership and professional development, and leadership and empowerment.
  • Teachers view working conditions within a school similarly, regardless of their backgrounds or experience. Teacher perceptions of a school’s working conditions were similar regardless of their age, years of experience, how they were prepared or whether they are National Board Certified. This should give us confidence in the results of the data and support them as an accurate reflection of the teachers’ perception of working conditions within a school.
  • Teachers and administrators view working conditions very differently. There was a significant difference in the responses of teachers and administrators on every survey question. For instance, for the question “Teachers in my school have time to plan with their colleagues during the school day,” teachers gave an overall rating of 2.94 and the average for administrators was 4.14. On a five point scale, this is a large difference.
 

What Is Being Done With the Data?

  • The data from the North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions is an excellent resource for informing school improvement in your community.
  • School districts around North Carolina have begun using the data to examine what is going on in their schools and changing practices as a result. Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools, for instance, made changes to their school schedule for teacher meetings and professional development as a result of the 2004 survey.
  • The North Carolina Principal’s Executive Program is using the data to inform the professional development it offers administrators from around the state.
  • The North Carolina Teacher Academy created a series of workshops to help districts which are part of the Disadvantaged Student Supplemental Funding program use the data to improve practices.
 

For More Information on Teacher Working Conditions