Evaluating teacher satisfaction

I agree that unionization would probably raise the level of pay for teachers. But you'd have the problems that come with unions. Mediocre (or even bad) teachers who can't get fired or who may get paid much more than you, a hardworking teacher, do because they've been there longer.

I love when people (like Lisa B. did) speak for me. Take away MYR (which is NOT mandatory in any form you twist it to fit your agenda) and my satisfactionwill rise. Um, NOT. Survey the teachers and you might be surprised about how many hate year round, not nearly as many as you try to use for your agenda. Unless you are a teacher, you do not understand fully the questions asked in the survey, and thus cannot understand fully the results. There are small details in every question that teachers think about as they answer them. It's a wide variety of things that affect the answers, and I would bet Non-MYR is a very SMALL factor in the survey. If you notice a significant number of questions deal with things that get tied to parents. So, get rid of complaining parnents, increase satisfaction could be used just like the MYR reference was. Please don't speak for teachers and try to use that to further your agenda.

The way Chuck and Del, Rosa and ESPECIALLY Patti Head feel is that WHO CARES about teachers being happy, if they don't like it they can go elsewhere. "We have 10's of 1,000's waiting in line to come work in wake county" and what's hard to understand about that. A system where you don't get the raises you're promised, where they yank your medical coverage as needed, where you work year round like or not and where the lies are endless.

Who wouldn't be satisfied with all that!

Having taken this survey twice so far in my career, I feel exceptionally bad for those being demoted due to its contents. While I agree school leadership's communication and policy making does affect teachers' effectiveness and simultaneously affects student performance, many thing in the survey results are more reflective of county policy and not that those at the school. Some counties (Wake) are so scared of lawsuits that they bog their teachers and administrators down in paper work and then scare them from providing many wonderful learning opportunities to student(as if the paperwork the state provides wasn't enough). Having ones' hands tied as you can imagine would make anyone severely dissatisfied. Many counties (Wake) are also sending mixed messages to their teachers in how they should teach. This is not to mention the disconnect from teacher education programs that rarely match the initiatives of the real classroom, but that is a whole other issue. On one hand students are asked to think outside the box to get a level four (a top score) showing creativity, and elaboration. Meanwhile teachers are held to teaching lackluster countrywide focus lessons from one stop curriculum banks which is moving ever closer to the European model of uniform instruction. It seems that the "art of teaching" is quickly loosing ground the science of objectives and uniformity. Don't get me wrong, I do see the value in using scientific classroom data to pinpoint weaknesses in both instruction and performance. Unlike like the science lab however , it seems that today's technologically driven children are juxtaposed to a sterile controlled environment. Similarly, I have yet to come across a fellow teacher who has been given the proper training or has the tools needed to fully implement these scientific skill sets (which are typically employed by extremely well paid corporate consultants).
This brings me to my more important point. The NC Working Conditions survey to my knowledge was first put into place to tackle the statewide issue of teacher retention and recruitment. If one looks at the survey, one will not find a single question dealing with a teachers' satisfaction of salary and living conditions. Myself, being at the point in my career where the salary ladder levels off to a mere few hundred dollars additional each year for the rest of my career, find this insulting. Even our students behavior today is being managed through positive reward systems yet the best we provide or teacher are coupons and small discounts. Unlike many members of our society, NC teaching professionals are not rewarded economically for working harder. Instead we teachers find ourselves suffering from a communist like monopolistic system in NC. We are all paid the same on a experience step whether one is a driven teacher who works 90-75 hours per week just to keep up or the teacher who is in and out the building with the bells with no work bag in sight (few and far between however). Somehow teachers have been dealt job security instead of economic freedom and happiness in our state. In the long run NC may lose out if it continues on its course to a widening teacher shortage amidst increasing student populations. The state has failed to recognize that today's twenty-somethings are getting married later and are delaying starting families and thus care much less about job security than previous generations. So not only are many of the most talented quitting teaching because the cards are stacked against them, but many young North Carolinians are not even willing to take on the challenge with so little a tangible reward. This rings true in the backhanded compliment that every teacher has heard more than once, "Its so great that you are a teacher; I could never do that."
I suggest we survey these people and find out why they are not teachers. If it wasn't for a surge of out of state teachers looking to get a start, NC would be in crisis mode right now. What these transplants fail to bring with them, for the few years some of them are here, is the strong advocate unions of their better educationally ranked home states. Without the right to organize for better pay and benefits in NC there will be little improvement in overall students performance no matter how much the state plays with the statistics of its normed tests. Teachers need a voice in which to negotiate for educational progress not only as a group but as individuals. As for the ABC bonus system of a few hundred dollars after taxes (based on school results not the individual), it hardly seems comparable to thousands of dollars of commissions and pay raises received by our college classmates in other 9-5 professions (Never mind the fact that some schools' student populations can be harder to achieve these bonuses and much like a harder product to sell).
Sadly, NC may keep kidding itself that its teachers will strive to improve based on receiving happy smiles, a little teacher empowerment, and handful of thank yous. (For perspective, I am a third generation educator; I love the school I work at and I enjoys my job, but I am constantly disappointed by my professional and economical status.)

interesting blog on AG
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/unwrapping_the_gifted/

     Note:  None of these administrators lose their jobs.  They get reassigned, maybe made assistant principals at another school or reassigned to central offices, but education seems a guaranteed job for life.

     The triangle that is students, teachers, parent has hovering above school based administration, system administration, system policies and rule, state laws, federal laws  (and layers of administrators with each).   It all makes for a huge challenge to meet the needs of students in an atmosphere that is cooperative.

      It seems like the numbers on this survey are lower at the schools I checked than on the one done two years ago.  That decline is a bad sign.