Research Spotlight on Teacher Working Conditions
NEA Reviews of the Research on Best Practices in Education
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Any discussion of student achievement must include teacher working conditions. Research makes clear that learning conditions in the classroom are of more importance to a teacher than salary, benefits, school locale, or even parent involvement. |
Teachers did not join the teaching ranks to become wealthy. Teachers have chosen this profession because they have an intrinsic ability to convey information to others and they have a genuine love for the students they teach.
As part of its work with teacher working conditions, North Carolina has done much in the study of the relationship between the learning environment and student achievement. Some of the more significant findings from the North Carolina work indicate the importance of—
- Professional collegiality
- Time allotted for teachers to meet and plan together
- Teachers being provided the time necessary to adequately understand each individual student they teach
Once we are able to address issues such as these, we will have much greater success in students selecting teaching as a career, in retaining teachers in the profession once we have them, and finally being able to truly focus on what matters: teacher quality and student achievement.
Richard Baumgartner, president of the Fairfax Education Association, points to teacher time as the key factor in improving working conditions. "The demands on teacher time have progressed incrementally over decades. As a profession, we have allowed external forces to slowly erode one of the most vital prerequisites to providing sound instruction to our students: quality time," he says. "It is now incumbent upon us as a professional association to recognize the cost of time issues to both our students and our profession and to act upon this knowledge."
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