MetLife Survey Examines Education Issues
MetLife recently released the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Challenges for School Leadership (2012). In its 29th year, the survey examines the views of teachers and principals on the responsibilities and challenges facing school leaders. The survey finds that responsibilities identified as most challenging result from conditions that originate outside of school, such as managing shrinking budgets and engaging parents and the community.
So many of the critical issues and concerns raised in this study can be solved through family literacy, especially with the help of NCFL’s tools and training — from addressing the needs of diverse learners, to increasing low-income student achievement, to boosting parental and community engagement, to implementing Common Core State Standards.
Here are some of the key findings:
- More than seven in 10 educators identify addressing the individual needs of diverse learners as well as engaging parents and the community in improving education for students as challenging or very challenging for school leaders.
- Professional development opportunities (63 percent) have either decreased or stayed the same during the past 12 months.
- Principals in schools with at least two-thirds low-income students are more likely than those with one-third or fewer to say that engaging parents and the community in improving the education of students (86 percent vs. 46 percent) is challenging or very challenging.
- In schools with at least two-thirds low-income students, 37 percent of principals and 27 percent of teachers believe most of their students are performing at or above grade level. By comparison, in schools with one-third or fewer low-income students, 91 percent of principals and 83 percent of teachers believe most of their students are achieving at this level.
- A majority of teachers (62 percent) and a smaller proportion of principals (46 percent) say teachers in their schools are already using the Common Core a great deal in their teaching this year.
- A majority of those surveyed (55 percent) believe help in identifying strategies to teach content more deeply would be very beneficial for teachers. Even more (61 percent) would like support in identifying real-world problems that students can solve.”
NCFL tools for success include:
- Training on Common Core State Standards and a variety of professional development topics, many of which are available online.
- Engaging learning activities aligned with Common Core State Standards at www.Wonderopolis.org.
- Free family and educator resources to implement family literacy, which boosts parental engagement and is proven to increase children’s scores on standardized reading tests by 10 points.
- Gaining insights from national education experts at the National Conference on Family Literacy.
Teachers – do you share the same opinions yielded from the survey findings?