Shockers from new US Chamber of Commerce report

I wrote yesterday about a new report from the US Chamber of Commerce that will raise eyebrows about what is, and isn’t, happening in our schools.

Let’s take a deeper look at some of the interesting data in that report. First up are some real shockers.

Here are the results from an opinion poll called the Schools and Staffing Survey which the National Center for Education Statistics distributes to schools around the country every four years. The graph shows how our teachers feel about paperwork getting in the way of instruction and about how well their schools are being run.


This data comes from a table on page 18 of the Chamber report.

Clearly, only a very small minority of our teachers don’t feel burdened by paperwork. Looked at the other way, 92 percent of our teachers think that paperwork is interfering with teaching.

That may indicate that there is too much paperwork, but it also might indicate that teachers don’t understand the value of the paperwork they need to complete – probably because they don’t know how to use the results effectively.

Either way, there is a huge problem with the paperwork requirement. In fact, teachers in only 10 other states are even more upset about paperwork requirements than our Kentucky teachers are.

There is also a crisis of teacher confidence in the way Kentucky’s schools are being run. Fewer than one in three teachers is happy about their school’s management.

This is an astonishing revelation.

Kentucky teachers directly control school management through their domination of the School Based Decision Making Councils.

Something here is terribly wrong if teachers don’t like the way they themselves are running the show. If they are unhappy, they are doing it to themselves.