Education Week’s State of Teaching survey, part of our annual project, reveals that most teachers believe they are viewed negatively by the American public.
Feeling undervalued has the potential to affect teachers’ performance, job satisfaction, and ultimately, the quality of education children receive.
As one middle school teacher from North Dakota put it: “Teachers are overworked, underpaid, and disrespected. We deal with our most valuable part of our society, which is children. We are treated as if that does not matter.”
How would you describe the public’s view of teachers?
The findings come from a nationally representative survey of 1,498 teachers conducted by the EdWeek Research Center in October 2023.
How and why some teachers feel undervalued
This widespread perception coincides with multiple challenges in the education sector:
- Job satisfaction: Teachers report feeling more negatively than positively about their work.
- Generational shift: Most surveyed teachers wouldn’t want their own children to enter the profession.
- Practical hurdles: Increased workloads, insufficient resources, and too much professional development strain educators.
- Political pressure: Some teachers have altered lessons to avoid controversy and potential complaints.
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The public perception paradox
Matthew Kraft, a professor of education and economics at Brown University, suggests the gap between the public’s perception and teachers’ reality partly stems from the public’s limited perspective on teaching.
“I think that gap in perception comes in some ways from the familiarity everyone has with teachers’ work from a student perspective,” Kraft said. “We’ve all been in classrooms, we see teachers doing their work, but as students, it may appear on its surface like something many people would succeed in doing if they chose to.”
Kraft also noted a paradox in how people view education:
“When people rate the quality of public schools broadly, they give schools middling grades. But when they rate their own individual school, they give much higher ratings.”
This suggests that negative perceptions might be more influenced by broader narratives than by personal experiences with local schools and teachers.
Investing in teachers for the future
Kraft argues for a shift in perspective: “As a society, we’ve been too focused on trying to make sure that we can staff every classroom instead of asking, who do we want to be in front of students in every classroom?”
He advocates for policies and investments that would attract “the most highly qualified and most talented members of our society to invest in becoming teachers for the next generation.”
Bottom line: Addressing the negative perception of teachers requires more than just talk, says Kraft. Kraft emphasizes the need for structural changes in the profession, including improvements in pay and redefining the work of teaching.
“We’d like to talk about how we need to value and respect educators, but that doesn’t give us any actionable steps for what to do,” Kraft says.
Next steps: Bridging this perception gap and improving the status of the teaching profession remains a critical challenge for American society. A follow-up State of Teaching report in early 2025 will explore these issues at the state level.
