(CN) — On one hand, most teachers are overworked and underpaid. On the other hand, many find the job rewarding and can’t help but use the word “love” when asked about it.
To better understand teachers’ experiences in and out of the classroom, the Pew Research Center surveyed 2,531 K-12 teachers last fall. The results, published Thursday, highlight pitfalls and opportunities for the profession.
“While teachers navigate through a variety of challenges, they actually don't feel that they are getting the reinforcements they need from parents,” observed Luona Lin, a Pew research associate. “We see that large majorities of teachers say that parents are doing too little in things like holding our children accountable if they misbehave in school, helping them with their schoolwork, or ensuring their attendance.”
Many teachers pointed to the pandemic for leaving a lasting negative impact on how parents interact with them.
Nearly 80% of teachers said parents don’t hold their own kids accountable for misbehaving in school. Nearly two-thirds of teachers also told researchers that parents aren’t helping their kids with homework or making sure they show up — two vital support roles as educators report more students becoming disengaged with school entirely.
Compared to the average U.S. worker, teachers are less satisfied with their jobs, as they face a host of challenges from staffing shortages to Covid-19 learning loss and curriculum caught in culture wars.
"We are sorely underpaid for the amount of hours we work and the education level we have attained," one elementary school teacher told Pew.
Another teacher said they were living paycheck to paycheck. A third confessed that "teaching is not a career where you can make a livable salary."
Only 15% of teachers polled said they get paid enough, and 84% said they don’t have enough time in the day to complete necessary work tasks like grading, lesson planning and answering emails.
Per 81% of teachers, the No. 1 reason they can’t complete all of their work before the end of the day is that they simply have too much work to do. In fact, only 2% of teachers polled said they didn't have too much work.
"The amount of extra hours that teachers have to put in beyond the contractual time is ridiculous,” one high school teacher told Pew.
“As far as ‘having summers off,’ most of August is taken up with preparing materials for the upcoming school year or attending three, four, seven days’ worth of unpaid development training.”
It follows that 54% of teachers said they find it difficult to achieve a work-life balance.
Nearly one-third of teachers polled said they plan to look for a new job next year. Of those who are polishing their resume, 40% said they want to leave education altogether.
Tellingly, more than half of teachers, 52%, said they would talk a young person out of joining the profession.
Facing a massive amount of work, about half of teachers still said they found the job fulfilling and enjoyable. More than 75% of teachers however describe the job as stressful and nearly 70% called the job overwhelming and their schools understaffed.
More than 80% of teachers said education has gotten worse over the last five years, and more than half expected the downward slide to continue. While only 5% of teachers said things had gotten better recently, 20% saw hope for the future.
On a related note, Pew surveyed 5,029 adults in November to find half of Americans said public K-12 education was "going in the wrong direction.” That number includes 65% of Republicans and 40% of Democrats.
Only 16% of Americans seemed to think education is improving.
Out of the adults surveyed, 55% of Democrats and 79% of Republicans thought schools should spend more time on core subjects like reading and math.
While half of Americans agreed that schools are underfunded, and half of Americans believe teachers are too political in the classroom, both of these averages bridge a wide political gulf: 33% of Republicans thought schools lack resources compared to 78% of Democrats, and 23% of Democrats thought teachers were too political compared to 76% of Republicans.
Given the opportunity to tell Americans anything about the job, one middle school teacher posed solutions: "If you want to see real change in the classroom, advocate for smaller class sizes for your child, push your district to cap class sizes at a reasonable level and have real, authentic conversations with your child’s teacher about what is going on in the classroom if you’re curious.”
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