Survey: Teacher Job Satisfaction Hits a Low Point

This from Education Week

Teacher job satisfaction is at the lowest it's been in more than two decades, likely as a consequence—at least in part—of the economic downturn and resulting cuts to education budgets, according to a national survey.

Souring Attitudes

The smallest proportion of teachers since 1989 say they are "very satisfied" with teaching as a career.
SOURCE: The 2011 Metlife Survey of the American Teacher

The 28th annual MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, released today, finds that 44 percent of teachers are "very satisfied" with their jobs, down from 59 percent in 2009. The last time job satisfaction dipped as low was in 1989.

The report is based on telephone interviews of 1,001 U.S. public school teachers conducted last fall by Harris Interactive on behalf of MetLife Inc. (The MetLife Foundation provides funding to Education Week Teacher to support its capacity to engage teachers interactively in professional community.)

In another indication of declining morale, according to the report, 29 percent of teachers say they are likely to leave the teaching profession within the next five years—up from 17 percent in 2009.

Regis Shields, director of Education Resource Strategies in Watertown, Mass., called that finding one of the most intriguing in the report. "What we need more information on is who the 29 percent of teachers likely to leave the teaching profession are," she said. "If these aren’t effective teachers and this increases the effectiveness of the teaching force, that's great. If they're high-quality teachers, then we have some concerns."

The survey also suggests that teachers are increasingly anxious about holding onto their jobs. In 2006, just 8 percent of teachers said they did not feel their job was secure. That figure has more than quadrupled, according to the report—with 34 percent now saying they feel a lack of job security...

Only 35 percent of the teachers surveyed say their salary is fair for the work they do—a figure that has remained relatively stable over the years, according to Dana Markow, vice president of Youth & Education Research for Harris Interactive.

 

Planning for Departure

This chart shows the percentage of teachers, in selected years, 

who said they were very or fairly likely to leave the profession within the next five years.

SOURCE: The Metlife Survey of the American Teacher

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said that both budget cuts and the "demonization" of teachers—or so-called "teacher bashing"—by politicians and media figures have been major contributors to growing teacher dissatisfaction. "Some elected officials don’t know what to do, so they demonize teachers as a rational for why they're cutting budgets," she said...