The 2006 Survey Results are In!

Research demonstrates that school working conditions—time, teacher empowerment, school leadership, professional development, and facilities—are critical to increasing student achievement and retaining teachers.

The significance of working conditions has led the Center for Teaching Quality to administer numerous statewide and pilot surveys in districts and states across the country over the last two years.

The first phase of the Arizona Teacher Working Conditions Survey is complete and the results are in. More than 70 percent of teachers and administrators in 19 districts completed the survey. Approximately 5,200 Arizona educators participated. This is the highest response rate of any working conditions pilot survey conducted to date.

Plans are underway to expand the reach of the survey statewide in 2007.

Preliminary results of the survey found over all working conditions are critical to keeping teachers in schools, teachers want effective leadership who make sustained efforts to address teacher concerns, and teachers need more preparation time and student time.

The findings represent the responses from every educator who completed the survey. The results from individual districts or schools with at least a 50 percent completion rate and five or more total respondents can also be viewed. Results for schools and districts under these thresholds cannot be viewed to ensure anonymity of the respondents.

More analysis will be done in July 2006 with a full presentation of the data to the Governor and her Committee on Teacher Quality and Support. Results correlated with student achievement will be available in the fall following the release of school performance analysis by federal and state education agencies.

Additional data will be given to each participating school or district for school improvement planning, faculty conversations and consideration of district and state policies and programs.

"This is a critical step in my goal to ensure Arizona educators are receiving the necessary tools to succeed and to create a thriving learning environment. I am pleased with the overwhelming response to this survey and will keep the results in mind as I continue efforts to improve Arizona’s education system."

-Governor Napolitano

A series of tools and resources will also help interested parties understand and respond to teacher working conditions. The Teacher Working Conditions Toolkit builds off the survey to provide research, recommendations and best practices for community members, teachers, principals, administrators and policymakers to act on the data and improve teacher working conditions. Conversations about this initiative are also ongoing in an emerging online community.