Frequently Asked Questions

Research demonstrates that school working conditions—time, teacher empowerment, school leadership, professional development, and facilities and resources—are critical to increasing student achievement and retaining teachers. This survey will provide you, your school and your district with information about the status of working conditions in your school and help guide state policy decision-making. This survey will help put educator experiences and perceptions at the center of local and state efforts to recruit and retain quality teachers.

How will the results be used?

At the state level, the Governor and the Governor’s Committee on Teacher Quality and Support will use the results to further their work in addressing issues important to supporting teachers and their primary task - educating students. Our hope is that this data will also be used at the local level for data-driven school improvement planning, faculty conversations and consideration of district and state policies and programs.

Is the survey anonymous?

Yes! The survey is anonymous. The only information that will be known is how many licensed professionals at each school completed a survey. But there is no way of knowing which survey responses belong to individual educators because the code needed to access the survey is not attached to an individual identity. The codes only identify which school a survey came from so perceptions of working conditions can be analyzed at the school level as well as at district and state levels.

Only researchers at the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ) will have access to these surveys. No one in the district or state will be able to view individual survey results with demographic information. This code has NOT been assigned to an individual educator; we will NOT know who they are.

Further, school and district reports will only be generated for schools and districts that have a response rate that is high enough to ensure anonymity of the respondents.

Who is the Center for Teaching Quality?

CTQ is an independent non-profit in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that works to ensure that all students have access to high quality teaching (www.teachingquality.org). CTQ has successfully completed similar surveys in six other states.