Teachers call for more order

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 1996

Restoring order in public schools is a top priority of the nation's teachers, according to a study, Given the Circumstances: Teachers Talk About Public Education Today and the general public agrees. Both support similar solutions, including school policies that focus on persistent troublemakers in the classroom. While the majority of teachers downplay the threat of violence in their schools, they go beyond the public in their approval of a proposal to ban students caught with weapons or drugs.

Teachers and the public tend to agree on what should be taught, especially basic academic and computer skills. They share skepticism over heterogeneous grouping and the early use of calculators by students, proposals strongly favored by reformers in many communities.

They part company, however, when rating the performance of their local schools. Teachers feel public schools should receive high marks. They also believe, unlike the general public, that their local public schools outperform private schools in key areas such as providing students with better preparation for college and higher academic standards. Asked to compare public to private schools in 13 categories, teachers rate public school performance as better than or equal to private schools in eight of them. The public, on the other hand, feels public schools outperform private in just two areas.

"It is not surprising that teachers and the public seem to assess the performance of public schools through very different lenses," says Deborah Wadsworth, executive director of the Public Education Foundation, which conducted the study. "Teachers talk about families in turmoil, schools and communities with inadequate resources, contentious school boards, and top-heavy education bureaucracies. In their view, they're doing a good job given tough circumstances."

Teachers do not seem to share the sense of urgency the public and community leaders feel about the issue of higher standards. They regard inadequate funding, overcrowded classrooms, and disorder as far more pressing problems. While 65% of community leaders and 47% of the public believe "a high school diploma is no guarantee that the typical student has learned the basics," just 31% of teachers agree.

"Education reformers and policy-makers who consider higher academic standards a centerpiece of their movement should not count on teachers to be a driving force," Wadsworth indicates. "It may be that the academic energies of even the most motivated teachers are sapped by what they consider to be the stressful day-to-day demands of the classroom. From the teachers' perspective, order and civility, not higher standards, provide the infrastructure that good teaching builds on."