Feeling Like Taking an OSPI Survey?

This is strange.  Here's the description of the survey currently being taken by OSPI:

Working conditions in schools are very important. 
The purpose of the Educator Working Conditions Survey is to gather input from educators, administrators, parents, and community members on the various factors that affect working conditions in schools. This includes parent and community involvement, leadership, professional learning, classroom support, and safety.

Data from this survey will be used to inform the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction as it creates the Washington State Equity Plan for the Department of Education. Your responses are important and we thank you in advance for taking the time to complete this survey. 

I appreciate that OSPI wants to create optimal working conditions for teachers.  But please, do take this survey and tell me what you think.

Because I was quite surprised to be asked what I think teachers think is most important to staying at a job.


In your opinion, which teaching conditions most affects a teacher’s willingness to continue teaching at a school?  Rank order which is of most importance to you. 
  • time during the work day
  • facilities and resources (school property and learning materials)
  • community support and involvement
  • managing student conduct (discipline and behavior)
  • teacher leadership
  • school leadership
  • professional development
  • instructional practices and support
  • safe environment (emotional/physical safety at school)
Then you, as a non-teacher, are asked your opinion on the same question but YOU decide the order of what is most important. 

The rest of the questions are mostly demographic.

I get that the public - as the people who pay the bills - have an opinion but it worries me that those opinions (based on what, I don't know) might have weight with how OSPI believes teachers should be working.

Comments

Eric M said…
My take? This is just OSPI dangling click-bait, to demonstrate to someone, anyone that they have a constituency that will take their surveys. Kinda like the recent SEA bargaining survey. The point is not to solicit opinions in order to do anything with the opinions, but just to show that at least a few people care enough about OSPI to do the stoopid survey. I recommend ignoring OSPI - they promote junk science testing and are not to be trusted.

Cynical? No, just a realist who's worked in the classroom for 30 years. OSPI hasn't done one useful thing for the people who actually do the work in classrooms. So yeah, don't encourage them.
4/8/15, 9:32 PM
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