Albemarle teachers overused, survey says

Nearly a quarter of teachers who responded to a survey recently conducted by the Albemarle Education Association reported working 60 or more hours per week. And two-thirds said that they do not have enough time in the week to complete the tasks that are expected of them.

Seventy-one percent reported high levels of employment-related stress and 92 percent said they do not feel adequately compensated for the work they do.

“Teaching is an overworked, underpaid profession,” said Steve Gissendanner, the president of the AEA and a fifth-grade teacher at Woodbrook Elementary School. “The amazing thing is that teachers do it. Teachers don’t go home at 4 p.m. We stay until the job is done.”

The county school system budget approved for the coming year includes an average 4 percent raise for teachers. The starting salary for a rookie teacher with a bachelor’s degree will be $41,947 and a 30-year veteran with a bachelor’s degree will earn $62,954.

Albemarle County employs a little more than 1,000 teachers. According to Gissendanner, about two-thirds of teachers in the county are members of the AEA, although that number fluctuates between 50 percent and 70 percent.

Fifty-one percent of AEA’s membership responded to the survey, which was sent out via e-mail.

Gissendanner hopes that the survey results will raise awareness in the community of the challenges that teachers face on a daily basis and help teachers make the case for improved pay, benefits and working conditions.

According to the survey, the greatest source of pressure for teachers is the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which enacted a strict system of accountability for schools, based on performance on standardized testing in reading and math.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents cited No Child as the source of a great deal of pressure and 24 percent reported feeling moderate pressure because of NCLB.

Many teachers say that No Child has increased their workload and that the culture of standardized testing imposed by NCLB has hurt the educational process.

“The tests we are forced to give and have students pass have taken on a life of their own,” one teacher wrote. “They are overshadowing the joy of teaching and students’ learning. I fear in the end they will drive out good teachers and make students less likely to love learning for its own sake. Administrators are under too much ‘score pressure,’ which filters down to teachers.”

Another teacher wrote that standardized testing has “sucked” the creativity out of teaching and the excitement out of learning.

“Our students are reduced to SOL statistics, and learning reduced to multiple-choice scantron marks,” the teacher wrote. “Leadership’s vision creates a drone-like workforce slavishly tied to reportable numbers. That is not what education should or can be.”

More than two-thirds of respondents felt moderate or great pressure from the division’s central administration.

Some respondents criticized central administration for creating too many new initiatives for teachers to implement.

“Every year, the expectations of teachers to participate in or to create new means of teaching, assessing, and evaluating ourselves seems to grow without any growth in compensation or any removal of the traditional responsibilities of teaching,” a teacher wrote.

Despite the challenges of the job, teachers continue to do it because they enjoy teaching and believe in the importance of what they are doing, Gissendanner said.

The results of the survey have been shared with Superintendent Pam Moran and the School Board.

“In this day and age, with standards and accountability, teachers are facing more pressure than at any other time in the history of education,” said assistant superintendent Bruce Benson. “We need to make sure that we do everything we can do to ensure that teachers have the resources and time to do their job, which is helping students achieve at the highest levels.”

School Board Chairman Brian Wheeler echoed that sentiment.

“This survey quantifies a number of concerns that I have heard anecdotally from teachers,” Wheeler said. “We are asking our teachers to do more than ever. It’s a balancing act because we are held accountable for performance.”

Wheeler added that the School Board and superintendent have created several means in recent years to solicit feedback from teachers.

An online survey tool has been made available through which teachers can assess administrators. Teachers have also been invited to School Board work sessions and Wheeler meets quarterly with Gissendanner.

One way that teacher stress could be lessened, Gissendanner suggests, would be if teachers were provided with secretarial support for tasks such as inputting grades. Gissendanner said that he spends about half an hour each day tallying grades.