WHAT THE POLLSTER SAYS: Student engagement starts with teacher engagement. And a recent Gallup report has some dire news: nearly 70% of K-12 teachers in the U.S. are "not engaged in their jobs," which it attributes to a "lack of autonomy and limited opportunities for collaboration."
Based on several Gallup surveys dating back to 2009 that include responses from hundreds of thousands of students and teachers, the report offers a look at the different factors influencing learning environments. One example includes a list of states where residents most and less frequently say teachers are well-respected.
With the subtitle "The Path to Winning Again in Education," the report clearly argues that school engagement and culture are indicative of academic achievement. Writes the authors:
One of the key findings is that students who strongly agreed that their school is committed to building students’ strengths and that they have a teacher who makes them excited about the future are almost 30 times as likely to be engaged learners as their peers who strongly disagreed with both statements.
But only one-third of 600,000 students in grades 5 to 12 were found to be "success ready," defined by Gallup as those who scored high on three measures: hope, engagement and well-being.
