Public schools rely on local communities for voter and tax support. But are communities and educators in agreement about what really matters for America's current generation of students? In Teachers versus the Public, a cast of well-established education experts reveals what the public and teachers really think about school reform.In partnership with the Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance and the journal Education Next, the authors engineered a project to gather public opinion over the course of seven years. They analyzed the results of sample responses about contemporary school politics to discover just why the teacher-public divide is so apparent and so potentially deleterious to education advancement. Paul Peterson, Michael Henderson, and Martin West consider the rise of teachers unions and associations; further, they juxtapose union messages with teacher survey responses to verify if unions faithfully represent their members. They also carefully stratify the public respondents to evaluate if divisions exist not only between teachers and the public, but also between grouped respondents. Do parents' opinions differ from other members of the public?How do socioeconomic status and other social and political factors affect the public's position on local school support, charter schools, and accountability? And on the other side, just how widespread is teacher opposition to rigorous evaluations, teacher pension reform, merit pay, school vouchers, and other items on the reform agenda?Teachers versus the Public draws on a rich data set and shows that the teacher-public divide is not confined to issues presented in a national context. Even when the question is framed in terms of the respondent's own school district or community, a palpable teacher-public divide remains. These findings present a frightening picture of a fractious school reform landscape. Ultimately, the lack of consensus and surging opposition to change leads us to question if the public can truly rely on teacher power to promote common goals.
Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance, Harvard University. He is also editor-in-chief of Education Next and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is author or editor of numerous books, including Endangering Prosperity, A Global View of the American School, with Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (Brookings, 2013); The Education Gap: Vouchers and Urban Schools, with William G. Howell (Brookings, 2004 and 2006). He is coeditor (with Martin West) of No Child Left Behind? The Practice and Politics of School Accountability (Brookings, 2003).Michael Henderson is assistant professor in the Department of Political Science, University of Mississippi. Martin R. West is associate professor of education at the Harvard Graduate Schools of Education, deputy director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance, and nonresident senior fellow with the Brown Center on Education Policy, Brookings.
"Provocatively titled, Teachers versus the Public is an eye-opening book about the current state of education reform. While teachers tend to support the status quo, the public --especially as it becomes more informed about school performance --is increasingly looking for major changes. And major changes are what our schools will need if they are to succeed at effectively educating our children for the modern world." --Joel Klein, former chancellor, New York City Department of Education "For a generation, we have been inundated with evidence of schools across our great nation stagnating, while those in other nations speed ahead of us... Teachers versus the Public [shows that] common among Americans from all walks of life --conservative or liberal, rich or poor, young or old --is the recognition that for the sake of our country, and for the continuation of the American dream, our education system must improve. Yet, teachers' unions have long made it abundantly clear that their priorities are not focused on students. This in-depth report explores the minds of American teachers, their focus on educating students, and the minds of the general public, identifying the opportunities --and the challenges --for all those who seek to improve the education of the next generation." --Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, 1999-2007, chairman, Foundation for Excellence in Education "The immense value of Peterson, Henderson, and West's well-researched overview of our nation's attitude toward education issues is that it highlights the divide between the educators who teach in our American public schools and the general public who have a huge stake in how those schools teach our kids. Their findings underscore an urgent need for supporters of education reform to engage with teachers and work collaboratively toward our shared goal of a world-class public education system." --Michelle Rhee, former Chancellor, District of Columbia Public Schools "This scholarly book corrects and changes the political debate. The authors reveal that it is teachers themselves --not just their union representatives --who stand opposed to school reforms a majority of the public favors. In many ways this points to a much larger problem with improving our schools." --Eric A. Hanushek, Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University
