Center for Education Policy Conducts Poll Finding Teachers Concerned Over Public K–12 Direction

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As students across the Bay State return to the classroom, 77% of Massachusetts’ K-12 teachers say public education in the United States is on the wrong track, according to the results of the new Annual Massachusetts Educator Survey (AMES).

Conducted throughout the summer by the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in conjunction with the UMass Amherst Poll, the AMES asked nearly 1,200 public K-12 teachers across the state about issues facing education, challenges in the classroom, how they view the job of educating Massachusetts students, and the direction of public education in the country, state and the teachers’ own districts. Just 6% of the survey’s respondents said public education is headed in the right direction nationally, although opinions did become more positive as the focus became more localized.

“This is obviously not good news,” says Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor of Education at UMass Amherst and director of the Center for Education Policy. “More than three-quarters of Massachusetts teachers believe that education in the U.S. is generally headed in the wrong direction. That finding is in keeping with national polling, in which teachers have expressed strong concerns about private school voucher programs, rollbacks of protections for historically underserved students, and efforts to ban books or limit what can be taught.

“The picture here in Massachusetts is better,” Schneider continues. When it comes to the direction of education in the Bay State, 45% of teachers say the state is on the wrong track. But, as Schneider observes, “we shouldn’t be patting ourselves on the back—only 35% of teachers say that we’re headed in the right direction here in Massachusetts. So, although we may be insulated from some of the most alarming national trends, teachers are telling us that we need to be paying attention to public schooling here in the commonwealth.”

The numbers improve slightly more at the local level, as 38% say their own districts are on the right track, while 43% say they’re headed in the wrong direction.

Looking within the demographics of the respondents, educators of color were more likely to say that public education nationally is on the wrong track (84%), while teachers aged 50 or older were more likely to view public education in the state (52%) and locally within their districts (51%) as headed in the wrong direction.

Assessments of their teaching jobs: Enjoyable and fulfilling… but not sustainable

The AMES asked teachers to give assessments of the actual job of teaching the commonwealth’s children by rating their experiences in the profession.

“Three-quarters (75%) of teachers find their jobs enjoyable and an even larger percentage (84%) find their jobs fulfilling,” Schneider reports. “This is really good news—it gives us a lot to build on, especially when you pair these findings with the wide range of student strengths that teachers recognize. But, we can’t lose sight of the fact that teachers are telling us loudly and clearly that things are not ok.

“An overwhelming majority is telling us that they like the work and that they find it meaningful. But, nearly half (42%) said that they don’t find it sustainable,” Schneider warns. “At a time when we’re seeing the work become more difficult, we need to be doing everything we can to make teaching a career that people want to stay in.”

Underreported issues and obstacles to success in the classroom

The AMES asked the teachers to select the top educational issues they believe deserve more attention, and working conditions, school funding and violence in the classroom topped the list. Although a focus politically over the last decade, “teaching about contentious issues” was the least-selected issue.

When asked about the greatest obstacles to their success in the classroom, 6 in 10 teachers reported student disinterest and just over half (51%) reported unclear standards over student behavior and discipline as the toughest challenges they face.

“Some topics, like the impact of artificial intelligence or the use of cell phones, are getting enough attention,” Schneider says. “Teachers are concerned about those topics, but they want to see more news coverage of their working conditions. They want parents and taxpayers to know that they are facing major classroom challenges, like low levels of student motivation, absenteeism, unclear norms around student behavior and student distraction. And nearly half of teachers (45%) say they just don’t have enough time to do their jobs. This is concerning and we need to be taking action on this front.”

The teachers surveyed were also asked about specific challenges within their classrooms. Although they were broadly in agreement, different groups of teachers placed different emphasis on the issues.

Nearly 8 in 10 teachers (79%) report that insufficient preparation by students is a problem in their classroom, with 90% of teachers of color and 89% of men agreeing with this sentiment—markedly higher than white teachers (76%) and women (75%). Educators of color were also more likely to view bullying as a problem in their classrooms (63%) than their white colleagues (51%).

Student strengths and MCAS graduation standards

The survey provided teachers the ability to provide open-ended descriptions of their students’ greatest strengths. Roughly 1 in 3 educators (34%) praised students’ curiosity, engagement, and desire to learn, while students’ kindness and empathy, as well as their resilience, perseverance and adaptability also drew the teachers’ admiration.

“It’s clear that teachers value the relationships they have with their students and have real appreciation for them,” Schneider says. “Even though teachers identify a range of issues complicating their work, they see tremendous strengths in their students. Massachusetts teachers describe their students as curious, creative, and kind, as well being accepting of classmates across differences. They also point to resilience in students facing poverty, displacement, and instability outside of the classroom.”

In regard to the seemingly never-ending debate over the best way to assess student and teacher success in the classroom, Schneider says the AMES sheds light on teachers’ views of the new graduation competencies recommended by the governor’s statewide commission in response to ending MCAS requirements.

“When voters went to the polls in 2024, they opted to remove the requirement that high school students pass MCAS in order to graduate. They were essentially saying that they didn’t want to see students denied diplomas solely on the basis of a standardized test,” Schneider says. “But, the law still requires that students demonstrate competency before graduation, and a statewide commission established by the governor has been working on a replacement. Their recommendations, released last spring, include four components: common statewide curricular requirements, state-designed ‘end-of-course assessments’ (think of these as state-run final exams), mandatory postsecondary planning through MyCAP, and then either a capstone project or portfolio of work.

“We asked teachers what they think of each of these components, and generally they’re in favor…of three,” he explains. “More than half of teachers ranked universal adoption of the MassCore curriculum, student engagement with MyCAP activities, and adoption of capstones or portfolios as their top choice or second choice as a competency determinant. None of those options was ranked last more than 18% of the time. State-run final exams, on the other hand, were not popular. Half of survey respondents ranked this as the worst option, and fewer than one-third put it in their top two. Teachers, in other words, aren’t opposed to new standards, but they aren’t supportive of the state’s proposed end-of-course tests.”

About the AMES

“For decades, teachers outside the commonwealth have been regularly surveyed about their classroom experiences, their schools and their views of the teaching profession. Yet Massachusetts has lacked a comparable, ongoing survey of its public school educators,” explains Tatishe Nteta, provost professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the UMass Poll, which is regularly cited around the world for its national and regional polling results. “This gap has limited our understanding of educators’ working conditions, the resources available to them, and their perspectives on the future of education in the commonwealth. In partnership with the Center for Education Policy, the UMass Poll developed the Annual Massachusetts Educator Survey to fill this gap and provide educators, policymakers and other key stakeholders with high-quality data about what is working well in our public schools and where improvements are needed from the perspective of the state’s teachers. The results of this project will provide an important new resource for understanding the experiences and perspectives of Massachusetts educators and informing the future of public education in the commonwealth.”

Nteta adds that for the past two years, the Center for Education Policy and UMass Poll have worked closely with the Massachusetts Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Association of School Committees, the Massachusetts Parent and Teacher Association, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, Teach Plus Massachusetts, and Phi Delta Kappa International to ensure that the survey reflects the experiences and perspectives of the commonwealth’s teachers.

“Understanding what’s going on in far-flung elementary and secondary schools throughout the commonwealth is a real challenge,” says Jesse Rhodes, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and co-director of the UMass Poll. “Schools are complex institutions that engage students, teachers, administrators, parents and communities. To date, Massachusetts residents have lacked rigorous information about the beliefs, perceptions and attitudes of a key education stakeholder—public school educators. The Annual Massachusetts Educator Survey uses a representative sample and rigorous survey methods to surface these perspectives for the first time. The AMES provides fresh insight into educators’ views on a wide range of pressing issues in K-12 education in the commonwealth, helping to advance public deliberation about how to strengthen the state’s elementary and secondary schools.”

“Because participation in the AMES differed across demographic and geographic groups relative to the overall teacher population of Massachusetts, survey responses are weighted so that the demographic composition of the final sample aligns with the characteristics of the teacher population,” explains Carey Stapleton, lecturer in the Data Analytics and Computational Social Science program at UMass Amherst. “In this survey, weights are included to match the sample distribution with the actual population of Massachusetts teachers across gender identity, race/ethnicity, age, area of the state, and grade level taught. This adjustment gives relatively greater influence to respondents from groups that are underrepresented in the survey and relatively less influence to respondents from groups that are overrepresented. As a result, estimates based on the weighted data better reflect the characteristics of the overall teacher population and reduce the potential for differences in survey participation across these groups to influence the findings.”

The Annual Massachusetts Educator Survey was conducted June 2-Aug. 24, with a sample of 1,179 Massachusetts public K-12 educators. The margin of error of the survey is 2.9%.

Topline results and crosstabs from the survey are available at UMass.edu/Poll. This story was originally published by the UMass Amherst News Office.