Quantcast
Dini von Mueffling

Dini von Mueffling, Co-founder and Board Member
Co-founder and president of Love Heals, the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education, Dini is also a journalist and author, having most recently co-written The Art and Power of Being a Lady with Noelle Cleary.

The Blame Game

New York, July 17, 2007— According to a recent Public Agenda poll, 76% of teachers feel they have become "the scapegoats for all the problems facing education." In an informal online poll that took place May through July, 2007, visitors to TeachersCount.org were asked to identify which of the following reasons best explained the phenomenon:

  1. Teachers are the public face of education, so they are held responsible for bureaucratic decisions that are beyond their control.
  2. Parents do not want to take responsibility when their children do not excel, so they blame teachers.
  3. No Child Left Behind has—perhaps unfairly—made it the teachers' responsibility to produce high test scores. When the scores are not high enough, teachers are held responsible.
  4. Overall teacher quality has declined. Teachers can and should be blamed for problems in education.
  5. Teachers are not well respected in their communities because their salaries are not as high as those of other professionals.
  6. There has been a broad shift in public attitudes toward learning. Parents and students do not value education enough, and teachers make an easy target when the repercussions of this attitude are felt.
  7. Teachers are not generally being blamed for the problems in education. They merely think that they are because they are demoralized.
  8. Some combination of the above. (Please specify in comment box.)
  9. Other. (Please explain in comment box.)
  10. Don’t know.

In all, there were 218 responses, 173 of which came from educators. As it turns out, this complex question has a complex answer. The most popular answer, chosen by 26.6% of respondents, was “some combination of the above.” (See below for a sampling of responses.) A close second, however, chosen by 25.2% of respondents, was more specific: “There has been a broad shift in public attitudes towards learning. Parents and students do not value education enough, and teachers make an easy target when the repercussions of this attitude are felt.” A near-equal percentage of educators (24.9%) and non-educators (26.7%) selected this option.

The next most common response was “Parents do not want to take responsibility when their children do not excel, so they blame teachers.” An equal portion of educators and non-educators (15.6% of both groups) selected this option.

The NCLB explanation, with 13.8% of the responses came next: “No Child Left Behind has—perhaps unfairly—made it the teachers' responsibility to produce high test scores. When the scores are not high enough, teachers are held responsible.” This response was more popular with non-educators (17.8%) than educators (12.7%).

After that, with 9.2% of the responses, was “Teachers are the public face of education, so they are held responsible for bureaucratic decisions that are beyond their control.” 9.8% of educators and 6.7% of non-educators selected this response.

The remaining responses were chosen by very few people. The least popular choice, which was selected by only one person, was the one about an overall decline in teacher quality.

The poll invited participants to comment, and many of them did. Below is a sampling of comments arranged by response.

“There has been a broad shift in public attitudes toward learning. Parents and students do not value education enough, and teachers make an easy target when the repercussions of this attitude are felt.”
  • “I feel that many parents see education as a system to beat in order to get their kid to the next step (job, university, trade school).”
“Parents do not want to take responsibility when their children do not excel, so they blame teachers.”
  • “Parents also teach their children not to be accountable, so the students also blame the teachers when the teachers try to get them to accept responsibility for their learning. Additionally, administrators fear the actions of parents and the public and are mostly interested in good public relations for the school.”
“No Child Left Behind has—perhaps unfairly—made it the teachers' responsibility to produce high test scores. When the scores are not high enough, teachers are held responsible.”
  • “I feel that No Child Left Behind has forced us to become test coaches. We no longer have time to really teach. Everything is geared toward the state tests. We have taken the fun out of education. Our students are not taught thinking skills. They can't think past multiple choice and short answer. We need to go back to teaching. I understand that we as teachers need to be held accountable for what our students know, but I think No Child Left Behind actually hurt our students instead of helping them.”
“Some combination of the above.”
  • “I think it's a combination of most of the above statements. Teachers are an easy scapegoat for lack of funding and parental involvement. Test scores have become too important, shifting the focus from quality education to the ability to spout the answers.”
  • “It's a combination of NCLB, bureaucratic decisions beyond our control, and parental attitude.”
  • “Parents, students, and the education community are all accountable or responsible for the problems facing education. Teachers make an easy scapegoat because it is our jobs to "Teach" students. What people fail to realize is that students must want to learn, parents must value education enough to play an active role in their children's education, teachers must be dedicated, policymakers must be realistic in their bureaucratic decisions and the public must respect and value the teaching profession.”