Do you believe school teachers are one of your best links to what’s happening at school and with the progress of your child? So, when is the last time you’ve heard from them?
Parents, the reality is even before COVID19 you have less contact time with teachers than any time before. Today there are more official and unofficial rules preventing teachers from connecting with parents over educational progress, behavior and special needs. Then there is the active manipulation of teacher voice. In River Forest one administrator told community members teachers were “on board” with a switch to block scheduling at the middle school until a half dozen later spoke out publicly against the policy. In navigating back to school, River Forest teachers have taken to Facebook to increase transparency and share their voice on negotiations with administration. Don’t underestimate the significance of teachers speaking out publicly against policy pursued by their bosses. There seems a systemic quieting of teacher voice that’s occurring and thankfully one link that connects you is the Illinois 5 Essentials survey.
The survey is administered to students, parents and teachers and the 2020 survey was completed in February before COVID19 had a chance to infect our interpretation of results. Presented below is the voice of the teacher in River Forest and OPRF High School for the last three surveys which span some important changes in curriculum and instruction. Results for Oak Park District 97 schools are available online at https://www.5-essentials.org/illinois/5e/2020/ by typing in 60302 into the search box. See results for different years by substituting the desired year in the web address right after …/5e/.
Values (0-100) in tables are percentile ranking for the State of Illinois – higher is better.
