Friedman Foundation Study on Private vs Public School Teacher Satisfaction

One of the things we have noticed in recruiting people to teach is that there is a definite shift right now in the United States with people are taking a good hard look at their chosen profession. People want to do things that matter and have feel good about their work. People attending our "Become a Teacher" workshops are telling us that without job security, which no one has today, they want a job where they can make a difference and have real job satisfaction.

It appears that if you ask teachers, private schools give them the greatest opportunity to make that difference and enjoy their work. There is a new study out from The Friedman Foundation that looks at the data from the national survey of teachers and found some striking, yet not surprising, differences in private school and public school teacher opinions.

Some of the highlights –
• 62% of private school teachers want to remain teaching as long as they are able compared to 44% in public schools
• 60% of private school teachers have control of selecting content, topics and skills taught in the classroom compared to 36% in public schools
• 28% of public school teachers strongly agree that routine duties and paperwork interfere with their job compared to just 9% of private school teachers

One of the more interesting highlights is that “although salaries are higher in public schools, private schoolteachers are more likely to be satisfied with their salaries (51
percent v. 46 percent).”

Huh - job satisfaction trumps money. You can read the whole study here.