Teacher-Powered Schools: Generating Lasting Impact through Common Sense Innovation

In this groundbreaking national opinion study, Education Evolving reports that 91 percent of Americans believe teachers should have greater influence over decisions that affect student learning, while 81 percent indicate they trust teachers to make “schools run better.”

Americans have expressed unprecedented support for teachers to have authority in making the decisions that drive student and whole-school success, including tailoring curriculum, conducting evaluations, and selecting colleagues, textbooks, technology, and budgetary priorities.

These are just a few key findings of this comprehensive research commissioned by Education Evolving, outlined in the report “Teacher-Powered Schools: Generating Lasting Impact through Common Sense Innovation.” In teacher-powered schools, teams of teachers work collaboratively as leaders and partners to make professional decisions about issues that matter most for their students, including selection and retention of personnel, evaluation, budget and resources, curriculum, and school-level policymaking.

A resounding 85 percent of Americans in this national survey indicated they believe teacher-powered schools are a good idea. More than half of the public reported they are “very interested” in seeing teachers explore this type of opportunity within their local schools and communities.

Top-line findings among teachers include:

· An overwhelming 78 percent of teachers say teacher-powered schools are a good idea.

· Fifty-four percent of teachers indicate they are “very interested” in working in a teacher-powered school.

· More than three quarters of teachers (76 percent) think at least some of their colleagues would also be interested in a teacher-powered arrangement.

· Among surveyed teachers, more “voice” in school-based decisions is identified as the single change that would most improve student learning, second only to increased parental involvement.

For more information on survey results and methodology, read the report.

Go to Resource

Displayed on

Learning about teacher-powered schools