Part Two Of The MetLife Survey Of The American Teacher has just been released.

I posted earlier this month about Part One of the survey — see The Saddest School-Related Statistic I’ve Heard In Awhile….

I’m just going to share a couple of items from Part that stand-out for me. For further thoughts on the report, I’d encourage you to read Today’s Education News: Rife with Contradictions by Barnett Berry of the Center for Teaching Quality.

The first statistic that stood out for me was this one on connecting with parents:

Teachers and principals believe that the most important factors for improving student achievement are having adequate public funding and support, and involving parents. Nine in ten teachers and principals believe that having adequate public funding and support for education (92% of teachers and 96% of principals) and that strengthening ties among schools and parents (88% of teachers and 89% ofprincipals) are very important for improving student achievement.

It’s great to hear that there is that high of a belief in the power of connecting better with parents. One question, though, is do teachers and principals see parent engagement or parent involvement as the way to strengthen those ties (see Expert Advice about Parent Engagement: An Interview with Larry Ferlazzo to learn more about the difference between the two.

Here’s another potentially more disturbing part of the report:

A majority of teachers (58%) and principals (61%) strongly agree that their school does a good job of teaching students who are English Language Learners, particularly schools with at least two-thirds ELL students (75% of teachers and 77% of principals in higher ELL schools). However, from students’ point of view, schools are not doing as well. Only one-quarter of students (25%) strongly agree that their school does a good job of helping students who are learning to speak English.

That’s certainly a disconcerting difference between the teacher/principal view and the student view. However, the key to its importance — for me at least — is if that 25% is from all the students surveyed or just from those who are English Language Learners. If it’s from all the students, it’s not surprising that they, like many people, might share misconceptions about how quickly ELL’s are supposed to be able to develop proficiency in the language and might question what kind of teaching is going on.

However, if the answers to that question only come from ELL’s, then it’s an entirely different story, and I’d be just as concerned about that statistic as I was about the one I blogged about earlier this month.

I’ll try to get the answer to that question and post the response.

In the meantime, please feel free to leave your thoughts about the report in the comments section.