Membership Speaks Out On America's Public Schools And Solutions To The Challenges They Face [The Biggest Challenge Being Idiot Rheeformers]

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As students and teachers get back into the swing of the school year we had a little homework for our membership. To our delight, our members did not respond with a groan or an eye roll. More than 12,700 people completed our member survey, including 1,259 teachers.

We were thrilled that so many of our members took the time to give us their opinions and tell us how they'd like to be involved.

We are a grassroots membership organization that depends on your feedback and involvement. Your opinions are helping to set our priorities and shape our programs for the next year.

In our survey, we asked you to describe America's public education system in one word, and you can see from the responses represented in our word cloud below that our members believe there is a lot of improvement that can take place in our schools. On this point, there is strong agreement. Our work is far from done.

The size of the font corresponds to the popularity of the response.
But our members also so saw that there was hope. We know through research what works and what doesn't. We know that the quality of teachers in the classroom is the top factor in determining the success of a student. We know that some schools and districts are better than others at helping kids learn and closing the achievement gap. In fact, the two issues our members most wanted us to focus on to improve our schools are: 1) Increasing the number of quality public school options for families to choose from; and 2) Eliminating LIFO policies so that when layoffs are necessary, the most effective teachers stay.

Our members come together with a common goal of fixing the things that are broken within our school system so that every student has a great teacher and access to a great school. But our members come from a wide diversity of perspectives and backgrounds.

Of those members that responded to our survey, 21% were teachers, 50% were parents, and 4% were school administrators. Our members range from students in middle school to senior citizens, and they cover the political spectrum in terms of their beliefs and party affiliations.

To thank you, we randomly selected five members who completed our survey and awarded them Amazon.com gift cards. Our winners included: R. from Spokane, WA; Kristin, from; Yucaipa, CA; Natasha, from Mars Hill, ME; Lucy, from Canyon County, CA; and Ali, from New Orleans, LA.
Ali in New Orleans responded,

"That is fantastic news. Thank you very much. You always think no one wins these survey things … I will use this gift to purchase more books for my classroom library and maybe a book for myself as well."

Thanks again to everyone who participated.

If you have not yet taken our survey you can do so now here: http://studentsfirst.org/take-our-survey