Project CLEAR VOICE!

Mississippi school districts and the stakeholders and policymakers that help govern them created an important initiative to measure and respond to the impact that teaching conditions have on teacher attrition and student achievement. Project CLEAR Voice (Cultivate Learning Environments to Accelerate Recruitment and Retention) provided every licensed Mississippi educator the opportunity to positively impact the lives of Mississippi students, teachers, and administrators.

The anonymous online survey was conducted by the Department during a six-week period last year to give Mississippi educators the opportunity to help make positive improvements in teaching and learning conditions in their own schools and schools throughout the state. Over 25,000 educators, representing 67 percent of eligible respondents, completed the survey, which is a greater percentage than any other state that has conducted a similar statewide survey.

“ We wanted to hear the voice of our teachers," said Dr. Bounds. "Research has shown that the single most important factor in student achievement is the quality of the teacher in the classroom. We must ensure that we take the steps necessary to support them and help them be successful. Through Project: CLEAR Voice, we gained valuable feedback that will help us as we examine instructional, leadership, management and communication practices.”

– Dr. Hank Bounds, State Superintendent of Education

The Center for Teaching Quality, a non-profit research-based advocacy organization, worked closely with the Mississippi Teacher Center to assemble the results and to conduct statistical analyses of the relationships between teacher working conditions and student learning outcomes.

The 2007 Mississippi Teacher Working Conditions Survey reveals several important findings:

• Mississippi teachers believe that their schools are good places to work and learn.
• Administrators believe that teachers are central to decision-making and that they are empowered on many fronts, but teachers disagree. In fact, the gap between administrator and teacher perceptions of all working conditions is very large.
• Mississippi educators appear to be more involved in classroom-level decisions than in school-level ones.
• Elementary school educators, compared to their secondary school counterparts, are more positive about their teacher working conditions. Middle school teachers are least likely to be positive about their working conditions.
• School setting also appears to play a role in perceptions, as rural elementary and high school teachers are more likely than their more urban counterparts to be positive about their working conditions.

"The response rate that Mississippi received was incredible," said Eric Hirsch, former Executive Director of CTQ and a national expert on teaching conditions. "It demonstrates the level of dedication that Mississippi teachers have to the children in their classrooms. Offering teachers the opportunity to let their voices be heard on a statewide level also demonstrates the level of commitment that the state has to improving teaching and learning conditions and increasing student achievement."

The Mississippi Department of Education plans to utilize the findings of the survey in a number of ways, including providing the information to the Blue Ribbon Committee on Teacher Preparation and the Blue Ribbon Committee on Leadership Preparation. Schools and school districts in which at least 40 percent of eligible respondents participated received school and district level results. Many have already begun using the information to improve teaching and learning conditions.

Project: CLEAR Voice was sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant, SERVE, the Mississippi Department of Education, and the Mississippi Teacher Center.

Your Voice Counts!