Educators, in general, feel inadequately prepared for teaching the common core to students, but when it comes to teaching the more rigorous standards to their students who are still learning English, their confidence drops sharply, according to a new survey from the Education Week Research Center.
Fewer than 25 percent of teachers who were surveyed said that they are “prepared” or “well-prepared” to teach the new English/language arts and math standards to English-language learners.
The survey also found that very few teachers had received professional development that focused on helping them learn strategies to teach the common standards to ELLs or other groups of students, such as those with disabilities or who come from poor families.
The report——shows that only about half of teachers feel prepared to teach the standards, in spite of the rising numbers of educators who’ve been receiving common-core training. The results come from an online survey of registered Edweek.org users last October. The 457 teachers who provided responses are not a nationally representative mix, but provide a snapshot of a diverse group of educators from states that are implementing the common core.
My colleague, Catherine Gewertz, has . Overall, the survey is a pretty harsh indictment of the quality of professional development teachers believe they’ve received so far.