Generic teacher classroom

A new Gallup survey of teachers and students found that both groups are having trouble feeling engaged in the classroom.

(MLive/Kalamazoo Gazette file photo)

LANSING -- A survey of more than 7,200 teachers across the country found that about 70 percent are not enthusiastic about their work, and one in eight surveyed were actively dissatisfied with their workplaces.

The survey, part of Gallup's "State of America's Schools" examination of both teacher and student attitudes, found that engagement drops across a teacher's first five years in the classroom. Teachers with between three and five years of experience reported the lowest levels of engagement, with only 28 percent saying they were enthusiastic and excited about their jobs.

"The problem is that when teachers are not fully engaged in their work, their students pay the price every day. Disengaged teachers are less likely to bring the energy, insights, and resilience that effective teaching requires to the classroom. They are less likely to build the kind of positive, caring relationships with their students that form the emotional core of the learning process," Gallup researchers wrote.

The lack of engagement among young teachers does improve with time, researchers found.

"Teachers’ overall engagement level begins to rise again as they move further along in their careers, perhaps adapting their expectations or developing their own strategies for overcoming some of the systemic barriers to engagement," researchers said in the study.

One potential cause of the lack of engagement is a feeling among teachers that their input is not valued by administrators, Gallup found, as teachers ranked last among 14 career groups interviewed about workplace engagement.

"In the absence of school leaders who build opportunities for collaboration among teachers and between teachers and administrators, many teachers feel isolated and disempowered. Increased use of high-stakes testing at the state and district levels may be exacerbating this problem by limiting teachers’ control over their own work," Gallup researchers wrote.

Teachers aren't the only ones having trouble feeling engaged in the classroom. Of the more than 600,000 students surveyed in the 2013 poll, only 55 percent of students in grades 5 through 12 reported feeling engaged in their studies, with older students feeling less engaged than elementary-age children.

Brian Smith is the statewide education and courts reporter for MLive. Email him at bsmith11@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.