Independent Women’s new report, “Give Teachers a Break: Cutting Red Tape to Unleash the Potential of America’s Great Teachers,” shows the bureaucracy holding back American teachers from teaching and American students from thriving. Everyone loves the party game “Two Truths and a Lie.” Can you identify which of the three following statements about the teaching profession is a lie?
A. Teachers, as a whole, are not politically radical.
B. Deteriorating student behavior is the number one stressor for teachers.
C. Current teacher licensure requirements are effective in preparing teachers-in-training for the classroom.
A. TRUE! A 2017 Education Week survey found that a plurality of teachers describe themselves as moderate, with 29% identifying as either “liberal” or “very liberal” and 27% as “conservative” or “very conservative.”
B. TRUE! A 2024 RAND Corporation study found that student behavior was the number one cause of stress for teachers. Since the onset of the pandemic, in particular, student behavior has deteriorated across the country: Per an Education Week Research Center survey, 70% of teachers, principals, and district leaders in 2023 reported that student behavior had deteriorated since 2019. In 2024, the Pew Research Center found that nearly half of teachers overall, and the majority of teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools, are dissatisfied with student behavior, marking it as “fair” or “poor.”
Unfortunately, bad policy has stopped teachers from being able to discipline their students, even though a healthy discipline culture—in which good behavior is rewarded and bad behavior punished—would entail the best outcomes for students and teachers alike. As a former teacher told the education news site The 74, “[P]olicymakers have made it so [teachers] have no authority. Only perceived authority. Only as much power as you get your kids to believe. Once the kid finds out he can say ‘F*** you,’ flip over a table, and he won’t get suspended, that’s that.” When forced to tolerate such chaos, teachers are unable to teach, and the end result is that the right of well-behaved students to learn in school is trampled on by the actions of their chronically misbehaving peers, while good teachers get fed up—often to the point of leaving the profession.
C. LIE! Policymakers have often resorted to the idea that more credentialing requirements improve the quality of teachers, but there is little evidence to support such a conclusion. This became quite clear during the COVID pandemic, when various states experienced teacher shortages and were unable to run licensing exams, forcing them to allow emergency licensure. In Massachusetts and New Jersey, states with some of the highest-performing schools in the country, teachers certified under the emergency programs of the pandemic era were just as effective as their traditionally licensed counterparts.
To learn more about these and other problems facing teachers today—and how policymakers can fix them—read the full report HERE.