A Fascinating survey of the demographics and beliefs of US school teachers, from the National Center for Education Information.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

K-12 public school teachers in the United States are amazingly similar over time. They constitute a unique profession that has self-propagated itself for at least the last half century. But, due to an influx of individuals from non-traditional backgrounds entering teaching through non-traditional preparation programs, the teaching force may be changing.

One-third of first-time public school teachers hired since 2005 entered the profession through an alternative program other than a college campus-based teacher education program.

The findings throughout this survey illustrate striking differences between this non-traditional population of new teachers and teachers who enter teaching through undergraduate and graduate college campus-based teacher education programs, especially in attitudes concerning current proposed school reform measures and ways to strengthen teaching as a profession, such as:

Getting rid of tenure for teachers
Performance-based pay
Market-driven teacher pay – paying teachers more to teach in high needs schools and high demand subjects
Recruiting individuals from other careers into teaching and school administration
Using student achievement to evaluate teacher effectiveness

The findings also show amazing similarities among all teachers surveyed, regardless of their backgrounds, how they prepared to teach, their age, how long they’ve been teaching and other variables we analyzed the data by. Public school teachers surveyed:

Strongly support getting rid of incompetent teachers regardless of seniority
Are generally satisfied with their jobs and various aspects of teaching
Think they are competent to teach
Rate their teacher preparation programs highly
Consider the same things as valuable in developing competence to teach – their own teaching experiences and working with other teachers/colleagues top the list
Plan to be teaching K-12 five years from now

PROFILE OF TEACHERS IN THE U.S. 2011

Wow.

An exclusive 5 On Your Side investigation has uncovered a money trail of Ohio tax dollars leading overseas that paid for illegal immigration fees and expenses associated with charter schools across the state.

Our investigation also reveals that the U.S. Department of Labor is investigating one charter school located in Cleveland for its use of so-called "H1-B visas" issued by the U.S. government for "highly trained" employees to work in the United States.

An extensive review of financial audits uncovered that in one case, the cash was finding its way to Istanbul, Turkey, where nearly $600,000 is winding up paying for monthly rent for a charter school back in Dayton.

In another case, thousands of tax dollars were paid for immigration and legal fees that auditors found were illegal.

In some instances, auditors found cash went to individuals who were never employed at any of the schools.