About Primary Sources

Objectives

The goal of Primary Sources is to place teachers’ voices at the center of the conversation on education by sharing their thoughts and opinions with policymakers, the media, the field of education and the public.

This year’s report seeks to:

• Showcase the daily work and challenges of teachers in an era of change and provide insights into their perspectives on their work, craft and students
• Explore teachers’ views on the Common Core State Standards
• Identify how teacher evaluations can be most helpful to teachers’ growth and practice as evaluation systems evolve
• Display how teachers seek to connect with peers, parents and communities to ensure student success

Background on Primary Sources

The Primary Sources series of reports is an ongoing dialogue with America's public school teachers on current issues in education. The first edition, which was fielded in 2009 and surveyed more than 40,000 teachers, is widely considered the largest-ever survey of America’s teachers. The following second and third editions were fielded in 2011 and 2013, respectively. The third survey asked 20,000 teachers their views on the many changes occurring in America’s classroom. Acknowledging the fast pace of these changes, the 2014 Update shows the impact of one year on teachers’ views on the Common Core State Standards. The previous editions, including state data, remain available for download.

Methodology, in brief

2013 Original Data: The findings of the third wave of Primary Sources are based on a national online survey conducted by Harrison Group, a YouGov company, among 20,157 PreK–12th grade public school classroom teachers. The survey was conducted between July 1 and July 22, 2013. The data were weighted to ensure alignment with their actual proportions in the population according to grade(s) taught, teacher gender, years of teaching experience and geography. The full methodologies are available when you download the full reports.

2014 Common Core Update: This Primary Sources update, fielded online by YouGov, includes teachers who participated in Primary Sources, Third Edition: America’s Teachers on Teaching in an Era of Change, which was fielded in July 2013. Teachers were once again contacted through Market Data Retrieval (MDR) and the study was conducted from July 1, 2014 through July 22, 2014; 1,676 pre-K–12 full-time public school classroom teachers completed the survey. All Common Core State Standards implementation states, plus the District of Columbia, are included in this research with the exception of Delaware. The states not included are Alaska, Nebraska, Virginia, Texas, South Carolina and Indiana. The sample is balanced on population characteristics including grade(s) taught, years of teaching experience, gender and urbanity, as was the case in each edition of Primary Sources. The survey invitation did not mention any content areas and the sample was monitored to ensure teachers who participated in this wave of the research were no more or less likely to have felt positively, negatively or neutrally toward the Common Core in 2013. The full methodologies are available when you download the full reports.