Teachers’ control over teaching practices and influence on school policies

• Private school teachers are more likely than public school teachers to report having a lot of influence on several teaching practices and school policies.

For most teaching practices—selecting teaching techniques, evaluating and grading students, disciplining students, choosing course content and skills to teach, and selecting textbooks and materials—private school teachers were more likely than public school teachers to report having a lot of influence on school policymaking (table 7). (Public schools are often required to follow the decisions of state and/or district officials regarding curricular content and textbooks.) However, though differences between the sectors were found, some of these policies were common in both types of schools: more than 85 percent of teachers in public and private schools thought that they had a lot of control over selecting teaching techniques, evaluating and grading students, and determining homework quantity. Few differences were detected among the three private school types on most measures in table 7, but nonsectarian school teachers were more likely than Catholic or other religious school teachers to report having a lot of control over the content and skills to teach and selecting textbooks and materials.

In four areas of school policy linked closely with teaching—establishing curriculum, setting student performance standards, setting discipline policy, and evaluating teachers—the sector differences were substantial (table 8 and figure 5). For example, 68 percent of private school teachers said they had a lot of influence on establishing curriculum, compared with 44 percent of public school teachers. In addition, private school teachers were more likely than public school teachers to say that they had a lot of influence on setting student performance standards (63 versus 38 percent) and on student discipline policy (48 versus 30 percent). In contrast, no difference was detected between the two sectors for teachers’ reported influence on teacher hiring decisions (about 14 percent for each). In addition to hiring decisions, teachers in both sectors were unlikely to think they had a lot of influence on the content of inservice training, school budget decisions, or evaluating teachers. (However, the sectors did differ on these matters; for example, 19 percent of teachers in private schools versus 8 percent in public schools thought they had a lot of influence on teacher evaluation.)

Teachers in nonsectarian schools were more likely than Catholic or other religious school teachers to say they had a lot of influence on establishing curriculum, evaluating teachers, and hiring full-time teachers (table 8 and figure 6). In addition, nonsectarian school teachers were more likely than Catholic school teachers to report having a lot of influence on setting student performance standards and on deciding teachers’ inservice training content.