Ensuring Well-Being and Positive Working Conditions
Teachers are the number one school-based factor when it comes to student achievement and learning. Supporting teacher well-being and positive working conditions is foundational to our work and mission.
Well-being encompasses how teachers feel and function in their jobs and their ability to develop a positive balance between their resources and challenges. It involves attitudes toward work accomplishments and social relationships. Whether teachers experience safe and supportive working conditions is linked to their well-being and motivation. Such conditions include compensation; adequate classroom management time for planning and collaborating; clean and functioning facilities and resources; and trust and mutual respect among colleagues, administrative leaders, students, and families.
WestEd supports teacher well-being and working conditions in multiple ways, including partnering with states and districts to expand the implementation of evidence-based induction, coaching, mentoring, and peer-learning opportunities for teachers, as well as designing ways for school systems to effectively learn from their teachers about their experiences and working conditions.
Discover how WestEd can help you enhance system and leadership capacity to support positive well-being for teachers.
Our Work in Action
Teacher Compensation: Busting the Myths and Generating Dialogue
WestEd launched the Teacher Compensation Initiative in November 2022 with a Washington, DC, roundtable of experts in policy, practice, and research who met to discuss education funding, teacher compensation, and teacher shortages. Listen to what they have to say.
In this recent WestEd brief, we outline five common myths about teacher compensation and provide the research that dispels these misunderstandings. With this resource in your toolkit, you can support constructive dialogue about teacher compensation and respond effectively to unfounded stereotypes or anecdotes.
In the Spotlight
Partnerships Supporting Early Career Teacher Retention in Arizona and Utah
REL West is launching two new multi-year partnerships in 2023 that are designed to support the retention of early career teachers.
The Maricopa County (AZ) Teacher Retention partnership will work to refine and study the use of teacher “stay interviews” as a strategy for districts in that county to learn more about teacher well-being and working conditions and provide needed supports.
The Utah Early Career Teacher Retention partnership with the Utah State Board of Education will engage a group of volunteering district HR directors to conduct local and regional root-cause analyses and then select and pilot relevant targeted evidence-based strategies to address attrition among early career teachers.
Facilitating Recommendations Related to Compensation for Educators and Staff in Delaware
In July 2022, the Delaware Department of Education convened a Public Education Compensation Committee (PECC) for the purpose of reviewing educator compensation and the state’s ability to compete with regional school districts, the state’s private business sector, and other governmental agencies. The committee’s goal is to develop recommendations related to compensation for all Delaware educators and other school employees.
WestEd expert facilitators and researchers, led by Senior Director of State Education Services Dr. Sarah J. Barzee, are supporting the management, facilitation, coordination, and data collection for the committee as well as the drafting of the recommendations report.