It’s back-to-school time across the country. Here’s what public school teachers say about conditions at school

At Midvalley Elementary School in Midvale, Jen Stark was hard at work Monday organizing her third grade dual immersion classroom in anticipation of the academic year starting next week.

There’s “a buzz” at the start of each school year, she said, as educators meet with administrators and other faculty members and teachers peruse “our new list of friends we’re going to be with for the next 9½ months.”

Then there’s those familiar smells of a deeply cleaned school, construction paper, and fresh crayons and pencils.

“It’s always exciting. It’s stressful getting ready for all of it. But once they’re in the room with us, we get to teach and build a community. That’s the best part,” she said.

Just as in Midvale, students across the country are heading to school, most of them returning students but also others attending for the first time. There’s a mix of emotions among educators, students and their parents or guardians as summer break comes to an end and the school year begins.

For educators like Stark, there’s excitement but also the weight of challenges that can impact student learning.

According to the results of a national survey for Pew Research Center , teachers identified the three top challenges in America’s public schools: poverty, chronic absenteeism, and student anxiety and depression.

The national survey of 2,531 public K-12 teachers indicates poverty cuts across the urban-rural divide.

Sixty-two percent of teachers in urban schools and 60% in rural schools said poverty is a major problem for their students, while in suburban schools, 42% of educators said the same.

Chronic absenteeism , defined as students missing a substantial number of school days, is particularly challenging at high schools. The survey results revealed 61% of educators saying this is a major problem where they teach. For teachers at middle and elementary schools, fewer identified it as a major problem in their schools but those who perceive it that way totaled 46% among middle school educators and 43% of elementary school teachers.

When students at Canyons School District’s Midvalley Elementary School start to miss a lot of school, educators make home visits to tell parents how much their children are missed and to explain how chronic absences impact learning.

“A lot of times poverty goes along with that because there tend to be parents that both work or work multiple jobs. That kind of trumps getting kids to school sometimes,” she said.

“That’s hard. It’s one of the things we don’t have a lot of control over. We just keep trying to communicate and tell the kids we want them there and hope that those kids help the parents follow through and say, ‘We’re doing this fun thing at school. I really want to get there’ or ‘My teacher really misses me when I’m not there and I feel lost when I come.’ So we’re trying to have the kids be our ally in that, too,” Stark said.

According to the survey results, student mental health continues to be of great concern to teachers. Sixty-nine percent of high school teachers and 57% of middle school teachers say anxiety and depression are major problems among their students, as did 29% of elementary school teachers.

The survey results suggest lingering effects of the pandemic with respect to behavior and academic performance.

About 8 in 10 teachers said the lasting impact of the pandemic has been “very” or “somewhat” negative.

Nearly half — 49% of the teachers polled — say the behavior of their students is fair or poor. Thirty-five percent said it was good and 13% described it as very good or excellent.

Stark said student behavior is among her concerns as an educator. Midvalley Elementary has “really good systems in place, but I think post-COVID, there’s been behavior problems that have been hard. But we’re very fortunate to have two social workers, school psychologists and a principal and an assistant principal, so we have a lot of support. But that’s kind of one of the things on my radar.”

As for academic performance, 48% of educators said the academic performance of most of their students is fair or poor while a third said it was good and 17% described it as very good or excellent.

The survey results suggest teachers feel like they’re not getting the support or reinforcement they need from parents.

Seventy-nine percent of teachers said parents do too little to hold their children accountable for misbehaving in school. The survey also found 68% of teachers said parents didn’t do enough to help their children with schoolwork and 63% said parents did too little to ensure their children’s school attendance.

The survey, conducted Oct. 17-Nov. 14, 2023, and reported by Pew in April , found some good news.

Fewer educators view bullying as a major problem at their school. It was higher among middle school educators at 34%.

The margin of error for the full sample of teachers was plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.