How teachers spend their working time is a good indicator of the school system’s priorities. And the clear “winner” in consuming teacher time, unfortunately, is paperwork.

The UFT has long flagged this as a top concern: Teachers spend more out-of-classroom time filling out paperwork than they do collaborating or planning with each other, communicating with parents, attending staff meetings or monitoring the halls. According to the responses of teachers surveyed by the UFT late last year, between 35 and 44 percent of teachers, depending on school level, spend three or more hours a week on required paperwork. Six to 9 percent reported spending more than 10 hours a week on paperwork.

These tasks, which can be electronic as well as paper-based, include entering student data, providing evaluation-related documentation and record-keeping. Teachers also lamented the amount of time they had to spend on grading and data analysis.

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“My school has used our collaborative planning times to grade baseline assessments in social studies and science that will be used for the teacher evaluation of those subject teachers,” a middle school teacher wrote. “In addition, during our collaborative meetings, we must analyze data using a data access protocol for the majority of the meeting instead of using it to plan integrated curriculum.”

Paperwork is making deep cuts into nonschool time. “I have been a teacher for over 20 years. In the past three years, I have worked 70 hours a week to keep up with the paperwork,” wrote one elementary school teacher. “I spend time at home on unnecessary paperwork that I should be spending with my own children,” wrote another. “The amount of paperwork is ridiculous and needs to stop.”

Working extra hours

Teachers also reported that they are working many hours beyond the normal school day. Between 85 and 87 percent of teachers surveyed, depending on school level, said they spend three or more hours a week on school-related work during their off time (excluding per-session work).

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Half of high school teachers (51 percent) said they spent more than 10 hours a week on school-related work during nonschool hours; 42 percent of middle school teachers and 38 percent of elementary teachers said they do the same. This squares with a national 2012 finding by the Gates Foundation and Scholastic that the average teacher works 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, or 53 hours a week.

Queens middle school teacher Camille Rojas said she was just sitting down with a “stack of papers” when the UFT called to ask about her time. “They want everything you do written down,” she said.