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And our critics always ask, “How do you know?”

We know because we are you. The teachers and the union are one and the same.

That’s why when we recently conducted a survey of UFT members about working conditions in the schools, the answers we received reflected what we have long known to be true.

Now, with the survey results, we are armed with the statistical data we need to silence our critics.

Our working conditions are unacceptable, and the results of our survey make that clear.

More than one quarter of survey respondents said that they intend to leave our city’s schools within the next three years. Seventy percent said that they had recently seriously considered leaving the profession altogether.

The respondents’ comments on why teachers are leaving could have come from any of us, in any school in our school system.

One elementary special education teacher wrote that the tone in our schools is “tense and grim.”

“Teachers are being set up to fail,” the teacher wrote.

“Teaching isn’t fun anymore!” another exclaimed. “There is no respect for teachers. It’s sad that I used to love teaching and now I don’t.”

And yet another said: “I love to teach but I deplore the state of the profession. The morale of teachers is at an all-time low. I have six years until retirement. This should be the apex of my career. Instead it is the low point.”

On paperwork, the survey confirmed what we have known all along: We are spending more time at work filling out unnecessary paperwork than we are collaborating with colleagues or planning our lessons.

As a result, our work is increasingly spilling over into our off time. More than half of all high school teachers, 42 percent of middle school teachers and 38 percent of elementary school teachers reported spending more than 10 hours per week on school-related work after school hours.

“There is no way that we can do all that is expected of us in a 24-hour day,” one teacher wrote.

The paperwork is so onerous, wrote another, that “when someone tells me they want to go into teaching I tell them not to.”

The botched Common Core rollout is another cause of persistent problems. Its consequences are still being felt in our schools today.

Months after we first sounded the alarm, half of us still do not have the curricula, materials or technology we need in order to teach to the new standards. Others have received materials that are not age-appropriate, or they are working under administrators who have implemented the new standards incorrectly.

The negative impact on our children is unacceptable.

“The Common Core’s trickle-down effect is making my kindergarten students and their parents believe they’re not smart or capable when in fact they’re being required to do things that are not developmentally appropriate for their age,” one teacher observed.

“Children are developing stomach problems, tics, anxiety and stutters,” another wrote.

Perhaps worst of all, even our youngest children are losing their natural love for learning.

“Kindergartners are telling me they hate school,” another teacher said. “They’re crying because they want to go home.”

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We also identified in our survey the solutions to these problems — the same solutions we have always fought for. None of them are new ideas: community schools, universal pre-K, social and emotional learning and smaller class sizes.

With a new administration in office, we now have a chance to make these ideas the reality in New York City’s schools.

For those who took the time to answer our survey, I cannot thank you enough. You have armed us with the statistics we need so that the next time our critics say, “How do you know?” we can reply, “We know because we are the teachers, but if you need data, here it is.”