PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Melinda and Bill gates, through their foundation are emphasizing the importance of teachers in educating kids. At Microsoft, they believe in giving their employees the best chances for success and making them accountable.

Their survey found that teachers don’t like no-support, low-expectation working conditions. They want more involvement with parents, engagement with school leaders and higher quality classroom materials.

Teachers want to be evaluated in a comprehensive way; 85% said that student growth should be a factor over the course of a year and 80% believe that tenure should be re-evaluated regularly — they want to be treated like professionals.

The research called Measures of Effective Teaching (MET), developed in cooperation with the AFT and NEA, has 3,000 teachers helping, who have volunteered to be videotaped, have experts score their tapes and students evaluate their teaching.

Read “Grading the Teachers,” in The Wall Street Journal. Its point is to reward teachers for success, not master’s degrees or seniority.

Reported By Dr. Marciene Mattleman, KYW Newsradio