Individual adjustments for many and structural change for some: Teacher and school responses to classed out‐of‐school responsibilities

Abstract

Research on adolescent responsibilities outside of school rarely considers how schools and teachers mitigate the adverse consequences of those responsibilities on academic outcomes. We seek to understand when, and for whom, teachers and administrators accommodate students' out-ofschool commitments. Analysing 61 interviews with teachers and staff at five high schools that serve predominantly low-income students and survey responses from teachers across Wisconsin (N = 601), we find that staff identify responsibilities as connected to students' social class.Teacher responses to student responsibilities are largely individual and ad hoc, whilst administrators report accommodating students' paid work through structural changes.