The schools teachers choose

Abstract

One way to identify good schools is to look for the schools where teachers want to work. Jeremy Glazer interviewed teachers in one large urban school district who moved from hard-to-staff schools to some of the district’s most desirable schools, asking what motivated their moves and why the schools they sought out were attractive to them. These interviews offer three lessons that can help guide efforts to make more good schools for all our nation’s children.

Factors Related to Teacher Resilience during COVID-19

“…Teacher autonomy and job satisfaction were positively related to having the intention to remain at their school. These findings are consistent with previous literature that suggests that job satisfaction is related to teacher retention (Perrachione, Rossier, & Petersen, 2008), as is teacher autonomy (Glazer, 2020). By contrast, where Zamarro and colleagues (2022) did not find teachers who were of retirement age to be more likely to leave the classroom, this study did.…”

“…First, this would assume an even distribution of teacher attrition across contexts. Evidence suggests that urban and rural schools have greater difficulty attracting and retaining teachers (Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002;Maranto & Shuls, 2013), especially in areas with high levels of poverty (Borman & Maritza-Dowling, 2008;Glazer, 2020;Gross & DeArmond, 2010). Second, it assumes that there is a pool of quality teachers that are ready to take the place of the teachers that leave.…”

“…However, there are several reasons teachers leave that are related to the work they do in schools. Teachers have cited unsupportive administrators (Fuller, Pendola, & Young, 2018;Marshall, Varier, Hope, & Abrams, 2020b;Scallon, Bristol, & Esboldt, 2021), a lack of teacher autonomy (Glazer, 2020), district demands for improvement (Holmes, Parker, & Gibson, 2019), and poor compensation (Fuller et al, 2018) as reasons they have either left or considered leaving the profession. Overall, teachers listed reasons that had to do with the adults with whom they worked, not the students they taught.…”

Teacher Sense of Efficacy and Capturing the Initial Transition to Remote Instruction

“…Our survey included open-ended items, including one that asked teachers about the challenges they faced during this pivotal time. High-poverty schools have a more difficult time recruiting teachers (Lankford et al, 2002), face greater levels of teacher attrition (Borman & Maritza-Dowling, 2008; Glazer, 2020; Gross & DeArmond, 2010), and have more teachers teaching outside of their licensed subject area (Machtinger, 2007) than schools with lower concentrations of poverty. A lack of student access to internet, computing devices, and the resources to do school at home was a common challenge for students, and by extension their teachers, during the transition to remote instruction (Marshall et al, 2020).…”