The Effect of Leadership on Teacher Retention and Attrition

• In Event: Roundtable Session 124
  In Roundtable Session: Teacher Retention in New York City Middle Schools: The Research Alliance for the New York City Schools’ Three-Year Study (2009-2012)

Abstract

Purpose

This paper delves deeply into our project’s finding, consistent with prior research, that leadership is a key—perhaps the key—organizational factor affecting teacher retention.

In recent years, NYCDOE principals and their school communities have gained increased decision-making power through the Children First initiative. Notions of public school “empowerment” are at the center of this reform. In light of the reform and prior research, we will take a distributed perspective, looking specifically at ways principals do and do not distribute leadership across a school, and the degree to which teachers feel empowered to assume leadership. We will then analyze the data to draw comparisons across our high and low turnover schools. This is particularly relevant given prior research (Ingersoll, 2003) demonstrating that high teacher control over an array of non-instructional decisions generated, in one large study, a teacher turnover rate of 1/25—whereas low teacher control over the same decisions resulted in a teacher turnover rate of 1/5.

Theoretical Framework

We draw on theories of distributed leadership (Author, 2004; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Spillane, 2006; Spillane & Diamond, 2007) and empowerment (Dee et al., 2002; Lichtenstein et al., 1991; Lightfoot, 1986).

Methods and Data Sources

We draw on the survey and case study data described in Paper #1. In addition to extensive interview and observation data relevant to our purpose, this paper draws specifically on the survey results for the case schools, utilizing the following scales: principal leadership; collective responsibility; and control over professional responsibilities.

Results

Preliminary analysis of the case data shows that the distribution of leadership plays a large, albeit complicated, role in teacher retention/attrition across the four schools.

The Brooklyn low turnover school principal explained that her leadership style has always been to continuously provide opportunities for leadership and decision-making to teachers; teachers at the school concurred. At the Bronx low turnover school, two teachers reporting in the fall that they planned to leave ultimately decided to remain at the school because they were given leadership roles. At the Bronx high turnover school, teachers stated they had plans to leave the school until they were placed on one particular team with greater freedom and more decision-making power. At the Brooklyn high turnover school, the school with the highest turnover of our case sites, teachers reported that they felt like they didn’t have a voice, there were minimal opportunities for leadership, and they were micro-managed.

Nonetheless, despite this reported and observed variation across schools, teachers uniformly reported low professional control when given a specific list of leadership decisions (on both the survey and in interviews), despite the NYCDOE “empowerment” language—with the highest turnover school reporting the lowest control. In an interesting narrative that will be explained in the paper, the high turnover Bronx school actually reported the highest degree of principal leadership on the survey.

Significance

This research will yield the beginnings of an empirical warrant for the sorts of decisions and control that administrators should distribute to teachers whom they hope to retain.

Authors

• Amy Millett Scallon, New York University

• Jennifer Goldstein, California State University - Fullerton