Educators of Color in Urban Charter Schools: The Sociocultural Dimensions of Working Conditions and Teacher Turnover

• In Event: 73.046 - School Working Conditions and Teacher Turnover: Implications for Diversifying the Teacher Workforce

Abstract

In keeping with research that reframes teacher turnover as intrinsic to school context (Simon & Johnson, forthcoming), as well as research that teases out meaningful differences in working conditions between differently organized schools such as charter schools and traditional public schools (Ni, 2012), I share in this paper qualitative data related to teacher turnover from interviews with 28 racially diverse teachers across four high-poverty charter schools in NYC between 2011-2013. The paper also includes analysis of interviews with 12 Black and Latino teachers from alternative teacher education programs (Teach For America and Relay) who were preparing to teach in high-poverty schools, including charter schools, between 2002-2009. Among the first group of teachers, turnover was fairly high, as 13 of the 28 teachers “shuffled” from school to school at least once in the previous three years (46%), and six of which were no longer classroom teachers by the end of the 2013 school year (21%). Among the 12 educators in the alternative program, although teacher turnover was expected in light of the program's short-term structure, 3 of the 12 teachers dropped out of the training program in the first year, after induction and in the early months of teacher placement (25%).

While the two sets of data are seemingly distinct, common reasons for turnover emerged among educators of color in both groups who expressed dissatisfaction with school and program culture that relied exclusively on data-oriented competition goals, technocratic perspectives of teaching and learning, and which fostered a perceived insensitivity to cultural differences between program directors, school managers, and urban school-communities. These perspectives shaped moral and dispositional conflicts over “right” and “wrong” ways to teach, and culminated in moments of dissonance whereby teachers described feeling like “misfits” before deciding to leave their program or school. Interviews with educators of color allowed for more in-depth understanding of how school culture is often intertwined with other dimensions of school conditions such as leadership and collegiality (Simon & Johnson, forthcoming). For participants in charter schools, moreover, organizational characteristics that differed between charter schools emerged as a factor shaping teacher turnover. These characteristics, which included managerial differences between network-affiliated and ‘independent’ charter schools, shaped differences in teacher collegiality, autonomy, and the degree to which market competition and data-driven rationales dominated teaching and learning goals. While all charter schools faced similar market and accountability pressures, teachers’ expressions of dissonance differed across differently managed charter schools.

Findings in this paper validate results in literature on the significance of moral dispositions in teacher satisfaction (Santoro, 2011), and are in keeping with research on how dispositions are enacted by school contexts, influencing the professional identities of teachers in ways that can lead to teacher turnover (Diaz and Murrell, 2011). Yet this paper frames these issues as a fundamental aspect of school working conditions and the organizational characteristics of charter schools in particular.

Author

• Terrenda Corisa White, University of Colorado-Boulder