The Interactive Effects of Student Poverty and Teacher Empowerment on Commitment and Turnover

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 1
  In Roundtable Session: Efforts to Support Students From Low-Income Backgrounds

Abstract

We present two field studies that respectively explore organizational and contextual antecedents of teacher organizational commitment and voluntary turnover. Leveraging a cross-section of 141 schools, our first study finds that teacher empowerment weakens the negative effect of student poverty on organizational commitment. Our second field study, which leverages four years of longitudinal data in a single school district, reveals a similar pattern for voluntary teacher turnover: The positive association between student poverty and teacher turnover is weakened when teacher empowerment is high. Our results are broadly consistent with qualitative research by Simons and Johnson (2015), who suggest that participatory styles of leadership help educators accommodate the high levels of change, uncertainty, and complexity that typically characterize socio-economically disadvantaged schools.

Author

• John McCarthy, Rutgers University