Sustaining a Sense of Success: The Importance of Teacher Working Conditions During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• In Event: Educating in an Epidemic: The K–12 Response to COVID-19

Abstract

Objectives / Framework

Previous research has emphasized the importance of working conditions in schools, especially concerning its influence on teachers’ work. Researchers have consistently found that working conditions shape teacher satisfaction and student academic growth (Johnson, Kraft & Papay, 2012; Simon & Johnson, 2015). The extent to which a school is supportive of teachers and well-organized can significantly influence how effectively it pivots during times of change. The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools across the United States in April, upending traditional approaches to education, and forcing schools and teachers to pivot to fully remote instruction with virtually no warning or preparation time. This paper examines the challenges teachers faced while teaching remotely at the start of the pandemic and the role that working conditions played in supporting their sense of success in this period of rapid organizational change.

Data and Methods

Data for this study were obtained from two waves of a working conditions survey from the 2019-2020 school year (pre and during pandemic). 7,880 teachers working in 206 schools, across 10 districts and 5 charter networks in 9 states completed the survey with a response rate of 81%. For the spring administration of the survey, we used a pre-post retrospective survey design by asking teachers to answer items based on their experiences before the pandemic and to respond to additional questions specifically about teaching remotely during the pandemic. Together, these data allow us to conduct a range of descriptive analyses as well as to employ event study and value-added models to explore how teachers’ sense of success changed over time and the degree to which working conditions moderated these changes.

Findings

Our findings suggest that the sudden move to remote teaching created substantial challenges for teachers’ work and limited the degree to which students could engage in learning. Teachers at every career phase struggled with the shift to remote teaching. Our data provide further evidence that remote instruction limited the learning opportunities for many students and likely widened achievement gaps along racial and socioeconomic lines. Not surprisingly, 53% of teachers experienced a substantial drop in their self-reported sense of success during the pandemic relative to fall baseline levels and retrospective reports from the spring before schools closed. Simultaneously, schools’ efforts to support teachers appeared to matter. Our exploratory analyses suggest that schools with more supportive working conditions were more successful at helping their teachers maintain a sense of success during the pandemic.

Significance

Findings from this paper are relevant to both ongoing policy efforts to deliver high-quality educational opportunities to all students during the pandemic—and to the broader literature on the role of teachers’ working conditions. We draw on teachers’ perspectives about their students’ engagement during remote learning to add further evidence that school-building closures and the pandemic are likely to widen existing achievement gaps across racial and socioeconomic lines. We also inform future research by highlighting the importance of school working conditions as critical factors in educational interventions that necessitate organizational change.

Authors

• Matthew A. Kraft, Brown University

• Nicole S. Simon, City University of New York

• Melissa A Lyon, Brown University