The Relationship Between Teachers’ Socioeconomic Status and Their Turnover: A Study of Beginning Teachers in Urban Schools

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 4:55 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Quantitative Approaches in Educational Research and Measurement (Table 31)

Abstract

This article presents an investigation of the understudied relationship between teacher socioeconomic status (SES) and retention. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction and longitudinal data from 379 mathematics teachers, we use logistic regression to examine whether teacher SES, conceptualized and measured in terms of their economic, social, and cultural capital, is associated with their teaching retention at five years. We find that certain measures of economic, cultural, and social capital are associated with the teacher retention and that this is independent of teacher race. The results indicate that a continued examination of the relationship between teacher SES and retention would help to advance the field. =

Authors

• Andrew M. Brantlinger, University of Maryland

• Ashley Anne Grant, Johns Hopkins University