Public Educators Under Private Management: Black Teachers' Experiences in Quasi-Markets of School Choice and Competition

• In Event: Growing and Sustaining Black Teachers: Examining the Intersection of Identity, Professional Development, and School Context

Abstract

Positive school-working conditions—leadership/professional development, academic expectations, teacher relationships, and safety/order—have been found to significantly impact teacher turnover and student achievement (Kraft, Marinell, & Yee, 2016). Attention to working conditions is particularly important for maintaining a racially diverse teacher workforce, as research on the benefits of teacher diversity, including significant gains in academic outcomes for students of color (Dee, 2004; Egalite & Kisida, 2015; Grissom & Redding, 2016; Wright, 2015), are undermined by poor working conditions that lead to teacher turnover, particularly for teachers of color (ToCs; Ingersoll & May, 2011). In light of the salience of working conditions for ToCs, this paper draws attention to education reforms that have radically restructured organizational conditions in which many ToCs work, such as the creation of new schools operated by leaders from the private sector. In several cities across the country, district leaders have sought to dissolve centrally managed public schools, moving from a school system to a system of schools, such as a “portfolio model of management” (PMM) encompassing multiple providers with varying organizational practices (Bulkley, 2010). In PMMs, government contracts with private providers offer autonomy from district rules in exchange for accountability in hopes of fostering innovation and greater academic outcomes (Bulkley, 2010).

Research is unclear, however, about Black teachers’ sorting patterns and employment choices in a changing landscape of school governance. Critical analysts warn, moreover, that experimentation with PMMs has occurred primarily in cities serving sizeable populations of students of color and foster troubling patterns of disruption, such as “school closures, school takeovers/turnarounds, the expansion of charter schools/networks that serve as a replacement for democratically elected boards of education, and the wholesale firing of veteran teachers, most of whom are African American” (Anderson & Dixson, 2016, p. 366). Indeed a major consequence of educational restructuring has included the decline and displacement of Black teachers in large cities (Albert Shanker Institute, 2015; Anderson & Dixson, 2016; Buras, 2015); a noted paradox in light of prominent efforts to reduce racial parity gaps between students and teachers of color (Author, 2016b). Nonetheless, as PMMs expand via marketization of public schools, novice and developing educators of color will increasingly choose—or feel “chosen” (see Mary Pattillo’s (2016) ethnography with parents in Chicago’s school choice program)—to work in privately managed public schools.

As such, this paper uses qualitative interviews with 25 Black teachers who work in autonomous/semi-autonomous public schools, including charter, innovation, pilot, and virtual schools. An iterative analysis of themes from interviews are used to understand Black teachers’ professional opportunities and choices, their experiences and relationships with leaders, whether/how autonomy is distributed in new educational contexts as a dimension of working conditions, as well as the role of race in shaping issues of power and control in teachers’ negotiations of classroom practices. A critical study of these issues is significant to enhance retention efforts of ToCs and to broaden discussions about the de/re/professionalization of teachers in market-driven public schools.

Author

• Terrenda Corisa White, University of Colorado-Boulder