C HAPTER 6: S CHOOL C OMMUNITY
W HAT
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EXPLAINS THESE TURNOVER PATTERNS ?
Teachers want to know that they are making a difference with students, and they have to believe that making this difference is within their power. Clearly, students’ socioeconomic status, race, and culture are not characteristics that teachers can control, but teachers can choose how to respond to them. The previous section identified the student characteristics that are associated with teacher turnover, and this section reports on studies which help to explain those associations. In her 1995 case study of failed reform in an inner-city school, Jean Anyon ties student characteristics to low teacher efficacy. She admits, “The desperate lives most of the children lead make many of them become restless and confrontational; many are difficult to teach and to love” (Anyon, 1995, p. 80). Most teachers will never make such an admission. To do so would require that they either blame the students for their birth and background, or admit that they themselves do not have the skills to reach those students. They don’t need to confront this reality if they can move to a new school, district or occupation. The “movers” in Johnson and Birkeland’s report of 50 Massachusetts teachers followed the typical transfer pattern from low-income schools to those serving wealthier populations, but the qualitative interview data from this study allowed these researchers to explain why. “They were not simply transferring in search of wealthier students” (Johnson & Birkeland, 2003, p. 599); they were looking for a setting where they would have better prospects of helping their students do well. One reason student characteristics of race and poverty might be associated with low teacher efficacy for some teachers is their lack of preparedness to work with these students. McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) noticed this pattern among the veteran high school teachers they interviewed as part of a four-year study of 16 high schools in two states. Teachers reported that they felt they were trained to teach very different students than the ones they teach today, yet they were expected to educate all of them. McLaughlin and Talbert noticed that the challenge of teaching a changed and changing student population was especially salient for teachers working in urban California districts where immigration and desegregation policies have caused radical changes in the schools and the students they serve. Today there are teacher preparation programs that prepare teachers specifically for working with high-poverty, urban, and/or diverse populations. However to date there are few good empirical studies which evaluate their effectiveness for teacher retention. Teachers’ self-efficacy is also inevitably influenced by their own personal characteristics, yet research is scant on the interaction between teacher and student characteristics and the relationship of that interaction to teacher retention. Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin (2004) found that teachers’ transfer patterns are affected by teachers’ and students’ racial characteristics. In an analysis of data from Texas, the researchers found that non-Black and non-Hispanic teachers are more likely to exit schools with higher Black and Hispanic enrollment, and conversely Black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to stay in schools with higher Black and Hispanic enrollment. This pattern corroborates studies which have shown that teachers seek certainty in their work and that their certainty is increased when teachers have a prior understanding of their students’ backgrounds and cultures. The potential link between teachers’ sense of efficacy with students and teacher retention can be influenced by training, preparation or cultural understanding, but it can also be affected by teachers’ beliefs. Ashton and Webb (1986) sought to understand the various environmental influences contributing to teachers’ sense of efficacy. Through an ethnographic study that involved inter-