With the recent increase in the number of available options for families to consider when selecting a school, diverse publicly funded public schools are now competing for both students and funding. This study intended to contribute to the available research on the changes at inner-city schools during increased school choice options. The purpose of…

There are many rewards associated with teaching in public schools, but there are also several challenges such as understaffing, limited resources, overcrowded classrooms, and underpaid employees. All of these issues combined often lead to burnout and mental health concerns among public school teachers, particularly those in urban settings. Since…

At the foundation of this research was the supposition that when principals implement positive leadership practices, they create an educational climate that encourages highly qualified teachers to continue to work in economically disadvantaged school districts by increasing teacher morale and perceived teacher efficacy. The purpose of the research…

Teacher working conditions (TWCs) have been linked to teacher retention and student learning. These connections make TWCs important to understand. However, the literature on TWCs lacks cohesiveness, with widely varying definitions, conceptualizations, and measures of TWCs. Contributing to this lack of cohesion is that there is no accepted…

Nationally, special education teacher turnover is a significant issue for school districts. The problem addressed in this study was the high special education teacher turnover rate in one local school district in North Carolina. Guided by Maslow's hierarchy of needs, this basic qualitative study explored previous special education teachers'…

Teachers experience a great deal of psychological distress. However, there is a gap in the literature concerning the difference between the distress of teachers working in urban schools versus those in non-urban schools. Thus, the present study utilizes data from the 2018 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey to conduct a statistical…

Summer school programs have been a part of national, state, and local education systems' instructional programming for decades. These programs exist in varying forms and rarely have a prescribed way in which they should be implemented. There is little to no research about teacher and administrator perceptions about these summer programs. The…

In 2010, North Carolina implemented a revised school executive evaluation instrument requiring school principals to utilize Teacher Working Conditions (TWC) as a component of the school improvement process which, prior to 2010, was optional. Teacher Working Conditions had been heralded as a way to improve student outcomes as well as address those…

The purpose of this narrative study was to examine the experiences of elementary general music educators in high-poverty schools (schools where more than 75% of students are eligible for Free or Reduced-Priced Lunch). This inquiry was guided by three research questions: (1) How do participants describe their experiences teaching in a high-poverty…

A teacher shortage continues to plague the SBAE profession. While this shortage has been quantified and explored from the perspective of individual teachers, little research has taken a systemic approach to the problem of the SBAE teacher shortage. We posit the teacher shortage problem as inextricably linked to a convoluted job description and…

This study approaches the idea of teachers' commitment to stay at their job by considering their perceptions of efforts by leadership to support working conditions in schools. Data from 85,000 teachers from the 2016 school year in North Carolina were used in the mediation analysis. Results show that administrative effort had a direct effect on…

Using the 2012 North Carolina Teacher Working Conditions Survey data, school demographic information, and school's urban-centric locale census designation, hierarchical linear modeling was conducted to examine the relationship between locale and teachers' perceptions of school leadership as a working condition and explore any variance in the…

This study explored the experiences of five Latinx Spanish teachers who worked in schools in rural North Carolina and South Carolina. Using data from 25 semistructured interviews and publicly available school/community demographic information, this qualitative multiple-case study sought to answer the following questions: (a) How do Latinx Spanish…

A diverse teacher workforce has the potential to improve outcomes for all students, and especially for students of color. North Carolina has recognized the importance of increasing diversity in the workforce and despite national and local efforts from school districts and policy makers, the teaching workforce has remained largely white and female,…

For decades, national surveys have shown faculty report high levels of dissatisfaction with the distribution of labor in their departments, especially women and underrepresented minority faculty. Research suggests this dissatisfaction is warranted, as these groups are often engaged in more service, mentoring, and institutional housekeeping than…