Urban Rev (2007) 39:541–565 DOI 10.1007/s11256-007-0072-8
Presence and Persistence: Poverty Ideology and Inner-city Teaching J. Gregg Robinson
Published online: 23 November 2007 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2007
Abstract This paper examines the role of poverty ideology in determining whether a teacher comes to teach at a poor school (presence) and whether s/he remains at this type of school over time (persistence). A sample of 400 teachers in San Diego California was administered a questionnaire that evaluated respondents’ attitudes toward poverty. Teachers who believed poverty was rooted in social structure were more apt to be present in and to persist at poor schools. It is argued that this presence and persistence in poor schools was because these teachers had developed a ‘‘structurally mitigated sense of occupational competence’’. This sense of competence made these teachers more likely to understand the problems they encountered in the classroom in structural terms, and thus they were more likely to be both satisfied with and persist at their jobs. Keywords Inner-city education Poverty ideology and teaching Teachers and poverty
Introduction Deciding to teach in a poor inner-city school may be one of the most difficult decisions a teacher will make, exceeded in difficulty only by the decision about whether to stay at this type of school. These two decisions are of importance not merely to teachers, but to school districts, the poor, and society more generally. The tendency for good teachers to avoid poor schools, and for experienced teachers to leave them, has been amply documented (Dworkin 1980, 1987; Carnegie Foundation 1986; Ingersoll 2001; Gaurino et al. 2004; Smith and Ingersoll 2004). J. G. Robinson (&) Department of Behavioral Science, Grossmont College, 8800 Grossmont College Dr, El Cajon, CA 92020, USA e-mail:
[email protected]
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This paper adds to this discussion by considering another factor, poverty ideology, and its impact on these decisions. It is common sense that what people believe influences their behavior. It is both common sense and good sociology that what people believe about poverty influences their behavior in regard to the poor. Surprisingly, this simple insight has not been applied to teaching. There has been no systematic research into the impact of teachers’ beliefs about poverty and their behavior in regard to poor children. To remedy this lack of examination, this paper applies sociological research on poverty ideology to an analysis of why teachers come to and stay at poor inner-city schools. The sociological approach to poverty ideology has focused on attitudes about the origins of this economic deprivation. Decades of research has demonstrated that beliefs about whether poverty is a function of structural causes (racism, poor job markets, etc.) or individual pathology (laziness, lack of financial planning, etc.) have profound impact on people’s attitudes and behavior toward the poor. The data presented in this paper suggest that there is also a significant relationship between this poverty ideology and the likelihood of teaching in a poor school. Teachers who believe that poverty has structural roots are found in greater numbers in poor schools, largely because they are more likely to persist over time. This persistence will be tied to a process called ‘‘structurally mitigated competence.’’ This process allows teachers to persist because their understanding of poverty makes them respond more effectively to the problems of the inner-city classroom, and this response, in turn, makes them feel more competent in their work than other inner-city teachers. Explaining in more depth how this process of structurally mitigated competence operates is the major focus of this paper. There are four sections to this discussion. First, the intellectual and methodological background of this research is discussed; this section also describes the sample and research methods employed by this study. The core of this paper, however, lies in sections ‘‘Ideology and Presence’’ and ‘‘Poverty Ideology and Persistence’’: ‘‘Ideology and Presence’’ examines the relation of poverty ideology to other factors that differentiate between teachers in poor and middle-class schools; ‘‘Poverty Ideology and Persistence’’ discusses how ideological factors determine who stays at poor schools. The fourth section concludes the paper with a series of suggestions drawn from these findings.
Literature Review and Methodology Literature Review Most previous research into who teaches in poor schools has found that inner-city teachers differ from their colleagues in the suburbs in terms of their educational background, their tenure in the profession, and their race (Dworkin 1980; Farkas et al. 2000; Ingersoll 2001; Figlio 2002; Lankford et al. 2002; Guarino et al. 2004). The academic preparation of teachers of poor children has been one of the areas that has received the most attention (Dworkin 1980; Ingersoll 2001; Figlio 2002; Lankford et al. 2002). Because of the obvious connection between academic
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background and teaching quality, many analysts have been disturbed by the relatively low levels of educational preparation in the inner-city (Dworkin 1980; Lankford et al. 2002). Teachers of poor children have tended to graduate from less prestigious universities, to be less likely to have received a degree in the subject area in which they teach or to have gotten lower grades in school if they are elementary school teachers, and to have not earned a master’s degree than teachers of middleclass children (Dworkin 1980, 1987; Farkas et al. 2000; Ingersoll 2001; Guarino et al. 2004). Likewise, teachers in the inner-city have tended to be newer to their profession than teachers in the suburbs (Boe et al. 1997; Ingersoll 2001; Gaurino et al. 2004; Smith and Ingersoll 2004). Teachers often start off their careers in poor schools, but transfer to middle-class institutions when they have earned enough tenure and experience to make them more marketable (Dworkin 1980, 1987; Boe et al. 1997; Ingersoll 2001; Lankford et al. 2002; Guarino et al. 2004). While a few scholars have suggested that some of this attrition might be a good thing by removing less qualified teachers (e.g., Boie et al. 1997), most agree that inner-city education suffers because of this churning of the ranks (Dworkin 1980, 1987; Ingersoll 2001; Figlio 2002; Lankford et al. 2002; Guarino et al. 2004). Most schools with large numbers of poor children lose teachers just when they have developed the experience and background that would make them most effective. Finally, race has been found to be a factor strongly correlated with teaching poor children (Murnane and Olsen 1989; Murnane et al. 1991; Adams 1996; Ingersoll 2001). Whether out of ethnic solidarity, convenience, or lack of other options, minority teachers have chosen to work in poor schools in disproportionate numbers (Dworkin 1980; Murnane and Olsen 1989; Murnane et al. 1991; Adams 1996; Kirby et al. 1999; Ingersoll 2001). The group most regularly associated with inner-city teaching is African Americans (Murnane and Olson 1989; Murnane et al. 1991; Adams 1996), though Latinos have also been found in large numbers (Dworkin 1980; Kirby et al. 1999). While these studies have provided important information, they have tended to share a lack of causal specificity. Because most of this research has been secondary analysis of large data sets, these analysts have been limited in their ability to explore the reasons for these associations. Too often the motivations, interests, or orientations of the individuals producing the associations between these factors and inner-city teaching have not been explored because there was no way to do so. These researchers have thus produced a great deal of numerically sophisticated data, but have not been able to tie this material to the motivations and beliefs of real people. When the actual motivations that bring teachers to the inner-city have been examined, few have been found to be predictive (Fuller 1969; Miech and Elder 1996; Rushton 2000). Most of this research has been done by social psychologists, and has focused on such social psychological issues as ‘‘other orientation’’ (Fuller 1969), ‘‘personal efficacy’’ (Rushton 2000); and ‘‘service orientation’’ (Miech and Elder 1996). The conclusion of these researchers has been that none of these factors are significantly related to teaching in this environment.
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Because of this psychological orientation, little attention has been paid to attitudes toward poverty. Interest in poverty ideology, however, has been at the heart of the discipline of sociology since its inception. Beginning with Marx (1969) and continuing into contemporary debates about the underclass/ghetto poor (Jencks 1993; Gans 1995; Wilson 1996), sociologists have given this issue consistent attention. The most useful research for this paper comes out of a series of studies of American attitudes toward poverty by survey researchers. According to this literature, there are two sets of explanations for poverty that are prominent in American ideology (Huber and Form 1973; Feagin 1975; Kluegel and Smith 1986). The first focuses on individualistic explanations, and looks at such behaviors as laziness, lack of self-discipline, hedonism, and poor financial planning (Huber and Form 1973; Feagin 1975; Kluegel and Smith 1986). There is a tendency on the part of believers of this ideology to moralize poverty. That is, poverty is attributed to the moral failings of individuals (lack of self discipline, laziness, etc.). With or without this tone of moral disapproval, however, the focus for people who share this ideology is on the failings of individuals as the source of poverty. In contrast, the second set of explanations focuses on social structure, with particular attention given to job markets, educational preparation, racial attitudes, and economic institutions (Huber and Form 1973; Feagin 1975; Kluegel and Smith 1986). More specifically, low wages, lack of jobs, or inadequate schools are the kinds of factors believed to cause poverty in this ideology (Feagin 1975; Kluegel and Smith 1986). At the extreme, some who hold this ideology attribute blame to racism. Both individual and structural explanations play important roles in the American understanding of poverty, but most researchers agree the former are more prevalent than the latter (Huber and Form 1973; Feagin 1975; Kluegel and Smith 1986). Whether measured by polls, political choices, or historical accounts, the individualism of middle-class Americans makes them prone to attribute the causes of poverty to poor people themselves (Feagin 1975; Kleugel and Smith 1986). Correspondingly, there is a tendency to de-emphasize the social, economic, and structural causes of poverty (Kluegel and Smith 1986; Gilens 1999; Katz 1989; Gans 1995). Kleugel and Smith (1986) have gone so far as to term this orientation toward individualistic explanations for poverty the ‘‘standard American ideology.’’ These attitudes have, in turn, been found to influence other beliefs and behaviors connected to poverty and the poor. Attitudes toward welfare (Gilens 1999), support for health and nutritional programs for the poor (Kluegel and Smith 1986; Gans 1995), and willingness to fund educational programs for poor children (Feagin 1975) have all been found to be influenced by poverty ideology. In other words, this research has found attitudes toward poverty not merely interesting in their own right, but to be determinants of a large number of other social policies and activities as well. This paper adds to the list of issues affected by poverty ideology, the willingness to teach in a poor school. As was indicated previously, this impact is complicated because it has to do with how ideology affects persistence in the inner-city over time. For all the complexity, however, this research indicates that poverty ideology is an important determinant of whether a teacher commits to teaching in the inner-city.
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Methods and Measures This research is part of a larger study of teachers and social workers conducted in San Diego, California in 1999. This paper focuses on a sub-sample of elementary school teachers drawn from the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) that was part of that larger study. Roughly 600 of these teachers were randomly selected and mailed a four-page questionnaire in 1999. A little over 400 of them eventually responded to the survey, producing a response rate that most researchers consider to be acceptable (Babbie 1990; Mangione 1995). Several checks were made to determine if the mailed sample varied significantly from the larger population, and no bias was detected. Considerable information about teachers was available from the SDUSD, and this was used to compare this sample to the population of teachers in the District. The sex, race (Spanish & Asian surname), grade level taught, percent of poor and minority students in the schools in which teachers worked, and area of the city in which the respondent lived were compared to the population, with no statistically significant differences noted. A group of nearly 50 randomly selected teachers who did not respond to the mailed questionnaire were contacted, and administered a shortened version of the questionnaire by phone. This group was compared to the mailed sample. No statistically significant differences between the regular sample and the nonresponder sub-sample were detected in any of the substantive areas that are the focus of this paper (attitudes toward poverty, proportion teaching in poor schools, work efficacy, etc.). The survey consisted primarily of fixed-choice questions, though a few openended ‘‘qualitative’’ questions were also included. These open-ended questions asked the respondent to explore a previous question in more depth (e.g., ‘‘Describe how poverty affects the problems you encounter in the classroom.’’). Respondents were given the space to write a paragraph about these issues, though most only responded with a few words. A content analysis of these open-ended questions was performed, and the responses quantified. This information was used to broaden the understanding of the responses of participants in this study. In addition, a subsample of 35 teachers was randomly selected from those who returned questionnaires, and were questioned in further depth about issues connected to this study. This in-depth portion of the research was a structured interview with over twenty open-ended questions, and was designed to explore the major areas of the questionnaire (attitudes toward poverty, choice of current job, work satisfaction, and reasons for entering the profession, etc.) in more depth. Quantitative and qualitative data are of equal importance in this study. While the quantitative data is used to establish overall patterns, qualitative data is used to explore the causal relations in back of these patterns. Numerous field researchers have argued for a multiple methodological approach to this kind of data (Axin et al. 1991; Burgess 1982; Lieberson 1992; Massey 1987), but this approach also avoids the lack of causal specificity noted about previous research. For example, to recognize an association between structuralist teachers in the inner-city tells us little about how this ideological orientation toward poverty has an impact on the real world behavior of these professionals. There is only minor importance in adding yet
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one more correlation to the already long list of correlates of inner-city teaching. Instead, the objective of this study is to describe how this association between poverty ideology and teaching in a poor school works through the motivations and behaviors of real teachers. Thus the interviews become crucially important as they let us see how teachers struggle to make sense of their experiences through these ideological orientations. Two dependent variables are analyzed in this study. The first and most important is whether respondents work in schools with large numbers of poor children-defined as the proportion of students qualifying for the free or reduced price meal program. While this is not a perfect measure of poverty, it is one that is commonly used in research into poverty and schools (Dworkin 1980; Dedrick and Smith 1991; Ingersol 2001; Guarino et al. 2004). Where reference is made to ‘‘poor’’ and ‘‘middle-class’’ schools, the former is defined as one in which the concentration of children who qualify for a subsidized meal is greater than 70%, and the latter is one with a concentration of less than 30% of these students. The second dependent variable is the occupational tenure (persistence) of teachers at poor schools. Overall time as a teacher is used as the measure of persistence rather than tenure in their position at the time of the survey. This was done because the concern in this research is not with whether a teacher persists at a particular poor school, but at poor schools generally. While a number of researchers have raised questions about whether tenure in a particular school is a valid measure of persistence in education given the tendency for teachers to change schools often in their careers (e.g., Bobbitt et al. 1994; Ingersoll et al. 1995), the fact that a teacher might have transferred from one poor school to another has little implication on her/his persistence in the inner-city for the purpose of this study. For this reason, time in the profession was chosen as the dependent variable. The independent variables used in this paper are of five general types: demographic, educational, racial, poverty ideological, and classroom problems. The demographic variables considered in this study are measures of class background (respondent’s father’s occupation, mother’s occupation, spouse’s occupation, and whether the respondent reports having ever been poor or received welfare), as well as measures of sex, age, and marital status. Measures of occupational background (father’s, mother’s, and spouse’s) were coded as either high (e.g., doctor, lawyer, corporate level manager, etc.); middle (e.g., teacher, social worker, police officer, etc.); or low (factory worker, machinery operative, waitress, etc). The two measures of poverty or welfare use were created by asking respondents if they had ever been poor or received welfare at any time during their lives (as children or adults). These were then dummy coded (0 = no, 1 = yes). Sex and marital status were also coded as dummy variables (0 = male, 1 = female; 0 = unmarried, 1 = married). Age is the age as reported by the respondent in an open-ended question. Educational issues are another set of self-reported variables. These variables focus on a teacher’s educational preparation as well as her/his length of experience as a teacher. The first variable in this group, length of experience, is the number of years of experience a teacher reports in the profession; the second variable, ‘‘B.A. prestige,’’ is a measure of the prestige of the institution from which a teacher
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received her/his bachelor’s degree (ranked either low, medium, or high according to Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges); and the last variable in this section is whether the respondent reported earning a master’s degree (dummy coded). Race is a self-referential category. That is, respondents were asked to state their race, and then these racial affiliations were dummy coded. Poverty ideology, the major focus of this discussion, is measured by using a modified set of two scales first developed by Feagin (1975) and later elaborated by Kluegel and Smith (1986). These two scales tap the individualistic and structural orientations toward poverty mentioned previously. The ‘‘Individualistic Scale’’ is a simple composite score that adds together responses to four questions about the individualistic origins of poverty. These consist of whether the respondent agrees that poverty is the result of: (1) lack of thrift; (2) lack of effort; (3) lack of ability; and (4) loose morals and drunkenness. Each of these questions allowed respondents to choose from a four-item Liekert scale that ranged from strongly agree to strongly disagree (alpha = .68). Teachers who scored high on this scale are referred to as ‘‘poverty individualists.’’ The ‘‘Structural Scale’’ is another composite score of four items that explore this dimension. These questions ask whether poverty is due to: (1) low wages in some industries; (2) failure of society to provide good schools; (3) failure of industry to provide jobs; and (4) racism. Also given a four-item Liekert scale for responses (alpha = .73), teachers who score high on this scale will be referred to as ‘‘poverty structuralists.’’ Finally, measures of classroom problems were variables associated with problems that teachers commonly encounter in their work, and included two sets of issues: those that have direct impact on classroom education and those that have indirect influence. The variables considered to have direct impact include the proportion of children in the respondent’s class who began the academic year not prepared to learn at grade level (responses ranged from 5 = all to 1 = none); the amount of time the respondent spent disciplining children in a way that detracted from education (5 = daily to 1 = never); the proportion of students in the respondent’s class who had problems with English (responses ranged from 5 = all to 1 = none); and the proportion of children who lacked parental involvement in their education (5 = all to 1 = none). Those problems labeled ‘‘indirect’’ are measures of whether the respondent believed a significant number of students were affected by: poor health or nutrition; physical or psychological abuse; parents’ drug or alcohol abuse; racism; and poverty (all responses: 5 = all to 1 = none).
Context Before turning to the substantive portion of this discussion, something should be said about the social context of this study. The San Diego school system, like those found in most major U.S. cities, is disproportionately poor and minority. Given San Diego’s proximity to the border with Mexico, there are a large number of poor Latino students in the district. At the time this survey was conducted nearly half (47%) of the students in the district were Latino, 33% were white, 13% were Asian,
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and 7% were African American (San Diego Unified 1999). The majority of these children were poor, with nearly two-thirds qualifying for the free or subsidized lunch program (San Diego Unified 1999). While SDUSD is predominantly poor and minority, there are pockets of considerable affluence in the district as well. La Jolla, one of the wealthiest suburbs in southern California, is in the northern part of San Diego, as is the University of California and its associated high-tech and bio-tech industries. While many of the upper- and upper-middle-class professionals who live in this area eventually desert the public school system once their children reach adolescence, the majority of them send their daughters and sons to the elementary schools of SDUSD while they are of elementary school age. This group of affluent schools provides a convenient contrast to the poverty and deprivation found in the central city.
Ideology and Presence Eighty percent of success in life is just showing up. Woody Allen
Introduction In this section the role played by poverty ideology in whether a teacher ‘‘shows up’’ in the inner-city is discussed. The focus here is on the characteristics that differentiate teachers in poor schools from teachers in middle-class schools in the San Diego Unified School District, and the relative importance of ideology among these characteristics. There are two tasks undertaken in this section of the paper: first, poverty ideology will be compared to other factors (particularly race) as a predictor of inner-city presence; and second, the process of analyzing how ideology has this impact on presence will be initiated.
Ideology and Race The examination of poverty ideology begins in Table 1 with a comparison of ideology to the factors previous research (see above) has indicated are important in predicting who teaches at predominantly poor schools. There are five models in this table: the first three focus on the relative importance of poverty ideology, and the last two show that ideology has an impact on presence by way of making teachers with a structuralist ideology persist over time. Particular attention in this sub-section is paid to race. Race is an attractive point of contrast for gauging the importance of poverty ideology as it has been found to be consistently associated with teacher presence in the inner-city (see above), and because it functions in a manner similar to ideology. The presence of AfricanAmerican and Latino teachers in poor schools may be due to many reasons (racism
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2.23 (2.45)
-.09 (.07)
-.64 (3.36)
12.42 (2.75)***
Mom class
Spouse class
Sex
Marital
369
* p B .05; ** p B .01; *** p B .001
N
369
369
.188
R2
-1.34 (.51)**
-11.83 (4.23)**
10.12 (4.03)**
.84 (3.16)
-3.40 (2.59)
-1.49 (2.22)
-8.02 (5.13)
-.59 (.12)**
11.56 (2.48)***
-2.32 (3.16)
-.11 (.06)
1.34 (2.42)
-1.87 (1.47)
1.77 (.71)*** .157
-10.65 (4.20)**
12.48 (4.31)***
5.20 (4.01)
-5.44 (2.78)**
-1.68 (2.10)
-9.34 (5.20)
-.60 (.13)***
12.42 (2.95)***
2.07 (2.46)
-2.61 (1.48)
2.99 (3.92)
6.13 (2.66)**
Model III
Structural
Individualistic
Poverty ideology
Asian-American R
Latino R
African-American R
.137
-1.32 (2.12)
-5.40 (2.83)**
B.A. status
M.A.
Race
-9.18 (5.68)
Years experience
B.A.
-.60 (.14)***
-1.40 (3.37)
-2.14 (1.45)
Dad class
Education and experience
-.08 (.07)
5.89 (4.21)
5.89 (4.28)
8.51 (2.95)**
6.58 (2.75)**
Model II
Welfare
Model I
Poor
Demographic
Variables
Table 1 OLS regression of percent of poor students on various factors
87
.101
.97 (2.21)
-1.35 (1.23)
-9.81 (6.56)
8.66 (5.01)*
1.58 (7.93)
-2.13 (5.70)
-1.44 (2.23)
-7.29 (14.12)
-1.54 (2.37)
10.76 (5.19)***
-5.13 (6.39)
-1.18 (.16)
1.46 (4.65)
1.71 (3.06)
2.29 (2.28)
10.13 (4.33)**
Model IV (\5 years)
246
.191
1.84 (.76)***
-1.46 (.63)**
-10.51 (4.55)**
11.29 (5.37)**
5.85 (5.26)
-3.49 (3.26)
-1.34 (2.20)
-5.08 (6.97)
-.64 (.17)***
12.48 (3.35)***
-2.77 (4.06)
-.11 (.07)
3.47 (3.31)
-2.95 (1.92)
6.11 (5.19)
-6.08 (3.31)*
Model V ([5 years)
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in hiring practices, marginal academic credentials, proximity to place of employment, etc.), but one of the most important is their commitment to children from backgrounds similar to their own (Muranane and Schwinden 1989; Villegas and Clewell 1998; Shipp 1999). This sense of ‘‘solidarity’’ is also what makes race similar to ideology. Race in this sense is not so much a demographic fact as it is an attitudinal predisposition. Like poverty ideology, race is an emotional orientation that affects the presence of a teacher in the inner-city or suburb. Thus, race is the major point of comparison in this table. Model I is a regression equation that includes both demographic and educational variables, but without either race or ideology present. This becomes the baseline to which the impact of adding race (Model II) and ideology (Model III) are compared. Adding race in Model Two increases the predictive power (R2) by a significant but modest amount. Latino respondents are more likely than whites to teach in the inner-city, and Asians are less likely to do so. Adding Poverty ideology in Model III again significantly improves the R2, and in an amount that is greater than when race was added. This means that poverty ideology operates independently from race (it was possible, given the correlation between race and ideology, that the former was the determinant variable), and is modestly more important in determining ‘‘presence’’ than race. There is even evidence that poverty ideology is an ingredient in the association between race and place of employment. Adding poverty ideology to the equation in Model III reduces the coefficients for Latino and Asian respondents by a measurable amount. That is, part of the association between race and place of teacher employment is the result of the tendency for Latinos to be poverty structuralists and Asians to be poverty individualists. Finally, it should be noted that poverty structuralism is more important than poverty individualism in Model III. Fully two-thirds of the improvement in R2 between Model II and Model III (data not presented) is due to this former variable. Poverty structuralists are present in poor inner-city schools in a way that dwarfs the flow of poverty individualists to the suburbs. These data are telling us that poverty ideology is not only statistically significant, it is also substantively significant. Though not as important as educational background or demography, it is at least as important as race. In that all too difficult decision about who will be showing up in the inner-city, poverty ideology plays a role that is of no small weight.
Models IV and V: Poverty Structuralists and Attrition Controlling for time in the profession (Models IV and V) provides some interesting information. Model IV is a cohort with less than 5 years, while Model V is a cohort with more than 5 years experience as a teacher. The first 5 years of a teacher’s career involves learning how to teach; after that point most teachers have consolidated their professional activities (Lortie 1975; Murnane 1984; Singer and Willet 1988). Interestingly, there is no statistically significant association between a structural orientation toward poverty and presence in the inner-city in the less
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experienced cohort, while there is an association in the more experienced cohort. The situation with individualistic orientation toward poverty is different. For this orientation there is an association in both cohorts (though the less experienced group misses significance because of the smaller sample size). This information, while not conclusive, does begin to point toward the causal relations responsible for these associations. What is most likely happening is that individualistic teachers have a strong preference for teaching in the suburbs, and this preference shows up early and strengthens over time. Blaming the poor for their problems is probably making these teachers less comfortable with serving in these schools in the first place and more anxious to leave over time. The pattern with the structural orientation is a bit more complicated. For the less experienced cohort there is no association with this explanation for poverty, whereas this association does seem to be developing over time. The most likely explanation for this pattern is that teachers with this poverty ideology come to the inner-city for reasons unrelated to ideological beliefs, but persist because of these beliefs. Poverty structuralism seems to be making these teachers more committed to inner-city teaching than is the norm for both poverty individualists and other teachers as a whole. They are thus accumulating over time, making it likely that there is something in structuralist ideology that makes them more resistant to attrition than other teachers in these circumstances. To understand why this resistance to attrition is the most likely explanation for the patterns in Models IV and V, it is necessary to turn to the larger issue of persistence in inner-city schools to which these patterns are tied.
Poverty Ideology and Persistence Introduction In this section the role that poverty ideology plays in relation to other factors that predict persistence in inner-city schools is examined. In the first subsection of this section ideology is compared to other factors as a predictor of this persistence. Particular attention is paid to the problems that teachers confront in the inner-city as these have been found to predict persistence in past research (Dworkin 1987; Dedrick and Smith 1991; Perie et al. 1997; Park 2003). The conclusion of this first subsection is that while poverty ideology is less important as a predictor of persistence than these problems as a whole, it is more important than any of them separately. The second subsection directly addresses how poverty structuralism operates to produce persistence. The key to understanding how ideology impacts persistence is its relationship to classroom problems. A structural orientation toward poverty allows a teacher to develop what will be called a ‘‘structurally mitigated sense of job competence.’’ That is, these teachers have a sense of competence that grows out of their orientation toward poverty that to a significant degree ‘‘inoculates’’ them against the problems inner-city teachers encounter in their classrooms.
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Persistence: Poverty Ideology and Classroom Problems Understanding persistence in inner-city schools means understanding the kinds of problems these teachers confront. It is news to no one that teachers in poor schools deal with an array of academic, emotional, and social problems found only to a limited degree in the suburbs. It is also not surprising to learn that these problems are significantly linked to the high attrition rate of teachers in the inner-city (Dworkin 1987; Dedrick and Smith 1991; Perie et al. 1997; Park 2003). These problems were used as the basis of a multivariate analysis (another series of regression equations) of the association of poverty ideology with persistence in high-poverty schools. Table 2 presents the results of this analysis. Model I is the baseline in which all of the demographic variables from the previous discussion of Presence were combined with these classroom problems. There was no need to add race separately because none of the race variables were significantly related to persistence. The most striking thing about Table 2 is the lack of predictors of persistence. Of the over 20 variables in Model One, only four are significantly related to the dependent variable. Of these, the group of Problems has the most impact. Nearly two-thirds of the effect on R2 is the result of this group of variables (data not shown). The only other variable in this equation with any association with persistence is whether the respondent reports having earned a masters’ degree. Not much is predicting persistence, and that is not surprising given the evidence of both past research and current public debate. If there were a number of predictors of persistence, we wouldn’t have the problems in poor schools with teacher retention that we currently face. There are three problems that predict persistence: discipline, parental involvement, and racism. The explanation of the first of these is straightforward: the less a teacher reports having problems with student discipline, the more likely s/he is to persist in the classroom. Discipline is something that teachers have a significant degree of control over, and new teachers are often less able to control their classrooms. A teacher either learns effective classroom management techniques or s/he leaves the school (or the profession). The impact of ‘‘problems with parent involvement’’ is also not surprising. This is one of the most common complaints in poor schools in this study, and in previous research as well (Marjorbanks 1979; Epstein and Becker 1982; Lareau 1987, 2000, 2003; Perie et al. 1997). More surprising is the belief that racism is a barrier to education. Unlike all the other problems encountered in the inner-city classroom, the more a teacher believes that this problem is present, the more s/he is likely to persist. Racism is not a problem like most of the others in this list. The judgment that racism causes classroom problems is more of an ideological evaluation than it is an objective recognition of a problem in learning. That is, seeing racism as a problem involves looking beneath the surface of classroom difficulties to make connections with a wider issue that is not immediately obvious in test scores or homework. As will be seen momentarily, this makes the belief that this problem is present similar to poverty attitudes because both function through a set of ideological orientations.
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Urban Rev (2007) 39:541–565 Table 2 OLS regression of persistence (tenure in occupation) of teachers in poor schools on various factors
553
Variables
Model I
Model II
Problems Unprepared to learn Discipline Health Parent involvement
-1.13 (.89)
-1.10 (.88)
-1.45** (.52)
-1.39** (.63)
-1.05 (1.13) -1.69** (.64)
-.4 (1.20) -1.50** (.59)
Abuse
-1.18 (1.36)
-1.20 (1.35)
Drugs
-1.13 (1.11)
-1.15 (1.15)
English
-.18 (.72)
-.12 (.72)
Racism
2.33** (.70)
1.29* (.89)
Poverty
-.57 (1.13)
-.34 (1.15)
Demographic Poor Welfare
.13 (1.52)
.49 (1.53)
2.60 (2.07)
2.54 (2.12)
Dad class
.22 (.73)
.38 (.73)
Mom class
-.68 (1.28)
-.97 (1.26)
Spouse class Sex Marital
.48 (.84)
-.68 (.95)
-.72 (1.18)
-.40 (.15)
-1.93 (1.40)
-1.91 (1.42)
-.91 (3.31)
-1.21 (3.31)
Education B.A. BA quality
-1.28 (1.16)
-1.28 (1.15)
6.70*** (1.17)
6.60*** (1.16)
African-American R
2.38 (2.30)
1.50 (2.42)
Latino R
1.22 (1.99)
1.45 (1.98)
Asian R
-1.47 (2.59)
-.92 (2.67)
MA Race
Poverty ideology Individualistic
-.26 (.28)
Structural * p B .05; ** p B .01; *** p B .001
.87 *** (.25)
R2
.20
.26
N
184
180
Adding poverty ideology in Model II produces a significant increase in R2. While this increase is not as great as that produced by the ‘‘Problems Variables’’ as a whole, it is greater than any single classroom problem. This variable is also obviously more important than the point of comparison that has been used throughout this paper: race. None of the racial variables were significant predictors of persistence. This means that poverty ideology, once again, is not merely a statistically significant, but a substantively significant predictor of persistence. Believing that poverty is rooted in structural conditions makes teachers willing to persist in poor schools in a way not found among their non-structural colleagues.
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Interestingly, the addition of structural poverty ideology has reduced the coefficient for racism considerably. That is, the belief that racism was a cause of inner-city educational problems not only functioned similarly to poverty ideology; it was a partial result of this ideology. This belief about racism was more likely to be held by poverty structuralists, and this association was responsible for some of the initial strength of this former variable’s relationship to persistence. It is time to explore why this association exists. Both in this section and the previous one, persistence has been associated with poverty ideology. Knowing that ideology is associated with persistence is important, but knowing why this association exists is even more important. The qualitative and interview data collected for this project offers insight into this causal connection.
Persistence and Ideology: Why Both the qualitative survey data and the 35 in depth interviews conducted for this project provide evidence that poverty ideology produces persistence through a process that will be called a ‘‘structurally mitigated sense of competence.’’ This structurally mitigated competence consists of two elements: first, a tendency to view classroom problems in structural rather than individual terms which allows these structural teachers to exert extra effort inside and outside of the classroom to help students; and second, a sense of job efficacy and satisfaction that results from the first element.
Structural Orientation to Classroom Problems and Job Effort The qualitative data collected for this project provide an important insight into why structuralist teachers persist in the inner-city. One of the most striking contrasts between structuralist and non-structuralist teachers was in their understanding of the previously mentioned classroom problems. Structuralist teachers were much less likely to feel discouraged as a result of these problems. They had an understanding of and adjustment to these educational difficulties that was missing among other teachers in poor schools. The key was that structuralist teachers were more apt to see the problems they confronted in the classroom in structural terms than were other teachers. The low test scores and difficulties in mastering basic subjects, structuralist teachers said, were because of over-worked parents, lack of money for quality daycare, lack of books and reading materials around the home, and the like. Significantly, this attitude made these teachers less likely to blame parents, students, or themselves. The qualitative portion of the questionnaire asked respondents to name the single most important barrier to learning in their classroom. This was an elaboration of the previously discussed quantitative question which asked teachers only what percent of their students were affected by each of the named problems. In this open-ended question, respondents were to name only one problem, and then describe why it was important. The responses to this question were coded into broad categories, and then
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Table 3 Greatest barrier to educational success of R’s students (poor schools [70% subsidized meal) Greatest barrier
Non-structuralist teachers (%)
Poverty-structuralist teachers (%)
Lack parent involvement
67
53
Student related problems (discipline, intelligence, laziness, etc.)
23
10
Poverty/structural
10
34
0
3
120
85
School related problems (bad administrators, bad previous teachers, etc.) Number Chi-Squared = 15.09 (p = .001)
structuralist teachers and non-structuralist teachers were compared in regard to these categories. The results of this comparison are in Table 3. Two of the categories in this table were similar to the problems described previously (lack of parent involvement and poverty/structural barriers). There were two other categories, however, that did not appear in this earlier discussion. The first of these, ‘‘Student Related Problems,’’ combines discipline problems with other student-focused complaints (e.g., lack of intelligence, laziness, and immorality). The second new category, ‘‘School Related Problems,’’ includes issues such as indifferent/incompetent administrators, bureaucratized school system, failure of previous teachers to adequately prepare students, etc. Examining this table, a number of conclusions are obvious. First, there is a general difference between structuralist and non-structuralist teachers in their estimation of the nature of educational problems (chi-squared = 15.09; p = .001). Second, and more specifically, structuralist teachers tend to blame the structural problems connected to poverty more, and their students less, than non-structuralist teachers. Thirty-four percent of structuralist teachers see Poverty/Structural related problems as the greatest barrier to their students’ success, but only 10% of nonstructuralist teachers felt similarly. Nearly a quarter of non-structuralist teachers believed that student-related issues were the greatest barrier, but only 10% of structuralist teachers felt similarly. The most important difference is in regard to the problem of parent involvement, however. This is one of the most important barriers to education for teachers both in this study and in many others as well (Diaz et al. 1986; Lareau 1987, 2000, 2003). This lack of involvement has been at the heart of most teachers’ frustration with education in general and inner-city teaching in particular. As most researchers and almost every inner-city teacher knows, what happens at home is at least as important as what happens inside the classroom when it comes to educating children (Coleman et al. 1966; Coleman and Hoffer 2000; Jencks et al 1972; Jencks and Phillips 1998; Lareau 1987, 2000, 2003; Rothstein 2002). Parents in the inner-city are much less likely to be active participants in their children’s education. This lack of involvement of parents is the most commonly named major barrier for all teachers in this sample, structuralist and non-structuralist alike. There was, however, a significant difference in degree between structuralist teachers and
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non-structuralist teachers in regard to this issue. While two-thirds of nonstructuralist teachers named this as the most important barrier, only a little over 50% did so among structuralist teachers. That is, while structuralist teachers agreed that lack of parent involvement was the most important barrier, the strength of this relationship was less than for non-structuralist teachers (largely as a result of the former’s stress on structural factors connected to poverty). Equally important, there was also a tendency for structuralist teachers to see the lack of parental involvement as something caused by the structural conditions of poverty (parents unable to help their children because of the struggle to make ends meet, because they themselves were never properly educated, because they did not speak English, etc.). Nearly half (49%) of structuralist teachers made some kind of unsolicited structural qualification of this lack of parent involvement in their written responses, while only about 30% did so among non-structuralist teachers. In fact, if the teachers who gave structural accounts of the lack of parent involvement were combined with those who had focused on poverty per se, roughly 60% of structuralist teachers pointed to this issue as the single greatest source of classroom problems contrasted to only about 30% of non-structuralist teachers. This is a crucial contrast. Over and over one hears inner-city teachers complain about the lack of involvement of parents. But structuralist teachers look beyond the poorly attended back-to-school nights, lack of concern about homework, failure to show up for parent–teacher conferences, and the like to the structural limits posed by poverty. These structuralist teachers qualify their disappointment with parents by looking at their economic situation. They are thus less likely to be angry with or resentful of them. The in-depth follow-up interviews further support this point. Half of the structuralist inner-city interview respondents (6 of 12) gave fairly elaborate structural explanations when asked to speculate why there was so little parent involvement in the education of their children. Take for example, one respondent who contrasted her experience with parents to the experience of a friend of hers who taught in an elite private school in a wealthy suburb in San Diego. ...[My friend] doesn’t know how good she has it. She complains about the over-involved moms she has to deal with. Don’t I wish!...At [the private school] they have a lottery to decide who gets to go on field trips with children....I’m lucky if one parent will show up for a field trip, and I hardly ever get parents coming to class to help out. Later she explained why she thought the parents at her school were so much less involved in the education of their children. ...those [private school] parents have nothing else to do. Its, ‘shall I go to my yoga class, get my botox injection, or go on a field trip with my daughter.’ My kids’ parents are working their rear ends off; they can’t take time off... They’re the ones cleaning that lady’s house while she’s on a field trip with her daughter, and spending four hours a day on a bus to get to her house so [they] can clean it.
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This woman expressed herself in stronger terms than most of the other structuralist interviewees, but her sentiment was shared by the majority. This structural understanding of classroom problems is an important ingredient in what is being called structurally mediated competence. For structuralist teachers, the finger of responsibility points away from individuals, and toward large impersonal forces as the root causes of their classroom frustrations. This structural approach forms the context in which structuralist teachers approach their day-to-day work, and its inevitable frustrations. Effort. If the structural approach to classroom problems is the context, then a special form of effort is the content of structuralist teachers’ approach to their jobs. Structuralist teachers go out of their way to help their students learn, in ways not found among other inner-city teachers. In almost every way measured by this research, structuralist teachers made more of an effort to teach their students than their colleagues in the inner-city. The qualitative portion of the questionnaire asked teachers how often they made various efforts to help their students above and beyond usual classroom responsibilities. In every one of the measures structuralist teachers made more of an effort. These teachers were more likely to stay after school at least once a week to have a parent conference—more than half of structuralist teachers said they had done so, while only a little more than a third of non-structuralist teachers responded similarly (tau b = .12; p = .1). Structuralist teachers were more likely to have participated in some form of professional development that involved time outside of school in the month before the interview (24% vs. 13%; tau b = .15; p = .05). Over 40% of these teachers tried to arrange a field trip at least once every other month, while less than a fifth of their colleagues made this effort (tau b = .24; p = .001). The gold standard, however, of inner-city teaching is the home visit. This involves making a visit to the home of a student to talk to her/his parents, and is therefore a kind of educational ‘‘house call.’’ This not only means taking time outside of class for which most teachers are not paid, but it is an emotionally and sometimes even physically challenging task. A teacher making one of these visits may find her/himself face to face with the unpleasant realities of poverty. Living conditions can be squalid, parents can be unfriendly or even abusive, and neighborhoods can be dangerous. Not surprisingly, most teachers are not anxious to make these visits. While only a minority of the teachers said they had made a visit in the month previous to responding to the questionnaire, structuralist teachers were disproportionately likely to have done so. Nearly a third of structuralist teachers had made a home visit in that period of time, but only 6% of non-structuralist teachers had made a similar effort (tau b = .36; p = .000). The in-depth interviews added to the evidence of this extra effort. Over half (7 of 12) of the structuralist interview subjects in poor schools said that they had made an effort to help their students outside of class that required a significant commitment of time in the week that preceded the interview, but less than one third (two of seven) of the non-structuralist teachers had made a similar effort. An example of the former is a woman I call Ms Garcia. Some of the students in Ms Garcia’s second-grade class had been complaining that one of their classmates ‘‘smelled bad.’’ The student, ‘‘Rosa’’, was a
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good-natured child, but had been struggling in the classroom. It was not unusual for Rosa to come to school hungry and dirty. Ms Garcia had sent notes home to the little girl’s mother about her school work and about her cleanliness, but on each occasion had gotten no response. Ms Garcia decided she would make a home visit because ‘‘I wanted to see what was happening...and I wanted to tell that woman she had better start taking better care of that child.’’ When she arrived at the home, Ms Garcia said that she: ... was shocked. There were two families living in a two bedroom apartment...That woman [the mother] had that child sleeping in a bed with two other children. You could smell the urine on the bed, ...the sheets had not been washed in months. She didn’t even try and hide it from me....and I told that woman that I would call someone if things did not change. I did not know who I would call, but I would call someone. I would call her landlord. I would call CPS [Child Protective Services]. I would call Immigration. I would just keep calling until I got somebody to do something.... Interestingly, when Ms Garcia recounted this story to the interviewer there was not so much a sense of anger about what had happened, as of satisfaction. ‘‘You know, for an entire month Rosa came to school clean, and she was better in class too.’’ Ms Garcia knew this was not going to solve the little girl’s problems, but she had made a little bit of a difference in the life of her student. Ms Garcia indicated that her willingness to get involved probably came from her attitude toward poverty. Ms Garcia had grown up in poverty herself, and she felt she had a special understanding of children like Rosa. When the interviewer told her that he admired what she had done for Rosa, she told him, ‘‘I feel I have to do it. I don’t have a choice; I know what it’s like to be poor.’’
Efficacy and Job Satisfaction Crucially, the structuralist understanding of classroom problems in combination with the extra effort made by structuralist teachers, in turn, led to a sense of efficacy in the classroom. Classroom efficacy is both one of the most important ingredients in any teacher’s job satisfaction (whether in a poor or middle-class school), and one of the hardest to achieve (Lortie 1975; Raudenbush et al. 1992). Teaching is an exercise in humility in the best of circumstances. Lortie (1975), in a classic sociological analysis of teaching, described the occupational situation of teachers as a continual confrontation between high expectations (society’s and their own) about being able to make a difference in a child’s education, and a limited ability to achieve this outcome. Every teacher must recognize these limits. In a poor school, however, this recognition is like hitting a wall. The uninvolved parents, unprepared students, and limited facilities rub a teacher’s nose in this impotence. The ability to maintain a sense of efficacy in this environment is all the more important. One gets a sense of this efficacy in the interview with Ms Garcia above, but most structuralist teachers had a similar sense of competence. Efficacy was measured in the qualitative section of the questionnaire by asking teachers how well prepared
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Table 4 Various measures of teacher efficacy (poor schools [70% subsidized meal) Percent feel prepared to deal with:
Non-structuralist teachers (%)
Poverty-structuralist teachers (%)
Lack parent involvement
45
Student related problems (discipline, etc.)
49
64*
Poverty related problems
47
69**
School related problems
65
77+
120
85
Number +
81***
Tau-B p B .1; * Tau-B p B .05; ** Tau-B p B .01; *** Tau-B p B .001
they felt to respond to the single most important barrier they said they confronted in the classroom (lack of involved parents, student related problems, school related problems, etc.). The responses to this question were tabulated, and are presented in Table 4. According to this table, there was not a single problem in which structuralist teachers did not express a greater sense of competence than their colleagues, and most of these differences were statistically significant. The biggest differences, however, were in regards to the problems that teachers most commonly felt were most important (student-related problems, structural problems related to poverty, and lack of parent involvement). Nearly two-thirds of structuralist teachers (64%) felt prepared to deal with student-related problems and their impact on classroom education, but less than half of non-structural teachers (49%) had this sense of competence (tau b = .14; p = .05). Over two-thirds (69%) of structuralist teachers felt prepared to deal with structural problems associated with poverty, while less than half (47%) of non-structuralist teachers felt similarly (tau b = .16; p = .01). Most importantly, given the number of teachers who focused on this issue, over 80% of structuralist teachers felt prepared to do something about the lack of parent involvement, but only 45% of non-structuralist teachers felt this way (tau b = .3; p = .000). Thus there is a sense of symmetry in the orientation of structuralist teachers to classroom problems. On the one hand, they are more apt to see these problems in structural terms; and on the other, they feel particularly well prepared to deal with them. This is the core of the meaning of the term ‘‘structurally mediated competence.’’ Teachers are realistic about their ability to do something about classroom problems. They do not expect miracles, because these problems are structural and deeply rooted. But they also do not retreat into cynicism. They feel an obligation to help their students. Having made an extra effort, they feel more efficacious than other inner-city teachers. They act, and having acted, they feel more in charge of their classrooms and of their role as teacher. This sense of symmetry and competence comes through even more strongly in the in-depth interviews. Almost every structuralist teacher in a poor school interviewed for this project (11 of 12) when asked to discuss how much impact they had on their students’ education indicated that they had had a significant amount of influence. In contrast, only a little less than half (three of seven) of non-structuralist
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teachers did likewise. A structuralist first grade teacher in a predominantly Latino school where nearly every child in the school qualified for the subsidized meal program put it this way: ‘‘Listen, I don’t have any illusions. What we do here is heavy lifting. Poverty is the real problem, and I know I can’t eliminate it by myself. I don’t even believe I am going to be able to turn every child who steps into my classroom into a reader. But I KNOW I can make a difference. I HAVE to make a difference [because] these kids need me’’ Satisfaction. Also related to this sense of efficacy is the satisfaction with their job that most of these structuralist teachers felt. The qualitative portion of this survey indicated that poverty structuralists were more likely to be very satisfied with their jobs than other inner-city teachers (53% vs. 37%; tau b = .14; p = .01). These structuralist teachers’ job satisfaction was also less likely to decline over time than other teachers. There was a significant association between time on the job and job satisfaction for most inner-city teachers in this sample (tau b = -.249; p = .004), but not for structuralist teachers (tau b = .08; p = .458). The structuralist interview respondents showed a noticeably greater amount of enthusiasm for their job than the other inner-city teachers. When asked where their satisfaction came from, most replied that it had to do with their ability to accomplish their jobs (10 of 12). That is, it was their sense of efficacy in the classroom that made them more satisfied. An example of this kind of job satisfaction is found in the statement of one female teacher who spoke with pride of having taught a little boy to read. ‘‘That’s why I love my job. It wasn’t easy. I had tried everything I could think of, and it didn’t work...[but] I kept coming back. The first time he sat with me and read a book, I don’t know who was prouder, him or me.’’ It is worthwhile at this point to examine the experiences of one of the respondents in more depth. A white male teacher who will be called Bob illustrates most of the dynamics discussed in this section. He was also outspoken and eloquent about these issues. As for so many teachers in the inner-city, Bob’s first year on the job was a rough one. He was, he told this interviewer, ...kinda overwhelmed by all the problems...Some of those kids just didn’t want to learn...they were in my face about stuff. You know, like this one kid who I caught cheating—he just laughed....And his parents didn’t seem to care. I talked to his dad, ... and all he would say was that his son was a ‘real man’. Like real men don’t read or write or something.... Bob’s response to this situation, however, was telling. When I asked him why he thought the father said what he did, Bob responded ‘‘You know, my guess is that he didn’t know how to read himself. This guy was like from Mexico, and I don’t think he could have gotten much farther than the third grade or something.’’ Bob had the right to feel angry with the child or the father, but instead he looked to the economic background of the family. Bob stuck it out with the child. He found that the mother was more willing to do something about the child’s behavior, and, while he continued to be a problem, the
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situation improved: ‘‘At least things got down to a dull roar, and I was pretty much able to keep him under control.’’ It was clear from the interview that Bob put a significant amount of effort (including more than one home visit) into dealing with what must have been a frustrating child. This child, however, wasn’t the only source of Bob’s frustration his first year. When asked what was the worse thing about his job that year, he responded, ...it was the bureaucracy around here. Look, I have thirty kids in my classroom, and I can’t even send their textbooks home with them..... I couldn’t believe it. When I first started working here they told me it was school policy that all textbooks had to stay in class, and could not go home with students.... It turns out that we have a real high turn over in students. You know, from the time school begins in the fall to the time it ends in the spring we lose something like almost half our kids...and a lot of them just disappear one day and take their textbooks with them. ....{So} I can understand how the school feels and all, I don’t blame them, ... but how am I supposed to teach ...math and science without letting them take their textbooks home to study?’’ Bob had gotten into trouble with his principal for ignoring the rule, and letting his students take their books home anyway. ‘‘They gave me a bunch of B.S., but I told them I would pay for [the books] if any disappeared.’’ This portion of the interview is important in two ways. First, even when confronted with bureaucratic rules that limited his ability to teach, Bob focused on the structural reasons for this behavior. Yes, he was frustrated and angry at administrators, but even here he qualified his hostility by looking at the limited options open to a school with large numbers of poor children. The second reason this excerpt is important is the kind of extra effort that Bob made for his students. If it came down to it, he was willing to pay out of his own pocket for the books these students needed. Over half of the structuralist teachers interviewed for this project had made similar sacrifices. Like Bob, many of these teachers when they were new to the profession were stretched thin financially, yet they still reached into their own pockets to pay for classroom materials. Some of these teachers went so far as to pay for out-of-school needs. One Latina teacher had paid to take one of her students along with her family when they went to Disneyland. Returning to Bob’s situation, in spite of all the frustrations he stuck it out. He felt he was good at his job, and it gave him satisfaction to come to school. ‘‘I’ve got [other] teachers comin’ to me asking how to deal with discipline and what have you...I think I do a pretty good job.’’ When asked where he thought he would be in 5 years, he responded, ‘‘Oh, I’ll probably be here. You know, I think about getting out sometimes, but I’m kinda of comfortable here now. I’m getting to teach what I want [he was teaching mostly math and science], ....and I’ve got some good kids.’’ Bob had helped a group of students compete in a science fair, and though they didn’t win anything, everyone seemed to enjoy the experience, including Bob. Bob’s ideology gave him a degree of separation from the problems he encountered, and a little extra motivation to deal with them. He didn’t feel incompetent, or blame the children, or their parents or even the school. His beliefs
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made Bob happier in his work. Ultimately, it also kept a dedicated teacher in a difficult environment. To summarize, the structurally mediated sense of competence is a function of structuralist teachers having a structural orientation to the problems of the classroom. This orientation both limits the degree of disappointment in students and parents, and makes this kind of teacher more likely to extend extra effort to help her/ his students. This extra effort pays off in a greater sense of work efficacy, which in turn makes these teachers more satisfied with their jobs. Teaching in the inner-city involves a willingness to confront hard problems with only a limited degree of success. A poverty structuralist ideology provides a means to satisfaction in these small victories. It is an understanding without retreat to cynicism or indifference that produces long-term job satisfaction. For want of a better term, structuralist teachers ‘‘embrace’’ their occupational situation, and out of this embrace comes a qualified, but enduring, love for teaching and their students.
Conclusion By way of a conclusion, the implication of these findings both for recruitment and persistence of teachers in poor schools will be briefly explored. Teaching in a poor school is much like union organizing, social work, and the ministry: many of the pleasures of this work are ideological. While practical reforms such as raising salaries and creating master teacher programs are invaluable, one cannot forget that many of the attractions to teaching are emotional. An active attempt to reach out to people with an intrinsically positive emotional orientation toward poor and minority groups would seem to be justified given this evidence. Getting bright idealistic students involved with tutoring programs while they are still in college might be a way of attracting more of these ‘‘poverty structuralists’’ into the schools. The innercity has no need for missionaries without persistence, but a degree of ideological zeal is not a bad thing if it is combined with a realism that keeps a teacher in the classroom for the long term. Besides bringing more structuralist teachers into the teaching pool, it would also be worthwhile to more effectively recruit those already in it. The fact that structuralist teachers are not making special efforts to come to the inner-city means schools need to reach out to them. The extra cost it would take to devise recruiting techniques (special appeals to those concerned about poverty, racism, and inequality, etc.) to attract these teachers is worthwhile given both their quality (willingness to help students, etc.) and their perseverance. The connection between ideology and inner-city persistence also has an implication for teacher training. The tendency for many teacher education programs to ‘‘psychologize’’ education may be doing teachers in the inner-city a disservice. Teacher education programs tend to focus on the psycho-educational background of students (developmental stage, personality structure, learning style, etc.) or on the skills and preparations that will make individual teachers successful in the classroom (pedagogical techniques, classroom management skills, etc.). This form of preparation leaves teachers in the inner-city blind to the socio-economic realities
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of their students. A healthy dose of sociology in teacher education programs could only help. At a minimum, an introduction to the sociology of poverty could help many prospective teachers see the structural connections that only those with a particular ideology are currently making. The importance of this sociological education is all the more relevant when we recognize the ideological forces an inner-city teacher faces. Society wants to believe that education can compensate for the degradations of poverty; schools of education want to believe that if they teach the right psychological insight a teacher will be prepared to solve any classroom problem; and teachers want to believe that they are the most important factor in a child’s education. All of this comes together in the inner-city to produce a vicious half truth: that if a teacher is dedicated enough s/he can compensate for all the problems of ghetto, barrio, and slum education. The examples of Jaime Escalante and the scores of movie teachers from Sidney Poiter to Antonio Banderas have convinced all too many teachers that helping is not enough, ameliorating is insufficient, and just surviving is defeat. Popular culture wants to see poor children turned into math whizzes, and ghetto children’s lives transformed by a single semester with an inspired teacher. But as the earlier quote from Woody Allen indicated, there are situations in life in which just showing up is half the battle. Educating teachers to the structural roots of poverty and the educational problems of the inner-city may take some of the weight off the backs of teachers that American ideology places on them so that they can continue to show up. With the burden for successful education no longer riding solely on their shoulders, and with disappointment and frustration minimized, they might find the energies for more home visits and teacher conferences. At a minimum, with expectations more ‘‘structurally mitigated’’ the rates of burn-out and attrition might come down appreciably. Keeping decent caring teachers in the inner-city is a small but worthwhile victory.
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