Steven Bednar, assistant professor of economics, partnered with Dora Gicheva of UNC-Greensboro on the post for the blog, which features policy relevant research on education topics.
Assistant professor of economics Steven Bednar has published a guest post on the Brown Center on Education Policy’s Chalkboard blog at the Brookings Institution on the role of workplace support in the retention of minority teachers.
Mentoring, and to a greater extent support from high-level administrators, has been shown to decrease worker turnover in general, but little is known about its differential impact on minority workers. Utilizing four waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey, Bednar and Gicheva found that administrative support is most strongly associated with retention for minority teachers working in schools where minorities are under-represented.
This effect is pronounced for teachers new to the profession and those in schools with more students from low-income families or located in rural areas. The results indicate that workplace support is essential in maintaining or growing minority representation in relatively less-diverse organizations.