Harnessing Organizational Leadership and Cultural Competence to Attract and Retain Quality Teachers: The Case of Inner-City Schools

Abstract

Strategic investments in organizational leadership within the education sector can reap significant dividends in attracting and retaining quality teachers. These investments include comprehensive cultural competency training for all school administrators, teachers, and staff as well as the inclusion of these groups in creating a collaborative organizational culture. Such investments are particularly important in inner-city schools, where research reveals that cultural incompetence and the absence of a collaboratively developed organizational plan contribute to high levels of teacher attrition and substantial difficulties in attracting new teachers. Because scholarship has already recognized and identified the problem of attracting talented teachers to low-income and urban districts, this article takes the next step to suggest novel evidence-based solutions to the problem. Central to this approach is the school administrator’s responsibility to build an organizational culture that ensures equity, educational rigor, and opportunities for meeting teachers’ and administrators’ work-related needs. Building this culture requires (a) delivery of empirically supported cultural competency training; (b) self-assessments of management style to create an approach designed to enhance employee satisfaction; (c) creation of a shared vision and organizational leadership plan designed to make the work environment more attractive and satisfying to current and prospective teachers; and (d) development of a flexible yet practical service delivery framework that enables employees’ workplace needs to be met. In creating this culture, we argue that inner-city teacher attraction and retention rates can be dramatically improved.