Why Select New Music Teachers Chose to, or Chose Not to, Apply to Teach in an Urban School District

Abstract

The purpose of this investigation is to describe the criteria that highly qualified music-education students with cultural diversity training from a Hispanic-serving institution used in their decision to apply or not apply to teach in an urban district on graduation. Eleven participants were selected. Three of them applied to an urban district and one accepted an urban job. Findings from employment inducement studies formed the theoretical basis to analyze the criteria the participants used to make their employment decisions. Content analysis of open-ended interviews reveals the importance of the following criteria in making the decision to apply to teach in an urban school district: the participants’ perceptions of the match of their own values to the organization’s values, specifically, whether they would be able to achieve what they wanted to and the proximity of the school district to where the participant grew up. These participants did not place great importance on salary. The finding of most interest is that the four participants who did not apply to teach in an urban district instead accepted jobs in midurban Title One schools, thereby teaching the same socioeconomic population they would have taught in an urban school. These particular participants were willing to teach students in lower socioeconomic circumstances, but they wanted to do so in a district where they believed that their ensembles would be competitive.