Leave Like a Champion: Teacher Embeddedness and Turnover at an Urban “No-Excuses” Charter Management Organization

Abstract

Teacher turnover remains considerably higher at Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), despite initially high perceptions of fit at the time of hire. Grounded in an emerging branch-off of job embeddedness theory—teacher embeddedness—this multi-site case study of one urban CMO used interviews of departed teachers and principals and focus groups of new and veteran teachers to determine the predominating factors of reduced feelings of embeddedness and, ultimately, turnover. Findings indicate that teacher embeddedness is threatened by methods the CMO has proliferated as “best practice” and factors researchers have empirically correlated with turnover.