Are We Creating Separate and Unequal Tracks of Teachers? The Effects of State Policy, Local Conditions, and Teacher Characteristics on New Teacher Socialization

Abstract

This article explores the possibility that state educational policies, involving accountability and instructional reform, and local district and school conditions interact with teachers’ personal and professional backgrounds to shape two tracks of new teachers that reinforce existing educational inequities. The present 2-year study incorporated mixed methods and a multilevel design that included state policy, local conditions, and teachers’ beliefs and practices, highlighting two cases from a larger database. The authors report how differences in district capital shape responses to state policy, influence teacher recruitment, interact with teacher characteristics, and create learning opportunities for new teachers that suggest the creation of two classes of teachers for two classes of students. While previous researchers have identified student tracking as reproducing inequities, this article examines the largely unexplored terrain of new teacher tracking: the sorting and socialization of novices.