The Role of School Environment in Teacher Dissatisfaction Among U.S. Public School Teachers

This article discusses the relationship between the schoolenvironment and teacher dissatisfaction utilizing the 2007-2008 School and StaffingSurvey. The school environment is defined through a social-ecological perspective whichtakes into account the hierarchical nature of schools. Teacher dissatisfaction wasquantified through a composite of variables that asked teachers about their overallfeelings regarding the profession. A logistic regression was performed with teacherdissatisfaction as the criterion variable, and school environment variables and teacherbackground variables as predictors. School environment played a statisticallysignificant role in the dissatisfaction of teachers. Specifically, teacher autonomy andprincipal leadership decreased the odds of teacher dissatisfaction, while student andcommunity problems increased the odds of teacher dissatisfaction. Once schoolenvironment was taken into account, the log odds of teacher race, middle school status,and rural school locale increased while remaining statistically significant