Doctor of Philosophy

Abstract

dissertationThe United States federal government funds two distinct types of school systems on or near indigenous lands: tribally controlled schools and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE)-operated schools. This study fills a void in the scholarly research on differences in teacher working conditions and job attitudes across all 170 of these two types of schools that are located in 23 states and on 64 Indian nations. This study utilized cross-sectional survey data from the 2007-2008 administration of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), which was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the U. S. Census Bureau. This project was undertaken in order to determine the existence of differences in perceived teacher job attitudes and working conditions across four classifications of schools with high Native American Alaskan Native (NAAN) enrollments. The study analyzed the responses from 1290 teachers who were sampled from 540 schools across the BIE and public sectors. Analytical techniques incorporated included confirmatory factor analysis of measures of organizational commitment, administrative support, teacher autonomy and student engagement, and multiple regression and group means analyses. In addition to the BIE-operated and tribally controlled schools, also incorporated into the analysis are state-funded public schools with high Native American Alaskan Native enrollments. The results of this study have verified that administrative support is highly associated with each of the teacher job attitudes: organizational commitment, job satisfaction, and pay satisfaction. Teachers at tribally controlled schools report greater perceived job satisfaction than do their public school counterparts at schools with high Native American Alaskan Native enrollments, and tribally controlled school teachers report much less satisfaction with their pay than do their peers at Bureau of Indian Education schools. There are significant salary disparities between the Bureau of Indian Education-operated and tribally controlled schools on the four salary points examined, and teacher experience levels both at their current school and over their careers are significantly greater for Bureau of Indian Education teachers as compared to teachers at tribally controlled schools. Study findings possess significant potential to inform the tribal and federal policy-making processes with respect to the furtherance of tribal sovereignty in education and to optimize school resource allocation practices. At the state level, information from the study may be utilized in reforming principal preparation programs via the inclusion of teacher job attitude research