By Adam Pagnucco.
Part One discussed the general characteristics of MCPS’s staff climate survey. Today we will start looking at the results for FY23.
Let’s start with the distinction between school based staff and central office staff. School based staff are the focus of this series but there are some interesting contrasts between them and central office staff. Average positive responses to all questions were 60.1% for school staff and 64.4% for central staff. Here are the specific questions on which the two differed the most.
Q: Overall, how positive is the working environment at your school?
School based positive: 56.2%
Central office positive: 78.9%
Q: At your school, how often are you encouraged to think more deeply about race-related topics?
School based positive: 66.7%
Central office positive: 45.9%
Q: How positive is the tone that school leaders set for the culture of the school?
School based positive: 60.3%
Central office positive: 77.5%
Q: During the past week, how often did you feel excited about work?
School based positive: 41.5%
Central office positive: 57.9%
In some ways, the schools and the central office really are different worlds.
Now let’s look at the racial differences among school based staff. Sample size was 631 for Asian, 1,037 for Black, 679 for Latino, 5,699 for White and 417 for Other. 175 respondents did not report race. The racial category of Other is defined as “staff identifying as two or more races, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and American Indian or Alaskan Native.” The table below summarizes the average percentage of positive responses across all 21 questions on the survey.
At first glance, the average positive by race does not appear to have varied much although Other respondents appeared to be generally less positive. But significant variations did appear on some questions. Here are three in which they were particularly large.
Q: At your school, how often are you encouraged to think more deeply about race-related topics?
Just look at that 20-point gap between Black and White respondents.
Q: Overall, how positive is the working environment at your school?
Q: During the past week, how often did you feel excited about work?
If I were working for MCPS, I would like to explore why these gaps are occurring. Is it because different racial groups are concentrated in specific schools, and so differences in these schools are driving this? Or are these racial gaps persistent across many schools? Depending on which scenario holds, the appropriate remedy will look different.
There are huge variations across questions. Some are really positive for MCPS. Others are much less positive. We will look at the best responses next.