Previous studies of working conditions in education have focused primarily on predicting teacher turnover. Researchers have examined how strongly salaries, principal leadership and other conditions affect teachers’ decisions to change jobs. Compared to the number of turnover studies, research on the ways that working conditions at one end of a causal chain affect student achievement at the other end, is quite rare. Moreover, many studies were restricted to whole-school achievement measures and rarely used controls for past test performance. Instead of growth or value-added measures, the dependent variables have often been achievement levels. Even with adjustments for socio-economic background differences, failing to account for previous achievement levels makes it likely that the achievements these studies are predicting include what students have learned over longer time periods. Hence, between-school differences in the achievement measures reflect more than just teaching and learning over the past year. Drawing on a rich mix of data—including metrics for working conditions, teacher quality, classroom conditions and student achievement—matched at the teacher level, for the fourth-through-eighth graders in reading and math from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project, this paper tests a series of hypotheses concerning how working conditions for teachers influence professional learning, teacher expectations, teaching quality and student outcomes. The present study is able to examine both between-school and between-teacher differences in student achievement using value-added scores.

The findings identify mechanisms inside the “black box” of schooling that help explain why some schools operate more effectively than others to produce high quality teaching and learning. Teaching Enablers that make good teaching more possible—especially school-level conduct management and effective professional development—play central roles. The paper distinguishes four types of teachers who differ in their expectations for students and in the intensity of their participation with colleagues in professional learning. The findings suggest that schools with more community support achieve more effective conduct management, which in turn predicts higher value-added learning gains. There is evidence that when teachers regard professional development and instructional support activities as meeting high standards, they are more likely to regard them as effective at enhancing instructional skills. When more teachers regard professional learning activities as truly effective, they tend to have higher expectations for students. Teachers may not regard professional learning activities as effective at building their skills, even if they regard those activities as state-of-the-art. In addition, professional learning activities are unlikely to improve teaching and learning for students if those activities are not truly effective at enhancing professional knowledge and skill. The value-added achievement gains are predicted by Academic Press more than by Academic Support. Schools achieve higher levels of Professional Community Citizenship when teachers perceive that their leaders are reasonable and where instructional supports encourage collaboration. Excessively respectful leaders may fail to provide the sense of urgency necessary to motivate high performance. Implications of the findings for all levels of educational leadership are discussed.

Although the paper was accepted for future publication, it was not disseminated elsewhere at the time of this submission.