Investigating the Interaction Between Teacher Autonomy and Teacher Race/Ethnicity on Job Satisfaction: Results From the National Teacher and Principal Survey

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is a moderation effect between perceptions of school-level autonomy and teacher race/ethnicity on job satisfaction using the National Teacher and Principal Survey. The participants included 25,360 teachers from 5140 public schools representing a weighted sample of 2.35 million teachers. Results from multilevel modeling found that when there were high levels of autonomy, White teachers perceived more job satisfaction compared to Teachers of Color generally. However, when disaggregating Teachers of Color, White teachers were more satisfied compared to Hispanic teachers, when there were high levels of perceived school autonomy.