Teacher Burnout: A Comparison Between Title I and Non-Title I Elementary School Teachers

With school reform and teacher accountability on the forefront of the educational landscape, attention has turned to investigating why so many teachers leave the profession after a relatively short time. Burnout is often cited as a major contributor to this teacher exodus. While many studies have focused on teacher burnout relative to the specific tasks that teachers perform and on the populations they serve, there is no research on how teacher burnout differs between Title I and non-Title I schools in an urban school district in Virginia. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to investigate if teachers’ perceptions of burnout including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment, differ between the two types of schools in a single school district. The sample, 145 elementary teachers from Title I and non-Title I schools, voluntarily completed the Maslach Burnout Inventory- Educators Survey (MBI-ES) through SurveyMonkey® online. Results from the self-reported instrument were analyzed for significant statistical differences between scores in the areas of personal accomplishment, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization between the Title I and non-Title I teachers using a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The results indicated that there is no statistical difference in teachers’ perception of overall burnout, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal accomplishment between the Title I and non-Title I school teachers in this urban school district in Virginia. Keywords: teacher burnout, teacher attrition, Title I, accountability, school reform