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Measuring School Climate as a Component of School Capacity

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Abstract

State and local education agencies continue to make an effort to systematically assess school climate through student surveys. These assessments typically collect data from individual students about their perceptions of different components of the school and their relationship to individuals in the school and aggregate those responses to the school level. To date, few researchers have examined the extent to which aggregating students’ perceptions of climate is a valid and reliable way to understand climate as a characteristic of the school. If this hypothesis is true, there are opportunities for school and district leaders to use this information to improve and sustain school climate practices. This study used middle and high school-grade student-level responses from the Georgia Student Health Survey and tested the extent to which the different dimensions of school climate varied across school and were associated with school behavioral data. Our findings suggest that student perceptions of climate are multi-dimensional at the student level at the student level, but not necessarily at the school level. Indeed, school climate appears to be uni-dimensional at the school level and is robustly associated with administrator-reported behavioral data. This study supports efforts to include student perceptions of school climate and school climate ratings as valid assessments of school climate. School and district leaders can use school climate ratings as a valid way to measure, improve, and sustain practices that build capacity and support school improvement.

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Notes

  1. This is consistent with the student discipline calculation that Georgia uses for its School Climate STAR Rating.

  2. We used administrative school-level data to measure school mobility, which is operationalized as the percentage of students who change schools during the school.

  3. We measured school mobility using Georgia Department of Education administrative school-level data, which measured the percentage of students who change schools during the school year.

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Funding

This study was supported by Award Number 2015-CK-BX-K001, granted by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. WestEd, San Francisco, USA

    Jenna Howard Terrell, Ryan Miskell, Amanda Nabors, Kathryn Grogan & Joseph McCrary

  2. University of Alabama-Birmingham, Birmingham, USA

    Christopher C. Henrich

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  1. Jenna Howard Terrell
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Correspondence to Jenna Howard Terrell.

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Terrell, J.H., Henrich, C.C., Miskell, R. et al. Measuring School Climate as a Component of School Capacity. Contemp School Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40688-023-00488-y

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