Poster #43 - Better School Climates, but for Who? Differennces Based on Race/Ethnicity, Academic Achievement, and Anti-bias Efforts

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Perceptions of school climate are associated with a range of outcomes related to students’ connection to schools and academic performance. How students’ perceive their school climate is influenced by both their experiences at school and their social identities. For example, students who struggle academically perceive teachers as less supportive and tend to hold more negative views of school climate relative to their higher achieving peers (Benbenishty et al., 2016; Košir & Tement, 2014). Additionally, students who are marginalized because of their race/ethnicity (i.e., students of color; SOC) tend to view school climates negatively (Pena-Shaff et al., 2016; Voight et al., 2015). Teachers also contribute to students’ perceptions of school climate through the quality of their relationships with students (Cohen et al., 2009) and through providing emotional support which is associated with higher academic performance (Kashy-Rosembaum et al., 2018) as well as student engagement and motivation to learn (Ruzek et al., 2016). In the present study, we investigated: (1) the association between the degree to which schools address bias and students’ perceptions of school climate; and (2) whether students’ race/ethnicity and academic achievement moderated this relationship.

We analyzed public middle and high school student (California Healthy Kids Survey; n = 609,807) and teacher (California School Staff Survey; n = 39,637) reports of school experiences across 1,313 public schools. Our sample was racially and ethnically diverse (50% Hispanic/Latinx; 39% multiple races; 29% White; 10% Asian; 5% Black/African American; 4% American Indian/Alaska Native; 2% Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander). Student perception of school climate was assessed using a 9-item measure related to meaningful participation, caring student-teacher relationships, school connectedness, and perceptions of safety. Academic achievement (AA) was assessed based on students self-reported grades. A school-level measure assessing schools’ efforts to address bias was created by aggregating teachers’ responses to 6-items related to the degree to which schools engage in efforts to treat all students, regardless of their race and ethnicity, equitably (e.g., “this school has staff examine their own cultural biases through professional development or other processes”).

Multilevel regressions (employed to account for nested nature of data) showed that: (1) relative to higher achieving students, lower achieving students perceived school climates more negatively; (2) relative to White students, SOC perceived school climates more negatively; and (3) students attending schools in which teachers reported a higher level of effort to address bias perceived school climates more positively than students in schools perceived as doing less. We also found that race moderated the relationship between academic achievement and perceptions of school climate (the relationship between AA and school climate was stronger for White students than SOC), and that the association between efforts to address bias and perceptions of school climate was strongest for high achieving students.

Results from this study indicate that efforts to address bias in schools are associated with more positive school climates generally, but do not necessarily adequately address achievement and race-based gaps in perceptions of school climate.

Authors

• Lauren Allen, Central Michigan University
  Presenting Author

• Jack Day, Central Michigan University