Impact of School Climate Improvement Practices on Student Safety and Related Outcomes

• In Event: Intervening in the School-to-Prison Pipeline by Disrupting Punitive Disciplinary Practices

Abstract

Disruptive aggressive behaviors such as bullying and violence create a hostile school environment that interferes with the academic performance and mental health of students who are victims or witnesses. Efforts to improve school climate through enhancement of positive adult-student relationships, providing students opportunities for meaningful participation, and providing clarity of behavioral expectations are believed to foster a more positive and safe school environment. The Capturing Kids’ Hearts Campus by Design Program (CKH) is a promising, widely-used, school-level intervention that is designed to impact student behavior by enhancing school climate through improved relational and conflict management skills. Using instrumental variables techniques and data from an experimental study of the CKH program involving 24 middle schools from four school districts in South Carolina, this paper investigates the impacts of efforts by teachers to enhance (a) student-teacher and student-student relationships, (b) student self-management, and (c) provide increased clarity of expectations. Using the random assignment of schools as an instrument, the paper examines the impacts of teacher relationship-building activities, students’ and teachers’ co-creation of social contracts, and student self-management on student perceptions of school safety, connectedness to school, bonds with teachers and peers, and personal and social competencies.

Authors

• Gary Zhang, WestEd

• Tom Hanson, WestEd

• Cindy Zheng, WestEd