Strengthening a School Climate Survey to Inform School Decisionmaking

 

The Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office for Safe Schools partnered with REL Mid-Atlantic to make its school climate survey more useful and actionable. The survey, available to any school in the state that chooses to use it, offers a way for schools to better understand student, teacher, and staff perceptions of school climate and to identify aspects of school climate in need of improvement. REL Mid-Atlantic assessed differences in school climate perceptions across school and student groups, the validity and reliability of the survey for elementary school students, and approaches to scoring the survey and defining performance categories. Key findings include the following: Perceptions of school climate varied across school and student groups. Schools with more Black students tended to have lower school climate scores than other schools, but within schools, perceptions among White, Black, and Hispanic students were similar. Average scores were higher among boys than among girls in the same school. Students in lower grades tended to report a more favorable school climate than students in higher grades.   Student perceptions of school climate tended to be less positive than those of classroom teachers and other school staff.   The elementary school student survey demonstrated construct validity and acceptable reliability, except for the safe and respectful school climate domain, which failed to meet the threshold for acceptable reliability.   The current approach to defining performance categories resulted in nearly all schools falling into a single category, whereas other approaches led to more variable distributions. Full report