Developmental Contexts of Adolescence Reading Reaction

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

The Racial School Climate Gap: Within-School Disparities in Students’ Experiences of Safety, Support, and Connectedness

Adam Voight1 • Thomas Hanson2 • Meagan O’Malley2 • Latifah Adekanye1

Published online: 16 September 2015

� Society for Community Research and Action 2015

Abstract This study used student and teacher survey data

from over 400 middle schools in California to examine

within-school racial disparities in students’ experiences of

school climate. It further examined the relationship

between a school’s racial climate gaps and achievement

gaps and other school structures and norms that may help

explain why some schools have larger or smaller racial

disparities in student reports of climate than others. Mul-

tilevel regression results problematized the concept of a

‘‘school climate’’ by showing that, in an average middle

school, Black and Hispanic students have less favorable

experiences of safety, connectedness, relationships with

adults, and opportunities for participation compared to

White students. The results also show that certain racial

school climate gaps vary in magnitude across middle

schools, and in middle schools where these gaps are larger,

the racial achievement gap is also larger. Finally, the

socioeconomic status of students, student–teacher ratio,

and geographic location help explain some cross-school

variation in racial climate gaps. These findings have

implications for how school climate in conceptualized,

measured, and improved.

Keywords School climate � Race � Adolescence � Youth

development � Schools � Diversity

Introduction

Racial and ethnic disparities in academic achievement and

school discipline are fundamental problems of educational

equity in the United States. A chorus of research findings have

demonstrated that Black and Hispanic students achieve at

lower levels than their White1 peers (see Duncan and Murnane

2011) and are suspended and expelled from school more often

(Losen 2015; Skiba et al. 2011). Racial2 gaps exist due to both

school segregation as well as racial disparities within indi-

vidual schools (Fryer and Levitt 2004; Page et al. 2008).

Reducing these racial gaps is central to the priorities of the US

Department of Education and to the values of community

psychology (Sarason 1996; Weinstein 2002).

One feature of schools that may be related to these gaps

and that has garnered increased attention of late among

researchers and policymakers is school climate (e.g., Kim

et al. 2014; US Department of Education 2014; Voight

et al. 2013). Climate refers to experiences of safety, con-

nectedness to school, opportunities for meaningful partic-

ipation, and the quality of relationships between students

and staff, and these factors are related to student achieve-

ment and behavior (Hanson and Voight 2014; Thapa et al.

2013). Conceptually, climate is generally understood as a

characteristic of schools, though there is mixed evidence—

reviewed below—to suggest that students within the same

& Adam Voight

[email protected]

1 Cleveland State University, 2121 Euclid Avenue, JH 377,

Cleveland, OH 44115, USA

2 WestEd, San Francisco, CA, USA

1 The racial/ethnic labels ‘‘Black,’’ ‘‘Hispanic,’’ and ‘‘White’’ were

used herein in lieu of ‘‘African American,’’ ‘‘Latina/o,’’ and ‘‘White,’’

respectively, as they correspond with the California Department of

Education’s racial/ethnic designations, and thus our subsequent

operationalizations. Where appropriate, more specific racial/ethnic

labels are used. 2 While we appreciate the distinction between the terms ‘‘race’’ and

‘‘ethnicity,’’ we use the term ‘‘race’’ herein to refer to both for the

sake of brevity.

123

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

DOI 10.1007/s10464-015-9751-x

school may experience safety, support, and relationships

differently based on their race. This study examines the

nature of the racial school climate gap using a large sample

of California middle schools. It further examines the rela-

tionship between a school’s racial climate gaps and

achievement gaps and other school structures and norms

that may help explain why some schools have larger or

smaller racial disparities in climate experiences than

others.

Literature Review

Racial Disparities in Education

Education inequity is a persistent reality of American

culture. Almost 50 years ago, the Coleman Report (Cole-

man et al. 1966) put race-based achievement gaps on the

national radar. Since that time, achievement gaps have

remained largely unchanged (Duncan and Murnane 2011).

As early as kindergarten, there are marked differences in

academic performance between racial minority students

and their peers (Fryer and Levitt 2004). These differences

are sustained as students progress through school (Clot-

felter et al. 2009; Hanushek and Rivkin 2006).

Various reasons have been proposed to explain the racial

achievement gap. One of the simplest explanations is that

race is inextricably connected to socioeconomic status in

the United States. Poor students have fewer resources for

learning and must overcome greater barriers, and a dis-

proportionate number of poor families are racial minorities

(Hanushek and Rivkin 2006). However, even when

socioeconomic status is taken into consideration, an

achievement gap among racial groups remains (Clotfelter

et al. 2009). Social psychologists note ‘‘stereotype threat’’

as a possible contributor to the gap, wherein test takers of

stigmatized racial groups worry that they may confirm

stereotypes about intelligence, and thus perform worse due

to this stress (Steele and Aronson 1995). Other explana-

tions are socio-cultural, suggesting that minority peer

groups reward disengagement or that certain racial identi-

ties are not conducive to valuing academic success (Fryer

2010), although this explanation has been strongly con-

tested and met with much countervailing evidence (e.g.,

Warikoo and Carter 2009). Finally, some scholars point to

the disproportionate rate at which Black, Hispanic, and

American Indian students are disciplined and suspended,

distracting from learning time and undermining school

connectedness. This disparity is presumed to be a function

of either objective differences in student behavior or dis-

crimination on the part of school staff in their subjective

interpretation of student behavior (Gregory et al. 2010). A

common thread to these explanations is that the divergent

school social experiences of racial groups contribute to

educational inequalities.

School Climate

School climate refers to the school social experience (Co-

hen et al. 2009). Seidman et al. (Seidman 1988; Seidman

and Cappella, in press; Tseng and Seidman 2007) describe

climate as a social process or ‘‘within-setting social regu-

larities’’ that affect members’ subjective experiences of the

setting. The conceptualization and measurement of social

climate are longstanding projects of community psychol-

ogy (Henry, in press; Moos 1973; Trickett and Moos 1974).

A recent study identified several specific dimensions of

school climate in a survey of California middle school

students, including: (a) safety and connectedness; (b) adult-

student relationships; and (c) opportunities for meaningful

student participation (Hanson and Voight 2014). Based on

this definitional framework (which is characteristic of and

encompassed by other common definitions in the research

literature; see Cohen et al. 2009) a positive school climate

is characterized by a school environment that makes stu-

dents feel emotionally and physically safe, part of the

school community, that adults in the school respect them,

care about them, and have high expectations for their well-

being and success, and that they have opportunities to

provide input in how things work at the school.

Theoretically, having caring, supportive, respectful

relationships with adults and peers and having opportuni-

ties to meaningfully engage at school (that is, having a

positive school climate) is particularly important for mid-

dle school students, as early adolescents are understood to

have an increasing desire for autonomy and social accep-

tance (Eccles et al. 1993). Person-environment fit theories

suggest that middle schools with positive climates are a

good fit for students, leading to improved achievement

through increases in academic interest and motivation

(Moos 1987). These theories suggest that performance and

well-being are maximized when members of a setting see

their personal characteristics, abilities, and preferences as

congruent with the social processes of the setting (Moos

1987).

There is empirical evidence that a positive middle

school climate is associated with higher levels of student

achievement and lower rates of suspension and expulsion

(Brand et al. 2003; Hanson and Voight 2014). McCoy et al.

(2013) conducted one of the only studies that used longi-

tudinal data analyses to examine the directionality of the

relationship between school climate and academic

achievement in Chicago elementary schools, finding a

positive bidirectional relationship between the two vari-

ables. Furthermore, middle school students’ perceptions of

positive adult-student relationships are associated with

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 253

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higher self-esteem and lower rates of depression and

behavior problems (Way et al. 2007). Student participation

and positive adult–student relationships have been corre-

lated with lower rates of secondary school violence in both

quantitative (Khoury-Kassabri et al. 2004) and qualitative

research (Johnson et al. 2012). Elementary and middle

schools with more positive relationships between adults

and students were found to have greater success imple-

menting a classroom-based violence intervention (Gregory

et al. 2007). A positive school climate appears to be gen-

erally beneficial for middle schools students.

Within-School Racial Disparities in School Climate

As mentioned above, person-environment fit theories con-

cern individuals’ appraisals of the congruence between

their personal characteristics and their settings. Different

people within the same setting can have different views of

what goes on in the setting, or how well it is working for

them based on their identity. Theorists of educational

inequalities suggest that students’ race may be an important

personal characteristic that conditions the way they expe-

rience school social processes, with Black and Hispanic

students reporting less favorable relationships and oppor-

tunities to participate at school than White students, due in

part to objective differences in how Black and Hispanic

students are treated (e.g., tracking them into less rigorous

courses) and in part to students’ subjective interpretations

of the school environment (e.g., not relating to dominant

culture teachers; Hill 1993; Noguera 2003). Thus, there is a

question as to whether the notion of climate can be gen-

eralized across an entire school. Is there a ‘‘school’’ climate

or are there ‘‘microclimates’’ of unique experiences, for

example based on a student’s race? The former under-

standing is representative of a positivist ontology, wherein

a single unified representation of climate adequately

describes any school environment, and the latter a con-

textualist one, suggesting that different students within a

school carry different representations of their school (see

Tebes 2005).

Few research studies have directly addressed this ques-

tion, but some studies of student perceptions of school

climate have included race as a control variable and report

correlations and regression coefficients that provide evi-

dence for racial disparities. Using a racially diverse sample

of middle school students pooled across schools in Illinois,

Way et al. (2007) found that students’ racial minority status

was weakly correlated with their perceptions of several

dimensions of school climate (-0.08 r 0.08), includ-

ing adult-student relationships and opportunities for

meaningful participation. Using data from 19 middle

schools in a large district in Maryland, Bradshaw et al.

(2009) found that Black and Latino students were less

likely than White students to report feeling safe at school,

although these findings were not statistically significant.

These studies do not distinguish within-school differences

from between-school differences.

Several studies have documented a within-school racial

gap in school climate experiences. Shirley and Cornell

(2012) analyzed data from 400 students in one suburban

middle school in Virginia and found that Black students

were more likely than White students to report that their

peers supported aggressive behavior and less likely to

express willingness to seek help from their teachers for

bullying and threats of violence. Kuperminc et al. (1997)

examined one urban middle school in New York state and

found that being Black or Hispanic was weakly correlated

with the positivity of a student’s school climate percep-

tions. Using multilevel analyses, research in two separate

samples of Maryland schools found that, within particular

schools, White grade-5 (Mitchell et al. 2010) and high

school (Bottiani et al. 2014) students had significantly more

positive perceptions of school climate than their Black

peers. Fan et al. (2011), in a multilevel analysis of the

nationally representative Educational Longitudinal Study

of 2002, found that Hispanic students had less favorable

perceptions of school safety, and Black students reported

less positive teacher-student relationships than did their

same-school White peers. Evidence from various geo-

graphic locations and grade levels suggest that Black,

Hispanic, and White students experience their schools

differently from one another. The presence of within-

school climate gaps across middle schools in California is

addressed in the present study’s research question #1.

No research of which we are aware has directly exam-

ined the relationship between racial disparities in both

school climate experiences and achievement in a school,

but given the theoretical and empirically demonstrated

connection between climate and achievement, it stands to

reason that this relationship may exist and that racial dis-

parities in climate experiences (specifically safety and

connectedness, adult-student relationships, and opportuni-

ties for meaningful participation) could, indeed, explain

racial achievement gaps, as depicted in Fig. 1. This asso-

ciation is examined in the present study’s research question

#2.

School Characteristics Associated with Students’

Experiences of School Climate

Why might some schools have larger or smaller racial gaps

in school climate experiences? Little is known about school

characteristics that are differentially related to student

school climate perceptions and experiences based on race.

School setting characteristics that may influence students’

school experience, in general, include setting norms (e.g.,

254 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

123

respecting racial diveristy; Katz and Kahn 1978), structural

characteristics such as the average background character-

istics (Moos 1973) of students and teachers in the school,

and whether the school is located in an urban, suburban, or

rural location. In this section we review characteristics of

schools that have been empirically associated with stu-

dents’ school climate perceptions and experiences, inde-

pendent of race in most cases. Though few among the

reviewed studies examined how these school characteris-

tics are differentially associated with climate experiences

among student racial subgroups, their linkage with school

climate may serve as a starting point for an exploratory

investigation of school factors associated with greater

equity. An exploratory examination of the relationship

between these school structural characteristics and norms

and within-school racial climate gaps is described in this

study’s research questions #3 and #4, respectively.

School Norms of Respect for Diversity

When schools foster an appreciation and respect for student

diversity and culture—for example by encouraging stu-

dents of all racial and cultural backgrounds to enroll in

rigorous courses and using instructional materials that

reflect the culture—students may feel safer and more

supported, especially students of color, like Black and

Hispanic students. Mattison and Aber (2007), using a

sample of Black and White high school students in a

Midwest town, found reductions in the Black–White dis-

cipline gap in schools with high levels of racial fairness,

reported by students. Datnow and Cooper (1997), in a

qualitative investigation of Black students attending afflu-

ent, predominantly White high schools, found that

involvement in cultural groups and clubs such as Black

Student Unions, Black Awareness clubs, and multicultural

alliances was related to a greater sense of school con-

nectedness. Chang and Le (2010) found that Hispanic

middle school students were more empathic to their peers

when they felt their schools respected cultural diversity

(e.g., providing opportunities to learn about diverse cul-

tures and ethnic groups in the curriculum and work with

diverse students in school activities). Tan (1999) found that

Hispanic middle and high school students who felt that

their culture was respected by other students and teachers

reported more interest in school. Bellmore et al. (2012),

using a racially diverse sample of grade-9 students, found

that students, in general, reported less racial discrimination

in schools that had strong norms of respect for racial

diversity, evident, for example, in celebrations of traditions

and music of various cultures and teachers encouraging

collaboration among students of diverse cultural groups.

Two experimental studies found that interventions

intended to improve a school’s culture of respect for

diversity also improved students’ perceptions of school

climate. One intervention that involved a racially and

socioeconomically diverse sample of grade-8 students in a

10-week racism and prejudice awareness program was

found to improve student relationships and decrease

fighting and racist attitudes (Schultz et al. 2001). The

second intervention involved enrolling students in an urban

middle school who self-identified as being of African

descent in an African and African American culture class

and was found to improve participants’ sense of school

connectedness (Lewis et al. 2006).

Teacher Race

Research that examines the association of teacher race and

school climate outcomes is scant, but there is evidence to

suggest a connection between teacher race and student aca-

demic engagement. Goldsmith (2004) used a nationally

representative sample of grade-8 students to show that a

higher proportion of Black and Hispanic teachers in a school

was associated with more positive attitudes toward school

for Black and Hispanic students but was not significantly

associated with the attitudes of White students. Using a

sample of Texas school districts, Meier et al. (1999) found

that, after controlling for poverty rate and expenditures,

districts with more Black and Hispanic teachers had higher

levels of student academic performance, both for racial

minority students and for White students.

Student–Teacher Ratio

Research has shown that lower student–teacher ratios are

associated with lower frequencies of student victimization

in elementary and middle school (Bradshaw et al. 2009;

Khoury-Kassabri et al. 2004). In schools with large

Fig. 1 Conceptual model of the relationship between within-school

racial disparities in school climate experiences and academic

achievement. Note Concepts or linkages addressed by each of the

study research questions are noted

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 255

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student–teacher ratios, it can be difficult for teachers to

effectively manage student behavior, which may in turn

provide more opportunities for bullying to occur and

influence students’ perceptions of safety (Koth et al. 2008).

Research has shown that higher student–teacher ratios in

grade 5 are associated with more negative overall student

perceptions of school climate (Mitchell et al. 2010).

Student Racial Composition

The racial composition of a student’s school peer group

may condition her own social behavior, and this condi-

tioning may depend on the student’s own race. For exam-

ple, Voight et al. (2014) found that White urban middle

school students exhibited less prosocial behavior in edu-

cational settings with higher compositions of Black stu-

dents but Black students’ behavior was unaffected by racial

composition. Thus, the proportion of Black students in the

setting was related to the racial disparities in student

prosocial behavior.

Student Socioeconomic Status

Waters et al. (2010), using a sample of grade-8 Australian

students, found that in schools with more poor students,

students felt less connected to school. A number of studies

have shown that, across diverse contexts, students experi-

ence more violence and victimization in schools with

higher poverty rates (Bevans et al. 2007; Bradshaw et al.

2009; Khoury-Kassabri et al. 2004; Koth et al. 2008).

Location

Where a school is located may have some bearing on how

students of different races experience climate. Rural

schools have been shown to have lower rates of student

victimization and higher student reports of feeling safe than

schools in suburban and urban locales, respectively

(Bradshaw et al. 2009).

When schools maintain a norm of respect for diversity,

Black and Hispanic students may have more equitable

experiences of safety, connectedness, positive relation-

ships with adults, and engagement, compared to their

White peers. Further, a number of school structural

characteristics have been linked to students’ general

perceptions and experiences of school climate. While

many of these latter studies did not examine the moder-

ating effects of student race, they point to school struc-

tural characteristics that could be explored for their

equity-enhancing value. The conceptual relationships

between school norms and structural characteristics and

within-school racial disparities in school climate experi-

ences are shown in Fig. 2.

Rationale and Research Questions

As the above review shows, there is limited evidence for

racial gaps in school climate experiences within individual

schools. A novel contribution of the present study is that it

uses a large sample of middle schools to provide broader

evidence for within-school racial climate gaps. Another

contribution of this study is that it directly examines

whether a school’s racial climate gap is associated with its

racial achievement gap. Finally, there is some evidence that

suggests how characteristics of schools affect students’

experiences of school climate, but little of that evidence

shows whether such effects are different for students of

different races. A final contribution of this study is that is

examines how school norms and structural characteristics

correlate with the school’s racial climate gap. Each of these

contributions add to the literature on school climate. The

specific research questions addressed in this study are:

1. What, if any, racial school climate gap exists within

middle schools?

2. Are within-school racial climate gaps associated with

within-school racial achievement gaps?

3. What school structural characteristics are correlated

with the magnitude of a school’s racial climate gap?

4. Is a school’s norm of respect for diversity associated

with the magnitude of its racial climate gap?

Method

Sample

This study relied on student and staff survey data and state

administrative data from 754 middle schools in California

that administered both the California Healthy Kids Survey

to grade-7 students and the California School Climate

Survey to teachers in either the 2008–2009 or 2009–2010

school year.3 In those years, 187,120 grade-7 students and

17,646 teachers completed the survey. A single adminis-

tration of the surveys was required of California public

schools during the 2008–2009 to 2009–2010 period as a

condition of Safe and Drug-Free School and Communities

(Title IV) funding and the state tobacco prevention pro-

gram. The sample middle schools comprised approxi-

mately half of all middle schools in the state and reflected

similar student demographics, on average, compared to all

middle schools statewide. In one large district, a sample of

the entire population of schools completed the survey, and

other schools did not administer the survey due to not

3 Schools in California typically complete the surveys every other

year.

256 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

123

receiving Title IV or tobacco prevention funding, being

exempt from this requirement under the Rural Education

Achievement Program, or for unknown reasons.

From this group of 754 schools, two separate analytic

samples were employed to examine the Black–White and

Hispanic–White school climate gaps, respectively. The

inclusion criteria for each of these samples required that a

school (a) have at least 10 student survey responses from

each of the two relevant racial subgroup categories,

(b) have a significant number of students of each of the two

relevant racial subgroup categories based on federal

reporting regulations for the Elementary and Secondary

Education Act, and (c) have at least 5 staff survey

responses. Forty-six middle schools were retained in the

Black–White school climate gap analytic sample (de-

scriptive statistics for these school are in shown in Table 1)

and 420 middle schools in the Hispanic–White school

climate gap analytic sample (Table 2). Within these

schools, only Black and White grade-7 students

(n = 3805) were retained in the Black–White school cli-

mate gap analytic sample, and only Hispanic and White

grade-7 students (n = 70,526) were retained in the His-

panic–White school climate gap analytic sample. The

number of respondents to the teacher survey in these two

analytic subsamples of schools were 1331 and 9942,

respectively.

Measures

This study relied on three sources of data: (a) the California

Healthy Kids Survey for grade-7 students; (b) the

California School Climate Survey for staff; and (c) publi-

cally available school administrative data from the Cali-

fornia Department of Education (CDE). Survey data were

identified by school identification number but not at the

student level; thus, individual-level student survey data was

linked with school-level aggregated staff survey data and

school-level administrative data.

Student Race

Race was operationalized via a series of binary variables

for Black, Hispanic, and White, scored based on students’

self-reported race and ethnicity (i.e., non-Hispanic Black,

Hispanic, or non-Hispanic White) on the California Heal-

thy Kids Survey.

School Climate

Recent psychometric evidence (Hanson and Voight 2014)

suggests that the California Healthy Kids Survey validly

and reliably measures three school climate factors exam-

ined in this study: (a) safety and connectedness (6 items,

Cronbach’s a = 0.80); (b) adult-student relationships (6

items, a = 0.85); and (c) opportunities for meaningful

student participation (3 items, a = 0.68). Students use 4-

and 5-item strength-of-agreement Likert-type response

scales to indicate their personal feelings of safety and

connectedness at schools (for example, one items reads, ‘‘I

feel like I am a part of this school’’), the quality of their

personal relationships with adults at school (for example,

‘‘At my school, there is a teacher or some other adult who

Fig. 2 Conceptual model of the

relationship between school

structural characteristics and

norms and within-school racial

disparities in school climate

experiences. Note Concepts or

linkages addressed by each of

the study research questions are

noted

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 257

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really cares about me’’), and their perceptions of opportu-

nities to personally engage in the life of the school (for

example, ‘‘At school, I help decide things like class

activities or rules’’; see Hanson and Voight 2014 for all

item wordings and technical details). For the present study,

individual students’ scores were standardized (i.e., M = 0,

SD = 1) relative to all 187,120 grade-7 students in the 754

schools that completed the survey in 2008–2009 and

2009–2010.

Academic Achievement

School and student racial subgroup academic performance

were measured using California’s Academic Performance

Table 1 Black–White sample demographics

Student level (n = 13,460 surveyed) M Range

Safety and connectedness, overall -0.17 -3.81–1.82

Safety and connectedness, Black students -0.33 -3.37–1.82

Safety and connectedness, White students -0.12 -3.81–1.77

Adult-student relationships, overall -0.07 -3.46–1.77

Adult-student relationships, Black students -0.06 -2.82–1.52

Adult-student relationships, White students 0.03 -2.73–1.77

Opportunities for participation, overall -0.11 -2.12–2.87

Opportunities for participation, Black students -0.07 -2.12–2.87

Opportunities for participation, White students -0.06 -2.12–2.87

%

Race

Asian or Pacific Islander (%) 13.6

Black (%) 12.3

Hispanic (%) 39.9

Mixed race (%) 8.2

White (%) 16.0

Other (%) 10.3

Male (%) 48.2

School level (n = 46) M Range

Student characteristics

Black-White achievement gap 112.8 -2–301

Academic performance 764.2 675–890

Percent Black students 18.3 9–33

Percent Hispanic students 39.3 15–68

Percent White students 25.0 8–54

Percent low-income 53.1 12–83

Staff characteristics

School-wide respect for diversity 0.01 -0.83–0.90

Percent Black staff 7.5 0–26.9

Percent Hispanic staff 10.1 0–26.2

Student–teacher ratio 20.1 11.7–25.3

%

Location

Rural 23.9

Suburban 50.0

Urban 26.1

Table 2 Hispanic–white sample demographics

Student level (n = 109,386 surveyed) M Range

Safety and connectedness, overall 0.02 -3.81–1.85

Safety and connectedness, Hispanic students 0.00 -3.58–1.82

Safety and connectedness, White students 0.12 -3.81–1.85

Adult-student relationships, overall 0.01 -3.46–1.77

Adult-student relationships, Hispanic students -0.06 -3.46–1.77

Adult-student relationships, White students 0.13 -3.46–1.77

Opportunities for participation, overall 0.01 -2.12–2.87

Opportunities for participation, Hispanic

students

-0.09 -2.12–2.87

Opportunities for participation, White students 0.10 -2.12–2.87

%

Race

Asian or Pacific Islander (%) 12.3

Black (%) 4.8

Hispanic (%) 40.7

Mixed race (%) 7.0

White (%) 23.8

Other (%) 11.4

Male (%) 48.7

School level (n = 420) M Range

Student characteristics

Hispanic–White achievement gap 94.9 -46–267

Academic performance 801.8 625–967

Percent Black students 5.9 0–33

Percent Hispanic students 40.4 9–86

Percent White students 39.0 8–80

Percent low-income 43.3 0–100

Staff characteristics

School-wide respect for diversity 0.01 -3.43–1.13

Percent Black staff 2.4 0–26.9

Percent Hispanic staff 9.6 0–42.0

Student–teacher ratio 20.7 11.7–29.1

%

Location

Rural 18.6

Suburban 47.3

Urban 34.0

258 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

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Index (API), which is a single number ranging from 200 to

1000 that reflects average student performance across

multiple content areas of the California Standards Tests

(CST), the annual statewide standardized test. In 2010, the

statewide average school API was 765 for grades 7 and 8,

according to the CDE (2011), and the student subgroup

averages for Black, Hispanic, and White students were 677,

706, and 842 respectively. Each school has its own student

subgroup API for each numerically significant subgroup.

For each school in each analytic sample, a school-level

achievement gap was calculated for Black–White students

(M = 114.1) and Hispanic–White students (M = 94.7) that

represented the difference in API between the two sub-

groups (i.e., White API minus Black API and White API

minus Hispanic API).

School Norms of Respect for Diversity

A single score representing norms of respect for diversity

was calculated for each sample school by averaging all

teacher survey responses to six strength-of-agreement

Likert-type items regarding the degree to which the school

encourages students of all races to enroll in rigorous

courses, prioritizes closing the racial achievement gap,

emphasizes culturally relevant instructional materials, has

staff examine cultural biases, and fosters an overall

appreciation and respect for student diversity. For example,

one item reads, ‘‘This school emphasizes using instruc-

tional materials that reflect the culture or ethnicity of its

students.’’ Teacher survey responses were standardized

relative to all 17,646 teachers in the sample prior to being

aggregated to the school level.

School Structural Characteristics

School demographic information was extracted from the

CDE’s California Basic Educational Data System, includ-

ing the percentage of students in a school who were Black,

Hispanic, and eligible for free or reduced-priced meals (a

proxy for poverty), the student–teacher ratio, the percent-

age of teachers who were Black and Hispanic, and the

geographic location of the school (i.e., rural, suburban, or

urban).

Analytic Approach

A series of multilevel regression models were estimated in

Stata 13 to examine within-school, shared variance in

students’ reports of school climate experience and explore

how various school characteristics explain this within-

school variance (Raudenbush and Bryk 2002). Separate

models were estimated for the Black–White and the His-

panic–White analytic samples. Students’ school climate

experiences were modeled as dependent variables. Prior to

analysis, all school-level covariates were standardized

within their respective analytic sample to allow for a

comparison of regression coefficients across covariates

(Rabe-Hesketh and Skrondal 2012).

To test the existence of racial school climate gaps within

schools, we first estimated a one-level OLS regression to

determine the overall statewide school climate gap, irre-

spective of school membership using the equation:

yi ¼ b0 þ b1Racei þ ri ð1Þ

where y is alternatively, in separate models, the reported (a)

safety and connectedness, (b) adult-student relationships,

or (c) opportunities for participation of student i. The

coefficient b1 is the model-implied overall statewide gap in

the outcome between White students and either Black or

Hispanic students. To determine the average within-school

racial gaps, random-slope multilevel models were esti-

mated that allowed school-specific racial gaps to vary

across schools.

yij ¼ b0j þ b1jRaceij þ rij ð2Þ

b0j ¼ c00 þ l0j

b1j ¼ c10 þ l1j

In the multilevel Eq. (2), the coefficients are subscripted

with a j to indicate that each school j has a unique racial

gap. The model-implied mean within-school gap is indi-

cated by c10 in the level-2 equation. The proportion of the

overall statewide racial school climate gap that is attribu-

table to within-school disparities can be estimated by

dividing c10 in Eq. (2) by b1 in Eq. (1).

To address the second research question, another set of

multilevel models were estimated to determine the rela-

tionship between the model-implied racial climate gap, b1,

of school j and its racial achievement gap. School-level

covariates indicating the racial achievement gap, AchGap,

and the overall academic performance, Ach, were added to

the level-2 equations that solve for the intercept and slope:

b0j ¼ c00 þ c01AchGapj þ c02Achj þ l0j ð3Þ

b1j ¼ c10 þ c11AchGapj þ c12Achj þ l1j

The coefficient c11 indicates the model-implied association

between a school’s racial school climate and achievement

gaps, controlling for the overall academic performance of

the school.

To address the third research question, another set of

multilevel models were estimated to determine the rela-

tionship between the model-implied racial climate gap, b1,

of school j and its structural characteristics. Six school-

level covariates were added to the level-2 equations, indi-

cating the percentage of students in a school who were (1)

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 259

123

Black or Hispanic (depending on the analytic sample) and

(2) low-income, the (3) student–teacher ratio, the (4) per-

centage of teachers in the school who were Black or His-

panic (depending on the analytic sample), and binary

variables indicating whether the school was in (5) a sub-

urban location or (6) a rural location (urban location was

the reference category).

b0j ¼ c00 þ X6

k¼1

c0kStructurekj þ l0j

b1j ¼ c10 þ X6

k¼1

c1kStructurekj þ l1j

ð4Þ

Each of the six coefficients, c11 through c16, provide an

estimate of the relationship between an aspect of school

structure and the racial school climate gap, controlling for

other aspects of school structure.

In the final set of models, a school-level covariate

indicating norms of respect for diversity was added to the

level-2 Eq. (4) to address the fourth research question. The

coefficient associated with norms of respect for diversity

estimated the relationship between the magnitude of a

school’s racial climate gap and its norm of respect for

diversity, controlling for school structural characteristics.

Due to the standardization procedures described above,

coefficients estimated by these multilevel models can be

treated as standardized regression coefficient effect sizes.

We further report the percentage of the overall cross-school

variance in racial school climate gaps that is explained by

each set of covariates. Multilevel models were estimating

using a maximum likelihood approach. There were no

missing data on the school-level covariates and less than

1 % of cases had missing data on student survey constructs.

This lack of missing data may be due to the fact that

schools are required to administer the surveys, as noted

above, and typically devote instructional time to allow

students to complete them.

Results

The results of the study analyses are reported below,

organized according to the four research questions. Stan-

dardized regression coefficients and p values are reported

in parentheses (‘‘n.s.’’ indicates that the coefficient was not

significant at the p .05 level).

Research Question #1: Do Racial School Climate

Gap Exists Within Particular Schools?

The analyses showed that, for both racial comparisons and

for most school climate dimensions, significant gaps exis-

ted within schools (Table 3). In schools with significant

numbers of both Black and White students, Black students

reported, on average, lower levels of safety and connect-

edness (c = 0.154, p 0.001) and adult-student relation-

ships (c = 0.077, p 0.05). There was significant

variation across the 46 sample schools in the magnitude of

the Black–White gap in safety and connectedness

(SD = 0.117). However, the within-school gap in adult-

student relationships did not vary across schools

(SD 0.001), suggesting that in the 46 sample schools, the

Black–White gap was more or less steady at 0.077. On

average across the Black–White subsample, there was no

significant within-school gap in opportunities for mean-

ingful participation between Black and White students.

However, there was substantial variation in this subgroup

difference across the 46 sample schools (SD = 0.088). In

other words, the average Black–White gap in opportunities

for meaningful participation across the 46 schools was not

significantly different from zero, but the cross-school

variation in the gap suggests that in certain schools it was

larger, smaller, or reversed direction.

The results showed an overall statewide gap in experi-

ences of safety and connectedness (b = 0.202, p 0.001)

and adult-student relationships (b = 0.090, p 0.001)

between Black and White students and suggested that these

overall gaps were due more to disparities within schools

(76 and 86 %, respectively) rather than to inequalities

between schools segregated by race.

In schools with significant numbers of both Hispanic and

White students, Hispanic students reported lower levels of

safety and connectedness (c = 0.049, p 0.001), adult-

student relationships (c = 0.151, p 0.001), and opportu-

nities for meaningful participation (c = 0.155, p 0.001).

There was substantial variation across the 420 sample

schools in the magnitude of the Hispanic–White gap in safety

and connectedness (SD = 0.067) and adult-student rela-

tionships (SD = 0.079). However the within-school gap in

perceived opportunities for meaningful participation did not

vary across schools (SD 0.001), suggesting that the His-

panic–White gap was more or less constant at 0.155 across

all of the sample schools.

The results further showed overall statewide Hispanic–

White gaps in adult-student relationships (b = 0.182,

p.001) and opportunities for meaningful participation

(b = 0.190, p.001) and suggested that these overall gaps

were due more to within-school (83 and 82 %, respectively)

rather than between-school disparities. The results further

showed an overall statewide Hispanic–White gap in safety and

connectedness (b = 0.130, p.001); however, the results

suggested that this gap was due more to differences between

schools, which are often segregated by race (37 % of the

overall statewide gap was due to within-school disparities).

Because the subsequent analyses attempted to explain

variation in within-school racial climate gaps using school-

260 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

123

level covariates, those gaps that did not vary across schools

were not included (i.e., Black–White gap in adult-student

relationships and Hispanic–White gap in student

participation).

Research Question #2: Are Schools’ Racial Climate

Gaps Associated with Their Racial Achievement

Gaps?

The first set of multilevel regression models included

school racial achievement gaps and overall school aca-

demic performance as predictors of within-school racial

climate gaps. In general, the results showed that there is a

significant relationship between the racial climate gap and

racial achievement gap in a middle school. Holding con-

stant overall academic performance, schools with larger

Black–White achievement gaps had larger Black–White

gaps in perceived safety and connectedness (c = 0.095,

p 0.05) and opportunities for participation (c = 0.084,

p 0.05; see Table 4). This suggests that in a school with

no Black–White achievement gap—equity between the two

groups—there would be no significant difference in reports

of safety and connectedness between Black and White

students (see Fig. 3), and Black students would report

significantly more opportunities for meaningful participa-

tion compared to their White peers by 0.15 standard

deviation units.

The same general findings, with lesser magnitudes, were

evident for Hispanic–White disparities (see Table 5).

Again, holding constant overall academic performance,

schools with larger Hispanic–White achievement gaps had

larger Hispanic–White gaps in perceived safety and con-

nectedness (c = 0.029, p 0.001) and adult-student rela-

tionships (c = 0.025, p 0.01). This suggests that in a

school with no Hispanic–White achievement gap, there

would be no significant difference in reports of safety and

connectedness between Hispanic and White students, and

the gap in adult-student relationships between Hispanic and

White students would be reduced by half that in an average

school (Fig. 4).

Research Question #3: What School Structural

Characteristics are Associated with the Magnitude

of its Racial Climate Gap?

The third set of multilevel regression models added a series

of school-level structural variables to the model to help

explain variation in within-school racial climate gaps. In

sum, few structural characteristics were significantly rela-

ted to either the Black–White or Hispanic–White school

climate gaps. Schools with more low-income students

(c = -0.091, p 0.05) and larger student–teacher ratios

(c = -0.084, p 0.05) had smaller Black–White gaps in

safety and connectedness. Point estimates suggested that,

with all other structural characteristics fixed at the sample

mean, there is no significant gap in safety and connected-

ness between Black and White students in schools where

more than 60 % of students are low-income or where the

student–teacher ratio is 23 or higher. A higher concentra-

tion of low-income students is associated with reduced

safety and connectedness for both Black and White stu-

dents, but this negative association is stronger among

White students. This suggests that, in general, Black–White

gaps in safety and connectedness are more prominent in

higher income, highly staffed schools.

As with the Black–White sample, schools that serve

more low-income students had smaller Hispanic–White

gaps in safety and connectedness (c = -0.045, p 0.05).

Point estimates suggested that in schools where more than

52 % of students are low-income, there is no significant

Hispanic–White gap. As with the Black–White sample, a

higher concentration of low-income students is associated

Table 3 Within-school means and standard deviations of racial school climate gaps (standard errors in parentheses and percent of total gap

attributable to within- versus between-school disparities in italics)

Safety and connectedness Adult-student relationships Opportunities for participation

M SD M SD M SD

Black-White within-school

gap (N = 46 schools)

0.154***

(0.039)

76 %

0.117 0.077*

(0.034)

86 %

.001 0.008

(0.036)

n/a

0.088

Hispanic–White within-school

gap (N = 420 schools)

0.049***

(0.009)

37 %

0.067 0.151***

(0.009)

83 %

0.079 0.155***

(0.008)

82 %

.001

Only schools with a significant number of Black and White students and Hispanic and White students, respectively, were included in the two sets

of analyses

* p 0.05; ** p 0.01; *** p 0.001

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 261

123

with reduced safety and connectedness for both Hispanic

and White students, but this negative association is stronger

among White students. Further, rural schools had smaller

Hispanic–White gaps in safety and connectedness than did

urban schools (c = – 0.019, p 0.05). This suggests that,

in general, Hispanic–White gaps in safety and connected-

ness are more prominent in higher income, urban schools.

Because the Black–White sample was smaller (46

schools versus 420 schools in the Hispanic–White sample),

models based on that sample had less power to detect

significant school-level effects. For instance, despite not

reaching statistical significance, the estimated effect sizes

for the rural covariate on gaps in safety and connectedness

was actually larger for the Black–White (c = – 0.056,

n.s.) than for the Hispanic–White sample.

Research Question #4: Is a School’s Norm

of Respect for Diversity Associated

with the Magnitude of its Racial Climate Gap?

A stronger norm of respect for diversity in a school, as

reported by teachers, was related to smaller Black–White

school climate gaps (c = – 0.067 for safety and connect-

edness; c = – 0.069 for opportunities for meaningful

participation), but while these associations approached

statistical significance, they did not meet the p 0.05

criterion. In the Hispanic–White sample, the results sug-

gested, paradoxically, that schools with higher norms of

respect for diversity had larger Hispanic–White gaps in

safety and connectedness (c = 0.018, p 0.05), control-

ling for school structural characteristics. Of note, school

norms of respect for diversity have a significant positive

relationship with the reported safety and connectedness of

both Hispanic and White students, but because the rela-

tionship is significantly stronger for White students, higher

Table 4 Multilevel regression results with random-slopes for Black-White school climate gaps and school-level covariates (n = 3798 students

in 46 schools)

Safety and connectedness Opportunities for participation

1. Within-school Black-White gap in

outcome

0.141***

(0.037)

0.145***

(0.038)

0.149***

(0.035)

0.002

(0.036)

-0.002

(0.037)

0.002 (0.035)

1a. School Black-White achievement

gap

0.092*

(0.037)

0.085*

(0.036)

1b. School overall academic

performance

0.056

(0.038)

0.063

(0.037)

1c. School-wide respect for diversity -0.067 (0.037) -0.069 (0.037)

1d. School percent Black students -0.040

(0.048)

-0.042 (0.045) 0.017 (0.047) 0.013 (0.045)

1e. School percent low-income

students

-0.091*

(0.044)

-0.114

(0.042)**

-0.061

(0.043)

-0.084

(0.041)*

1f. School student–teacher ratio -0.084*

(0.041)

-0.101 (0.039)* -0.043

(0.040)

-0.059 (0.039)

1g. School percent Black teachers 0.085 (0.044) 0.083 (0.042) -0.005

(0.043)

-0.003 (0.042)

1h. Suburban location -0.012

(0.049)

-0.014 (0.046) 0.006 (0.048) 0.002 (0.045)

1i. Rural location -0.056

(0.047)

-0.056 (0.044) -0.020

(0.046)

-0.024 (0.043)

19 % 1 % 58 % 15 % 1 % 67 %

Not shown in the results table are main effect coefficients for variables 1a–1i

* p 0.05; ** p 0.01; *** p 0.001

-.4 -.3

-.2 -.1

0 .1

.2 .3

.4

S tu

de nt

p er

ce pt

io ns

o f

sa fe

ty a

nd c

on ne

ct ed

ne ss

0 100 200 300

School Black-White achievement gap

White students Black students

Fig. 3 Relationship between school Black–White achievement gap

and student report of safety and connectedness, by race

262 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

123

norms of respect for diversity in a school are actually

associated with larger subgroup gaps.

Discussion

The findings from this study problematize the concept of a

‘‘school climate’’ by showing that different student racial

subgroups within a particular middle school may have

significantly different experiences of safety, connectedness,

relationships with adults, and opportunities for participa-

tion. In middle schools with significant numbers of Black

and White students, Black students, on average, reported

poorer safety and connectedness and adult-student rela-

tionships than White students. In middle schools with

significant numbers of Hispanic and White students, His-

panic students, on average, reported poorer safety and

connectedness, adult-student relationships, and opportuni-

ties for meaningful participation. Just as previous research

has illustrated racial gaps in achievement and discipline,

this study shows that students’ experiences of school cli-

mate may also be function of race. Discussing climate as a

whole school phenomenon, therefore, may obscure

important inequities. To borrow a term from the atmo-

spheric sciences, school climate may better be understood

as a series of ‘‘microclimates’’ within a school that are

organized around student identity. For example, schools

may, at once, create an environment characterized by

Table 5 Multilevel regression results with random-slopes for Hispanic–White school climate gaps and school-level covariates (n = 70,427

students in 420 schools)

Safety and connectedness Adult-student relationships

1. Within-school Hispanic–White gap in outcome 0.032***

(0.009)

0.030***

(0.009)

0.029***

(0.009)

0.140***

(0.009)

0.147***

(0.010)

0.146***

(0.010)

1a. School Hispanic–White achievement gap 0.030***

(0.009)

0.025**

(0.009)

1b. School academic performance 0.047***

(0.009)

-0.008

(0.009)

1c. School-wide respect for diversity 0.018*

(0.009)

0.016

(0.010)

1d. School percent Hispanic students -0.018

(0.016)

-0.018

(0.016)

0.026

(0.017)

0.025

(0.016)

1e. School percent low-income students -0.045*

(0.014)

-0.042**

(0.014)

-0.016

(0.015)

-0.014

(0.015)

1f. School student–teacher ratio -0.018

(0.009)

-0.018

(0.009)

-0.010

(0.010)

-0.010

(0.010)

1g. School percent Hispanic teachers -0.004

(0.012)

-0.004

(0.012)

0.000

(0.012)

0.000

(0.012)

1h. Suburban location -0.009

(0.010)

-0.008

(0.010)

-0.007

(0.011)

-0.006

(0.011)

1i. Rural location -0.019

(0.009)*

-0.016

(0.010)

-0.010

(0.010)

-0.008

(0.010)

Percentage of overall cross-school variance in Hispanic–White gap

explained by school-level covariates

13 % 27 % 21 % 8 % 8 % 6 %

Not shown in the results table are main effect coefficients for variables 1a–1i

* p 0.05; ** p 0.01; *** p 0.001

-.4 -.3

-.2 -.1

0 .1

.2 .3

.4

St ud

en t p

er ce

pt io

ns o

f sa

fe ty

a nd

c on

ne ct

ed ne

ss

-100 0 100 200 300 School Hispanic-White achievement gap

White students Hispanic students

Fig. 4 Relationship between school Hispanic–White achievement

gap and student report of safety and connectedness, by race

Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267 263

123

safety and connectedness for White students and one

characterized by lack of safety and disconnectedness for

Black students.

This study also shows that Black–White gaps in safety

and connectedness and opportunities for participation and

Hispanic–White gaps in safety and connectedness and

adult-student relationships vary across middle schools.

That is, these gaps are larger or smaller from school to

school. In middle schools where these gaps are larger, the

racial achievement gap is also larger. In middle schools

where these gaps are smaller, the racial achievement gap

is smaller. There is a significant association between

racial disparities in achievement and climate within a

given school. While causality cannot be inferred from

these cross-sectional analyses, the results point to the

racial school climate gap as a potential source of inequi-

ties in achievement. This finding represents evidence

contrary to the ‘‘cultural’’ explanation (e.g., that minority

peer groups reward disengagement or that certain racial

identities are not conducive to valuing academic success)

for the racial achievement gap, suggesting instead that

middle school environments are systematically perceived

as less welcoming, nurturing, and engaging for students of

color.

Why might some middle schools have larger racial cli-

mate gaps than others? Few of the school structural char-

acteristics examined in this study helped explain cross-

school variation in climate gaps. The socioeconomic status

of students, student–teacher ratio, and geographic location

may offer some explanation. While there was evidence for

a racial gap in safety and connectedness in low-poverty

schools, the gap was insignificant in poorer, under-re-

sourced schools. In these latter schools, results suggested

that all students, regardless of race, had more or less

equally low reports of safety and connectedness. An

increase in socioeconomic and human resources to a school

appear to benefit all students’ feelings of safety and con-

nectedness, but White students seem to benefit more than

their Black and Hispanic peers.

Similarly, all students appear to have more positive

experiences of school climate in schools that create a

strong norm of respect for diversity by prioritizing

closing the achievement gap, training staff in multicul-

tural competencies, and reflecting students’ ethnic back-

ground in course curricula. However, the present results

suggest that White students benefit more from this norm

than Hispanic students, thus widening that racial gap in

felt safety and connectedness. This suggests that the

activities that many schools undertake with the express

purpose of closing racial gaps and appreciating diversity

may ‘‘lift all boats’’ but may not help students of color,

in particular.

Limitations

This study is descriptive and exploratory, and due to its

cross-sectional design, its findings are insufficient evidence

to draw casual conclusions regarding model variables. The

study results would not allow one to assert that a racial

climate gap causes a racial achievement gap or that certain

school structures and norms cause a racial climate gap.

There are potential third-variable explanations for the

associations demonstrated in the study, as are there ques-

tions regarding the directionality of the associations.

Participating schools in this study were solely from

California, which has a unique racial, ethnic, and cultural

landscape that may limit the generalizability of these

findings to other contexts. Further, this study makes no

distinction among various Black or among various His-

panic cultures or national origins, all of which may have

different school experiences. Previous research has shown

that Mexican–Americans, for example, had lower math and

reading standardized test scores than other Hispanic stu-

dents (Eamon 2005).

Additionally, norms of respect for diversity were mea-

sured by teacher report only, and students’ perspectives of

norms of respect for diversity are not captured. Further-

more, regarding norms of respect for diversity, teachers

were not asked to specify which races, ethnicities, or cul-

tures are the focus of curriculum, professional develop-

ment, or other interventions. Thus, a teacher could report a

strong norm of respect for diversity in his or her school

while not considering a particular subgroup like Hispanic

students.

Finally, the internal consistency of the opportunities for

meaningful participation construct is slightly below the

commonly accepted cutoff for good reliability attributed to

Nunnally (1978), although this construct was also made up

of the fewest items, and a small number of items in a scale

strongly reduces alpha values (Cortina 1993).

Implications

Implications for Future Research

In light of this study’s findings, future research on school

climate may consider whether school climate is usefully

measured as a school-average of individual student reports,

the approach most commonly employed (Henry, in press).

This study shows that there are significant differences in

school climate experiences among various student sub-

groups within a school; thus, simply averaging all students’

reports to create a single school-level score may obscure

important information regarding unique subgroup climates.

264 Am J Community Psychol (2015) 56:252–267

123

Researchers may consider treating student subgroups as a

level of analysis, apart from schools or classrooms. This

study is also unable to explain how much of the racial

climate gap is a function of the different ways in which

students of different races may interpret their school

environment versus objective differences in treatment of

students of different races. A more in-depth qualitative

investigation of the experiences of students in mixed race

schools could contribute in this area.

Furthermore, there are still many questions regarding

why some schools have more pronounced racial school

climate gaps than others. What explains this variation

across schools and what can be done to close racial school

climate gaps? Future exploratory research could consider

other characteristics of schools that might explain cross-

school variation in racial. Experimental and quasi-experi-

mental research could assess the effectiveness of school

interventions in reducing within-school climate gaps. For

example, a sample of schools could be divided randomly

into a treatment and control group to test whether a

restorative justice program reduces disparities in experi-

ences of safety and connectedness between Black and

White students in the treatment schools.

Practical Implications

There is increased educational policy interest in school

climate of late, at the federal, state, and local levels. Pol-

icymakers are encouraging schools to address issues like

safety, connectedness, adult-student relationships, and

meaningful student participation, and many of these ini-

tiatives require schools to measure their climate using

student, staff, and parent surveys. The results of this study

suggest that such measurement efforts would benefit from

reporting survey results disaggregated by student sub-

groups to allow educators to assess racial (and other forms

of difference) gaps in school climate. It would also be

prudent for the evaluation and monitoring requirements of

school climate policies to consider student subgroup indi-

cators alongside whole school indicators of climate. Fur-

thermore, the activities that schools implement to improve

climate should be sensitive to student diversity. For

example, a common school climate improvement inter-

vention involves ‘‘universal’’ instruction in social skills

(Osher et al. 2010); the present study suggests that edu-

cators should carefully consider how responsive such uni-

versal interventions are to the cultural experiences of all

student subgroups and whether to adjust interventions

accordingly. As the results show, this latter point may be of

particular concern for more affluent schools. Finally,

schools that undertake efforts to address ‘‘respect for

diversity’’ should be sensitive to and inclusive of all stu-

dent subgroups that they serve.

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Development During Adolescence: The Impact of Stage-Environment Fit on

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Schools as Developmental Contexts During Adolescence

Jacquelynne S. Eccles University of Michigan

Robert W. Roeser Portland State University

Considerable strides have been made in the past decade in recognizing the centrality of the cultural context of schooling to adolescent development. In this review, adopting a developmental systems conceptualization of schooling, we focus on selected new research findings from the past decade regarding how (a) teachers, curricular tasks, and classroom envi- ronments; (b) aspects of the school as an organization; and (c) district policies and practices can play an instrumental role in adolescents’ intellectual and social – emotional development.

Adolescents spend more time in school than any other setting except their bed. It is the place where they are exposed to their culture’s font of knowledge, hang out with their friends, engage in extracurricular activities that can shape their identities, and prepare for their future. Consequently, experiences at school influence every aspect of development during ado- lescence, ranging from the breadth and depth of their intellectual capital to their psychological well-being to the nature of peer influences on their development (Wigfield, Eccles, Schiefele, Roeser, & Davis-Kean, 2006). Some youth thrive at schoolFenjoying and benefitting from most of their experiences there; others muddle along and cope as best they can with the stress and demands of the moment; and still others find school an alienating and unpleasant place to beFa place that is difficult to enjoy and benefit from. In this paper, we summarize some of the major research initiatives and findings of the last decade related to the many ways in which experiences at school might relate to adolescents’ academic and social – emotional development during the second decade of life. Page limitations have forced us to cite only representative studies. A longer version of this paper can be obtained from the authors.

In our own work, we have conceptualized the context of schooling as one that bridges between the macro-level of society and culture that shapes dis- trict policies and the practices of education from afar, and the middle- and microlevels of the district, the school as an organization, and the classrooms within a school whose people, through daily acts of lead- ership, teaching, and social interaction, affect ado- lescents’ learning and development in immediate ways (see Eccles & Roeser, 2010; Roeser, Urdan, &

Stephens, 2009). Here, we focus and organize our review around the latter two middle and microlevels of the context of schooling, beginning first with contextual features associated with teachers, curric- ular tasks, and classroom environments (Level 1), then moving to the level of the whole school (Level 2), and finally to the level of district policies (Level 3).

LEVEL 1: TEACHERS, TASKS, AND CLASSROOM ENVIRONMENTS

Teachers, with their professional qualifications and identity beliefs as well as their pedagogical skills and curricular choices, represent some of the most proximal influences on the development of adoles- cents in school (Pianta and Hamre, 2009). During the past decade, research in education, psychology, and economics in particular has begun to examine how such teacher factors affect the intellectual develop- ment of youth.

Teacher Qualifications

The importance of teacher qualifications such as certification, majoring in the subject matter one teaches, and years of teaching experience for stu- dents’ achievement and graduation rates has now been demonstrated in many countries (Akiba, Le- Tendre, & Scribner, 2007; Koedel, 2008). Unfortu- nately, the likelihood of having well-qualified teachers differs across socially defined groups in the United States: Large proportions of the teaching staff in poor schools are made up of noncredentialed or unqualified teachers. Substitutes also regularly fill the places of full-time teachers in these schools, staff turnover is great, and there is often little support for English language learners (Fashola, Slavin, Calderon,

r 2011 The Authors

Journal of Research on Adolescence r 2011 Society for Research on Adolescence

DOI: 10.1111/j.1532-7795.2010.00725.x

Requests for reprints should be sent to Jacquelynne S. Eccles, 5271 Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 426 Thompson Ave., Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1258. E-mail: jeccles@ umich.edu

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE, 21(1), 225 – 241

& Duran, 2001; Peske & Haycock, 2006). Thus, poor and language minority students are much more likely to be exposed to unqualified teachers, with implications for their intellectual development. Just how to improve teacher quality, especially in high- concentration poor and ethnic-minority school en- vironments, remains a key challenge in education today and in the upcoming reauthorization of federal educational legislation. From a developmental per- spective, more research is needed on how the quality and qualifications of teachers change as young peo- ple progress through elementary and into middle and high school and the effect that such changes have on individuals’ academic life-paths and issues of educational equity more generally.

Curriculum and Academic Work

The nature of the academic work students are asked to do can affect not only what students come to know about themselves and their world, but also their ca- pacities to pay attention, their interests and passions, and their morals and ethics. Two key aspects of ac- ademic work are particularly important for adoles- cents’ development: (a) the content of the curriculum in terms of its intellectual substance and its consid- eration of global social – historical realities (e.g., Noddings, 2005) and (b) the design of instruction to cultivate interest, meaningfulness, and challenge as well as deep cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement with the material (Fredricks, Blum- enfeld, & Paris, 2004). Both of these characteristics vary in terms of their relative match or mismatch with the developmental needs and capacities of students of different ages, cultures, and social back- grounds. Cross-sectional and longitudinal correla- tional evidence support the notion that academic work that is meaningful to the developmental in- terests and cultural reality of adolescents’ experience promotes motivation to learn and helps to ‘‘bond’’ young people with the institution of school (Bur- chinal, Roberts, Zeisel, & Rowley, 2008; Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000). For instance, boredom in school, low interest, and perceived irrelevance of the curriculum predict diminished engagement and learning and withdrawing from school (Finn, 2006; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine (NRC/IOM), 2004). Minority students in particular report greater interest in courses in which voices, im- ages, role models, and historical experiences of tradi- tionally under-represented groups are represented (Graham & Taylor, 2002). Nonetheless, providing curricula that address developmentally and culturally meaningful topics to a diverse and large school pop-

ulation is an on-going challenge in the United States and many developed nations today, and little attempt has been made to evaluate curricular materials in terms of their meaningfulness to students.

The nature of instruction can also influence ado- lescents’ motivation, engagement, and learning (Deci & Ryan, 2002; Fredricks et al., 2004; Hattie, 2009). Choosing materials that provide an appropriate level of challenge for a given class, designing learning activities that require diverse cognitive operations (e.g., opinion, following routines, memory, compre- hension), structuring lessons so they build on each other in a systematic fashion, using multiple repre- sentations of a given problem, and explicitly teaching students strategies that assist in learning (e.g., asking oneself if one has understood what was just read) are but a few of the design features that can ‘‘scaffold’’ learning and promote interest, engagement, and learning. Work on the role of interest in learning, engagement, and intrinsic motivation highlights the important role of the design of academic tasks (Renninger, 2000). Increased interest is associated with greater engagement in the task and higher levels of mastery of the material (Fredricks et al., 2004; Hattie, 2009; Wigfield et al., 2006). Even more im- portantly, interesting tasks increase intrinsic motiva- tion to do well (Deci & Ryan, 2002) and increase the odds that students develop a strong personal identity as a committed school student (Eccles, 2009).

From a developmental perspective, there is evi- dence that the content and design of academic work may not change over time in ways that reflect the increasing cognitive sophistication, diverse life expe- riences, and identity-linked motivational needs of children and adolescents as they move from the ele- mentary into the secondary school years (Eccles, 2009; Roeser, Peck, & Nasir, 2006; Wigfield et al., 2006). As one indication, middle school children report the highest rates of boredom when doing schoolwork, especially passive work (e.g., listening to lectures) and in particular classes such as social studies, mathe- matics, and science (Larson, 2000). Academic work becomes less, rather than more, complex in terms of the cognitive demands as children move from ele- mentary to junior high school (Juvonen, 2007). It may be that declines in adolescents’ motivation during the transition to secondary school in part reflects aca- demic work that lacks challenge and meaning com- mensurate with children’s cognitive and emotional needs. For instance, Roeser et al. (2000) found that perceived curricular meaningfulness was a positive predictor of longitudinal changes in their valuing of and commitment to school from the beginning to the end of middle school.

226 ECCLES AND ROESER

Teacher Beliefs

Teachers’ professional identity beliefs also matter for their pedagogical decisions and the ways they in- teract with different types of students. Various kinds of teacher beliefs have been posited to mediate the effects of teachers on adolescents’ achievement (Wigfield et al., 2006). For example, secondary school students with teachers who feel efficacious with re- gard to their ability to teach all of the students in their class learn more and feel better about them- selves as learners (Hattie, 2009; Lee & Smith, 2001; NRC/IOM, 2004). In the last decade, Woolfolk and colleagues have extended the concept of teacher efficacy to a broader construct they label teacher optimism (Beard, Hoy, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2010; Knoblauch, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2007) that is composed of three components: confidence in one’s ability to teach the students and in students’ ability to learn and master demanding material and trust of both students and parents. These scholars argue that tea- cher optimism: (1) is a key underlying motivational construct that drives effective teaching and effective relationships between teachers and both students and their parents, (2) operates at both the individual teacher and collective school-wide levels, and (3) can be influenced by school structural characteristics. Most of the existing work has focused on elementary school teachers, but given the established impor- tance of teacher efficacy at the secondary school level and the importance of the issue of adult – adolescent trust for positive relationships, it is quite likely that teacher optimism is important during the secondary school years as well.

Unfortunately, the proportion of teachers with a high sense of teacher efficacy decreases as children move from elementary into secondary school and the proportion of secondary school teachers with a strong sense of teaching efficacy is lower in schools that educate a predominance of poor and minor- ity children (Juvonen, 2007; Juvonen, Nishina, & Graham, 2006; NRC/IOM, 2004; Wigfield et al., 2006). Although this has not been tested systemati- cally yet, it is likely that teacher optimism is also lower among secondary school teachers, particularly middle school and junior high school teachers, than among elementary school teachers.

Expectations and differential treatment. Teachers vary in their expectations for the success of individual students in their classrooms, and these beliefs are related to differential treatment and to differential student outcomes (Hattie, 2009; Jussim & Harber, 2005; NRC/IOM, 2004). In general, the teacher

expectations literature has shown that these effects are small on average but can have substantial cu- mulative negative effects on motivation and achieve- ment for students from stigmatized groups (e.g., girls in math, boys in reading, and African American and Hispanic students in all subject areas). Recent studies have also shown that teachers’ implicit stereotypes about gender and about race predict differential teacher expectations for male versus female students and for students from different ethnic/racial groups (Chalabaev, Sarrazin, Trouilloud, & Jussim, 2009; Van Den Bergh, Denessen, Hornstra, Voeten, & Holland, 2010).

Much of the work related to this phenomenon in the last decade has focused on differential treat- ment based on race or ethnic group and has relied on students’ perceptions of differential treatment. Researchers interested in the relatively poor academic performance of adolescents from stigmatized groups have suggested that discrimination or teachers’ differ- ential treatment of students based on ethnicity, race, or gender may play a role (Brody et al., 2006; Chavous, Rivas-Drake, Smalls, Griffin, & Cogburn, 2008; Graham & Taylor, 2002; Wong, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2003). For instance, in a 2-year longi- tudinal analysis of African American early adoles- cents across 7th – 9th grade of junior high, Wong et al. (2003) found that adolescents who perceived more incidents of racial discrimination with teachers, school staff, and classmates in grade 8 also showed declines in their academic self-concept and teacher- reported grades and increases in their self-reported psychological distress from grade 7 to grade 9. In contrast, anticipated future discrimination appeared to motivate the youth to do their very best so that they would be maximally equipped to deal with future discrimination. Similarly, in a large study of Asian, Mexican, and Central and South American immigrant high school students growing up in major metropolitan areas of the United States, Portes and Rumbaut (2001) found that a majority of youth in their sample reported feeling discriminated at school and in other settings.

Furthermore, some researchers report that stu- dents’ perceptions of racial/ethnic discrimination increase as they move through secondary school. For example, in Greene, Way, and Pahl (2006), African American and Asian American adolescents (but not Puerto Rican students) reported increasing levels of discrimination from adults (and peers in the case of the African Americans) as they moved through high school. Finally, several studies suggest that having a strong positive ethnic identity serves as a protective factor against the potential aversive effects of daily

SCHOOLS AS DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXTS 227

experiences of ethnic discrimination at school (Bur- chinal et al., 2008; Chavous et al., 2008; Harris-Britt, Valrie, Kurtz-Costes, & Rowley, 2007; Wong et al., 2003).

Pedagogical goals and beliefs about the nature of ability. Another key set of teacher beliefs relates to the goals that underlie aspects of their teaching practices. Advocates of Achievement-Goal Theory argue that mastery- or relative ability-oriented class- rooms can emerge from the goals that teachers hold about the purposes of learning and related ways of teaching (see Midgley, 2002). Goal theorists have identified two particular goal-oriented approaches to instruction or goal structures. In the first pattern, called a mastery-goal orientation, teachers emphasize in their instructional practice students’ mastery of material, investment of effort, self-improvement, progressive skill development, and collaborative work assign- ments (Midgley, 2002). These teachers stress the importance of understanding work and not just memorizing it, and they make an effort to provide students with work that has meaning in their everyday lives. In the second pattern, called a relative-ability- goal orientation, teachers believe that the goal of learning is for students’ to demonstrate their abilities relative to others. Grouping by ability, differential rewards for high achievers, public evaluative feedback, academic competitions, and other practices that promote the notion that academic success means outperforming others and proving one’s superior ability are practices used by teachers who espouse such goals (Hattie, 2009; Midgley, 2002). In a review of 25 years of research in Achievement-Goal Theory on learning environments that emphasize these two different goal orientations or goal structures, Meece, Anderman, and Anderman (2005) concluded that ‘‘whereas school environments that are focused on demonstrating high ability and competing for grades can increase the academic performance of some students, research suggests that many young people experience diminished motivation under these con- ditions’’ (p. 487). In a study using person-centered analyses, Roeser et al. (2000) found that the students most at risk for school failure were most aware of, and presumably affected by, a relative-ability goal orientation in their school. In addition, in a meta- analysis the effects of competitive, cooperative, or individualistic goal structures on the achievement and peer relationships of over 17,000 adolescents, Roseth, Johnson, and Johnson (2008) found that higher achievement and more positive peer relation- ships were associated with cooperative rather than competitive or individualistic goal structures.

Dweck and colleagues argue that teacher strategies linked to a mastery versus relative-ability orientation are associated with the teachers’ beliefs about the nature of students’ academic ability and intelligence (Dweck, 2006). If teachers believe that intelligence is a fixed entity rather than a modifiable skill, they are likely to use ability-focused pedagogical strategies. Similarly, students who see intelligence as a fixed entity are likely to adopt a relative ability-focused orientation to learning. If they are doing very well academically, this orientation may not cause them problems, but if they are not doing very well, such an orientation is likely to undermine their engagement in learning and in school. In support of this view, students exposed to an intervention that emphasized the malleability of intelligence promoted positive change in students’ classroom motivation and seemed to ameliorate some of the downward trend in grades normally found after the transition to secondary school (Blackwell, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007). In addition, in a review of what amounted to three rigorously designed intervention studies aimed at reducing the detrimental effects of stereotype threats on the achievement of African American students, Aronson et al. (2009) identified three main components of the interventions that worked that seemed the most crucial: (a) reinforcement of the idea that intelligence is malleable and, like a muscle, grows stronger when exercised; (b) reinforcement of the idea that difficulties in school are often part of a normal learning curve or adjustment process, rather than something unique to a particular student or his/ her racial group; and (c) provisions of opportunities for students to reflect on other values in their lives beyond school that are sources of self-worth for them. Thus, changing mindsets around issues of intelligence and related goal orientations through mastery-oriented pedagogy and an emphasis on the malleability of intelligence through effort are crucial for support- ing the motivation of all students, especially those from groups traditionally targeted with stereotypes of intellectual inferiority. Such interventions are also likely to engender positive mental health consequences for adolescent students as well (e.g., Roeser, Marachi, & Gelhback, 2002; Roeser & Peck, 2003; Seligman, Ernst, Gillham, Reivich, & Linkins, 2009).

Given these findings, it is unfortunate that school leaders’ and teachers’ use of performance-oriented instructional practices increases as adolescents move into and through secondary school. This increase in the likelihood of adolescents being exposed to more performance-oriented/relative ability focused class- rooms likely contributes to the declines that exist

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during adolescence in school motivation, school en- gagement, and achievement (Midgley, 2002; Roeser et al., 2002). This suggests the learning environments of secondary school become less supportive and less motivating for all but the highest achieving students as adolescents move through school.

Teacher – Student Relationships and Classroom Emotional Climate

Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have shown that the quality of teacher – student relation- ships and students’ feelings of classroom belonging predict changes in students’ academic motivation, engagement and learning, and social – emotional well-being in school (Burchinal et al., 2008; Deci & Ryan, 2002; Hattie, 2009; NRC/IOM, 2004; Roeser et al., 2000; Wentzel & Wigfield, 2007). Sense of be- longing may be especially critical for young people who must traverse significant ethnic and racial, socioeconomic, and sociolinguistic borders to feel fully part of a school in which middle-class, majority cultural norms often predominate (Garcia- Reid, Reid, & Peterson, 2005). In correlational lon- gitudinal studies, adolescents’ perceptions of how caring their teachers are predict gains and losses in their feelings of self-esteem, school belonging, and positive affect in school (Hattie, 2009; NRC/IOM, 2004; Zimmer-Gembeck, Chipuer, Hanisch, Creed, & McGregor, 2006).

Declines in the average levels of adolescents’ perception of emotional support from their teachers and in a sense of belonging in the classroom are quite common as students move from elementary into secondary schools (Burchinal et al., 2008; NRC/IOM, 2004; Wigfield et al., 2006; Zimmer-Gembeck et al., 2006). This shift is particularly troublesome in our highly mobile society in which teachers represent one of the last stable sources of nonparental role models for adolescents. In addition to teaching, teachers in mobile societies such as the United States can provide guidance and assistance when socio- emotional or academic problems arise. This role is especially important for promoting developmental competence when conditions in the family and neighborhood cannot or do not provide such sup- ports (NRC/IOM, 2004; Roeser & Peck, 2003).

Evidence supporting the link of better student motivation, general well-being, and classroom en- gagement with more positive supportive classroom climates is also quite strong (Wigfield et al., 2006). Researchers interested in Self-Determination Theory, for instance, have investigated the relations of di- mensions of the classroom climate to adolescents’

motivation, engagement, and socioemotional devel- opment (Deci & Ryan, 2002). These scholars argue that motivation, engagement, learning, and well- being will be highest in classrooms and schools in which the climate and culture stress and provide opportunities for the students to feel autonomous, competent, and emotionally supported. Such class- rooms and schools would (1) provide the students with a voice in how the classroom is run and what kinds of assignments are made, (2) allow all students to be successful at the required academic and social tasks, and (3) provide emotional support to all students. Both correlational longitudinal and ran- domized trial intervention studies support these predictions (Niemiec & Ryan, 2009; Zimmer- Gembeck et al., 2006).

Over the last decade, several researchers have looked more specifically at the association between classroom climate and students’ emotions in the classroom and, in turn, their motivation and learning (Frenzel, Pekrun, & Goetz, 2007; Hattie, 2009; Pekrun, Goetz, Titz, & Perry, 2002). These researchers argue that emotional reactions to experiences in the class- room have a large impact on student engagement and learning and have separated individual emo- tional reactions to classroom experiences from shared emotional reactions. Findings suggest that shared emotional reactions across students within the same classroom are influenced by shared per- ceptions of teachers’ enthusiasm and enjoyment (Frenzel et al., 2007). Furthermore, these shared pos- itive and negative emotions are linked to the general level of achievement in the classroom: As a group, students in high-achieving classrooms reported more positive emotions (pride and enjoyment) and less extreme negative emotions (anxiety, shame, and hopelessness).

LEVEL 2: BROADER SCHOOL-WIDE CHARACTERISTICS

School Culture

The concept of the culture of the school and the fact that different schools, like different communities, vary in their interpersonal, moral, and academic cultures, have been central to our understanding of school effects on adolescent development (Roeser et al., 2009). During the last decade, much of the work in this area has focused on two issues: school cultures that facilitate academic engagement and learning by all students (Bandura, 2006; Lee & Smith, 2001; NRC/IOM, 2004) and school cultures linked to school safety. Much of the work on the former draws

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directly on the work on Catholic and private schools done by Bryk, Lee, and Holland (1993). Using a similar approach to understanding successful versus less successful public high schools, Lee and Smith (2001) found that successful public high schools (schools with higher average levels of academic achievement and fewer SES and race/ethnic differ- ences in academic achievement) were characterized by high value placed on learning, high expectations that all students can learn and master a core curric- ulum, and the belief that though the business of school is learning, each person has inherent value and dignity and is a valued member of a social community (Hattie, 2009; Stewart, 2007).

School Safety

School violence. Researchers have focused more on bullying and victimization because being a victim of bullying and feeling unsafe at school predict decreasing levels of psychological adjust- ment, school engagement, and academic achievement (Graham & Bellmore, 2007; Nishina & Juvonen, 2005). Unfortunately, recent statistics suggest that bullying is quite common in America’s secondary schools (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2007). The frequency of being exposed to bullying varies as a function of several characteristics of the school: Rates are higher in larger schools and in schools with higher proportions of students from low income families, for instance (Gottfredson, Gottfredson, Payne, & Gottfredson, 2005; Gregory et al., 2010). Graham and colleagues (Graham, 2006; Juvonen et al., 2006) also found that greater ethnic diversity in both the classroom and the school predicts reduced levels of both bullying and the negative consequences of being bullied for students who are members of the least well-represented minority groups. Astor and colleagues (Benbenishty & Astor, 2007; Benbenishty, Astor, Zeira, & Vinokus, 2002) have shown that both the levels of school violence and students’ concerns about their safety at school decrease as the social climate in the school improves. Similarly, Crosnoe, Johnson, and Elder (2004) found that bonding with the teachers in one’s school is positively linked to feeling safe at school. It is likely that these two aspects of schools are reciprocally related: as the social climate de- teriorates, violence increases, and as violence and bullying increases, the general social climate in the school further deteriorates. Using HLM with cross- sectional data, Gregory et al. (2010) found that both perceived bullying and reported victimization are lower in schools in which both the students and the

teachers rate the prevalence of consistent authori- tative discipline and social support as high. Similarly, several scholars interested in school violence point to the importance of the moral authority of the adults in the school coupled with the acceptability of violence to the students (LeBlanc, Swisher, Vitaro, & Tremblay, 2007; Stewart, 2003).

Given the importance of school discipline and safety, many interventions have been designed and tested over the last 20 – 30 years. In addition, many American schools have adopted Zero Tolerance policies with regard to violence. What have we learned about what works? In 2008, the American Psychological Association released a report from its Zero Tolerance Task force (The American Psy- chological Association Zero Tolerance Task Force, 2008). The authors of this report concluded that evidence for the effectiveness of Zero Tolerance policies is weak, and schools with such policies often show worsening conditions rather than im- provement at the school level. Often these policies result in higher rates of suspension, particularly for students of color, poor students, and students with disabilities without leading to improvements in school safety. The APA report argues for inter- ventions aimed at changing the general school climate, at reconnecting alienated students and in- creasing school bonding, at developing a planned continuum of steps to be followed with at-risk students, and at increasing the collaboration be- tween the various community, school and family stakeholders instead. Unfortunately, achieving these multiple goals is not easy, as has been shown by a meta-analysis of whole school reform efforts focused on violence (Smith, Schneider, Smith, & Ananiadou, 2004). Clearly much more research is needed on how to successfully implement the kinds of integrated interventions suggested by the APA Task Force.

Harassment of sexual minority youth. Over the past decade, there has been increased attention to ways in which harassment and bullying at school influence the development and well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth in par- ticular. Because LGBT youth are at higher risk of mental health difficulties than heterosexually iden- tified youth, including suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self-harm (King et al., 2008; Meyer, 2003), research has focused on the emergence of such difficulties in the schools in which adolescents develop. Among self-identified LGBT youth, adoles- cent males, adolescents who attend rural schools in isolated communities, and younger adolescents are at greatest risk of exposure to homophobic language or

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other forms of verbal and physical victimization in school related to their sexual orientation (Kosciw, Greytak, & Diaz, 2009; Russell, Seif, & Truong, 2001). Furthermore, exposure to homophobic victimization at school, as well as exposure to an unsafe school climate, predicts subsequent psychological and social outcomes (such as increased anxiety, depression, substance use, suicidality, engagement in risky sex, and a decreased sense of school belonging) for LGBT youth, especially males (Eisenberg & Resnick, 2006; Espelage, Aragon, Birkett, & Koenig, 2008; Murdock & Bloch, 2005; Poteat & Espelage, 2007). Subgroup differences by orientation within the LGBT popu- lation have been examined, but few clear results have emerged (Murdock & Bloch, 2005; Poteat & Espelage, 2007; Russell et al., 2001).

Some intervention and policy research is beginning to examine how the sexual diversity climate of secondary schools can be improved for all students through inclusive policies, conscious efforts to educate students and staff on sexual diversity issues, and the existence of a Gay-Straight Alliance in the school (e.g., Szalacha, 2003). Much of the field research cited above also is suggestive of the protective value of supportive teachers, support groups for LGBT youth, and safe school climates generally in ameliorating risk among LGBT youth (e.g., Goodenow, Szalacha, & Westheimer, 2006).

School Student Body and Peer Influences

The aggregate social background characteristics of the student body also have been investigated as a key factor in student achievement (Rutter & Maughan, 2002). The ‘‘mix’’ of socially disadvan- taged students or those with significant emotional – behavioral difficulties in a school has been associated with the educational outcomes of all students in a given school (Crosnoe, 2009; Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). Furthermore, between-school variations in the proportion of students with histories of disruptive problems predicted subsequent rates of classroom behavior problems among high school students, for example (LeBlanc et al., 2007). Similarly, as the ratio of students who are socially disadvantaged goes up in a school, its aggregate achievement goes down (Rumberger & Palardy, 2005). Given the dispropor- tionate number of African American and Latino youth who are socially disadvantaged, this is highly problematic. In the United States, nearly half of all African American students and almost 40% of all Latino students attend high schools in which most students do not graduate (Balfanz & Legters, 2004). This gives rise to a view of curtailed educational

attainments of members of these groups as norma- tive and serves to reify debilitating cultural stereo- types about group members’ academic ability. A variety of mechanisms, including those of peer influences on motivation understood in the context of tracking, and social environments in which maladaptive norms develop, have been proposed to account for these influences (Crosnoe, 2005; Wigfield et al., 2006).

In support of these hypothesized mechanisms, new research has focused on the influences of peer groups and peer cultures on students’ motivation and achievement in school. The ADD Health data set in particular has made such studies possible because it is longitudinal and has extensive social network information that allows researchers to link changes at the individual level to (a) between individual variations in their experiences within their friend- ships and peer networks, as well as (b) within the larger peer cultures characteristic of whole schools. The most ambitious work in this area is the work being done by Frank and colleagues (Crosnoe, 2007; Crosnoe, Riegle-Crumb, Field, Frank, & Muller, 2008; Frank et al., 2008; Riegle-Crumb, Farkas, & Muller, 2006). For example, in an important paper, Frank et al. (2008) demonstrated first that one can classify individual students’ local peer social position in terms of the network of students with whom they take the same classes. They argue that peer norms and ‘‘cultures’’ at this structural level are likely to yield the strongest ‘‘peer influences’’ on individual students’ identity formation, short- and long-term goals and aspirations, and educational choices dur- ing the secondary school years. They go to show that being a member of a group of students taking the college preparatory math sequence in early high school increases the likelihood of taking advanced math courses later in high school substantially, par- ticularly for girls who perform below the group mean in mathematics in early high school. They also compared the amount of individual variation in high school math course taking explained by individual characteristics, local peer social position, and school level variation in course taking patterns and found that 44% of the within-school variance in young women’s (and 35% in young men’s) math course taking is explained by the ‘‘emergent but observable sociological entity’’ (p. 1675) they call ‘‘local posi- tion.’’ Finally, they argue that schools can implement practices that increase the likelihood that many stu- dents will be in local positions linked to high school achievement and successful transitions into college.

Other studies by this group of scholars and others have demonstrated a strong link between the norms

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and practices of one’s friendship network and larger peer group within the school context and changes over time in the behaviors and goals/aspirations, and social and personal identities of individuals, even after controlling for the relevant individual and family-level characteristics. Hanging out with and taking courses with achievement-oriented peers both reduces the likelihood of becoming involved in risky behaviors and dropping out of school and increases the likelihood of positive academic out- comes (Crosnoe, Cavanagh, & Elder, 2003; Crosnoe, Muller, & Frank, 2004; Crosnoe et al., 2008; Ream & Rumberger, 2008; Stewart, 2007). Interestingly, the protective associations of having academic friends are larger for females than for males. But, consistent with Marsh’s notion of the ‘‘big fish in a small pond’’ (Marsh, Trautwein, Lüdtke, & Brettschneider, 2008), among those girls who failed a course over the 2-year time span between waves of data collection, those who hung out with academic friends were more likely to suffer a decrease in their academic self-concept over time than those who hung out with less academically oriented friends. Finally, the longer term negative consequences of drinking alcohol in high school are less marked for those youth who have high achievement-oriented friends (Crosnoe et al., 2004). Similar results char- acterize the mediating role of peer group character- istics in the association between participation in extracurricular activities and both positive and neg- ative indicators of adolescent development (Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003; Mahoney, Larson, & Eccles, 2005).

Crosnoe and colleagues have also looked at the role of the larger peer group on the association of obesity on school achievement and well-being. In general, girls who are obese are less likely to enter college, more likely to fail courses, more likely to be truant, and more likely to show mental health problems, net of other relevant individual and family background characteristics, than girls who are not. By and large these relationships were not evident for boys. But more importantly for this section, the as- sociations of obesity with college attendance and truancy were stronger for girls who attended high schools with very few obese students, suggesting that the stigma associated with obesity varies by gender and by the proportion of the student body that is obese. Crosnoe and Muller (2004) also found that the longitudinal link between obesity and lower school achievement, net of all other personal and social covariates, is stronger in schools with ‘‘high rates of romantic activity and lower average body size among the students’’ (p. 393).

All of these results are consistent with person- environment fit theory in that individuals fair best in settings in which they fit well with the norms and aggregate characteristics of students and much less well in settings in which they are outliers. The recent work on the role of peers and friends also supports the perspective that personal and social identities are critical in understanding adolescents’ school engage- ment, that individual and group differences in these identities are influenced by the peer groups one has joined or aspires to join, and that these processes are directly influenced by school-wide characteristics and policies that shape the peer group structures that emerge within the school building. Specifically, peer group structures are influenced by differential course taking patterns, differential curricular track- ing, differential extracurricular activity choices, and the more general processes associated with niche- picking (Crosnoe & Muller, 2010; Eccles, 2009; Eccles et al., 2003; Frank et al., 2008).

LEVEL 3: DISTRICT-WIDE POLICIES

Many aspects of within-classroom and within-school interactions are influenced by district-wide policies and characteristics. Often these characteristics and policies reflect local political and cultural beliefs, as well as local economic conditions. We review work on several such school-wide characteristics and practices including school size, grade configu- rations, tracking policies, school start and end times, and the availability of extracurricular activities.

Grade Configurations and School Transitions

School transitions are an excellent example of how the multiple levels of school interact to affect devel- opment. All school districts must decide both when they allow children to begin school and how they will group the grade levels within the various school buildings. One common arrangement is to group children in grades kindergarten through 5th or 6th grade in elementary schools, children in grades 6 or 7 through 8 or 9 in junior high or middle schools, and children in grades 9 or 10 through 12 in senior high schools. The other common arrangement places the transition to secondary school after grade 8Fcreat- ing elementary schools made of grades K – 8 and senior high schools made up of grades 9 – 12. In both of these arrangements, children typically move to a new and often larger building at each of the major school transition points. These school transitions typically also involve increased bussing and expo- sure to a much more diverse student body. How

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might such changes influence development? This question has attracted a great deal of research and policy attention over the past 25 years due primarily to concerns about the declines in motivation, achievement, and engagement in schools during school transitions in adolescence. Most of the work in the 1990s focused on the middle or junior high school transition; over the last 10 years, there has been increasing work on the transition into high school and then into college.

There is consistent evidence of average level de- clines in academic motivation, interest in school, and achievement across the adolescence years, particu- larly as adolescents make the transition to middle or junior high school and again when they make the transition into high school (Juvonen, 2007; Wigfield et al., 2006). Although these changes are not extreme for most adolescents and many adolescents show positive changes in response to these transitions, a substantial number of adolescents become less in- terested in and less engaged in their education as they move into and through secondary school, leading to excessively high rates of school failure and drop out, particularly among ethnic/racial minority youth, lower SES youth, immigrant youth, and youth who have difficulty with the academic school agenda (Rumberger & Lim, 2008). Why? Some researchers point to the biological changes (both hormonal and brain maturation) associated with adolescent devel- opment (Dahl, 2008; Steinberg, 2008). Others point to more social contextual factors linked to pubertal development and to major school transitions (Eccles et al., 1993). However, almost all researchers now point to the confluence of changes at the biological, psychological, and social levels. Given space limita- tion in this article, we focus on the role of context. Both Eccles and Midgley and Simmons and Blyth proposed that average level declines in school mo- tivation during adolescence might reflect changes in the experiences adolescents have as they move from elementary school into middle or junior high school and then again into high school. Eccles and Midgley referred to this possibility in terms of changing Per- son-Environment Fit (Stage-Environment Fit theory). For example, most junior high schools are substan- tially larger than elementary schools, and instruction is more likely to be organized departmentally. As a result, junior high school teachers typically teach several different groups of students, making it very difficult for students to form a close relationship with any school-affiliated adult precisely at the point in development when there is a great need for guidance and support from nonfamilial adults. Such changes in student – teacher relationships are also

likely to undermine the sense of community and trust between students and teachers, leading to a lowered sense of efficacy among the teachers, an increased reliance on authoritarian control practices by the teachers, and an increased sense of alienation among the students. Lee and Smith (2001) noted similar types of changes associated with the transi- tion to high school. Such changes are likely to de- crease the probability that any particular student’s difficulties will be noticed early enough to get the student necessary help, thus increasing the likeli- hood that students on the edge will be allowed to slip onto negative motivational and performance trajectories leading to increased school failure and drop out. Correlational longitudinal research is ac- cumulating to support these sets hypotheses re- garding both the middle or junior high school transition and the high school transition, particularly for adolescents who are having difficulty with the academic school agenda (Juvonen, 2007; Lee & Smith, 2001; NRC/IOM, 2004; Roeser, Eccles, & Freedman-Doan, 1999).

School Size

For many years, scholars have argued for the bene- fits of small schools: These scholars hypothesized that smaller secondary schools afford young people various opportunities not available in larger schools, opportunities that foster engagement and achieve- ment. Such opportunities include (a) closer rela- tionships between teachers and students, (b) greater adult monitoring of and responsibility for student progress, and (c) a particularly favorable roles-to- people ratio with respect to school extracurricular activities and the need for many students in the school to participate to fulfill those roles. By affecting these mediating processes, school size was hypoth- esized to affect student outcomes. Subsequent re- search has consistently verified these hypotheses. For instance, in a national probability study of high school students, Crosnoe et al. (2004) found that students’ attachment to school in general and to their teachers in particular was significantly, negatively correlated with school size (see also Hawkins, Kosterman, Catalano, Kill, & Abbott, 2008). In sum- marizing the work of school size, Leithwood and Jantzi (2009) proposed that the most effective K – 8 elementary schools with respect to student achieve- ment gains are those that enroll 300 – 500 students or less, whereas the ideal 9 – 12 secondary school in this regard enrolls between 600 and 1,000 students. This work and studies by others suggest that the impact of school size on achievement depends on quality of

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instruction provided: If the schools focus primarily on social climate and devote limited focus on aca- demic press, the students feel quite good about at- tending the school but their academic achievement is no higher than students attending much larger schools (Wyse, Keesler, & Schneider, 2008). Again, this work provides a nice illustration of how it is complex configurations of factors in school systems, not single factors in isolation, that account for ‘‘school effects’’ per se on students (Roeser et al., 2009).

Others have studied issues of school size in the context of the schools-within-schools or small learning community approaches (Lee & Ready, 2007; Maroulis & Gomez, 2008; Ready & Lee, 2008). The schools-within-schools approach grew out of two concerns: reducing the size of each student’s learn- ing community without having to build new schools and providing students with greater choice over their high school curriculum. Educators decided that they could create several smaller learning commu- nities within the existing large high school buildings. Furthermore, they decided that they could increase student choice and sense of autonomy by focusing these smaller learning communities on specific subject matter or career topics like math/science, the arts, health, and vocational education. Unfortu- nately, unless school administrators are very careful, these smaller learning communities often end up creating the same problems that have been discussed with respect to academic tracking; namely, tracking is highly linked to the students’ social class, which can then exacerbate problems of inequity in educa- tional experiences (Ready & Lee, 2008). The students like these smaller learning communities and report feeling that their educational options fit better with their own career and educational goals, even though they acknowledge the status hierarchies associated with the different communities that can be created along social class lines in certain schools-within- schools programs.

School Start and End Time

School start time is yet another example of how regulatory processes associated with schools can interact with individual regulatory processes, here biological ones, to influence development. Research has shown that, as children progress through puberty they actually need more, not less, sleep (Carskadon, 1997; Dahl, 2008; Sadeh, Dahl, Shahar, & Rosenblat-Stein, 2009). In addition, preferred diurnal patterns of sleep and wake cycles shift develop- mentally such that adolescents prefer to stay up later

at night and to sleep later in the morning. This ten- dency is exacerbated in modern American culture by the fact that many adolescents have TVs and com- puters/cell phones in their bedrooms, which they use until late at night, and by the increased use of caffeine to induce wakefulness (Whalen et al., 2008). During this same period, as children move through elementary to middle and high school, schools typically begin earlier and earlier in the morning, necessitating earlier rise times for adolescents (Carskadon, 1997). In concert with other changes, such as the later hours at which adolescents go to bed, the earlier school start times of the middle and high school create a ‘‘developmental mismatch’’ that can both promote daytime sleepiness and under- mine adolescents’ ability to make it to school on time, alert and ready to learn. The time which school begins has implications for other aspects of adoles- cent development. Increasing evidence suggests that the sleep deprivation created by early school start times is linked to increasing levels of depression, aggression, and risk taking during adolescence, as well as the increasing desire for reward-driven be- haviors and the increasing perception of academic classes being boring (Dahl, 2008; Holm et al., 2009; Whalen et al., 2008). Interestingly, sleep deprivation also increases the rate of pubertal development, which may lead the youth to think they are more mature than their brains actually are, as well as leading other individuals to engage such youth in more risky opportunities related to drinking alcohol, driving cars, smoking, and having early and un- protected sex (Sadeh et al., 2009).

Finally, the time at which school ends also has implications for adolescents’ behavior. In communi- ties where few structured opportunities for after- school activities exist, especially impoverished communities, adolescents are more likely to be in- volved in high-risk behaviors such as substance use, crime, violence, and sexual activity during the period between 2 and 8 p.m. Providing structured activities either at school or within community or- ganizations after school when many youth have no adults at home to supervise them is an important consideration in preventing them from engaging in high-risk behaviors (Eccles & Templeton, 2002) and for keeping educationally vulnerable students on track academically (Mahoney et al., 2005; Peck, Roeser, Zarrett, & Eccles, 2008).

School Tracking Policies

School districts often have policies regarding both ability level and curricular tracking. Such tracking

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policies influence adolescents’ daily experiences in their classrooms and in their academic niche within the school (Oakes, 2005). Differentiated curricular experiences for students of different ability levels structure experience and behavior in three major ways: First, tracking determines the quality and kinds of opportunities to learn (Oakes, 2005); second, it determines exposure to different peers and thus, to a certain degree, the nature of social relation- ships that youth form in school (Dishon, Poulin, & Burraston, 2001); and, finally, it determines the social comparison group students use in assessing their own abilities and developing their academic identi- ties (Marsh et al., 2008).

Despite years of research on the impact of ability tracking practices, few strong and definitive answers have emerged (Hattie, 2009; Wigfield et al., 2006). The strongest justification for tracking practices de- rives from a person-environment fit perspective. Students will be more motivated to learn if their educational materials and experiences can be adap- ted to their current competence level. There is some evidence consistent with this perspective for chil- dren placed in high-ability classrooms, high within- class ability groups, and college tracks (Frank et al., 2008). In contrast, the results for students placed in low-ability and noncollege tracks do not confirm this hypothesis. By and large, when long-term effects are found for this group of students, they are usually negative primarily because these students are typi- cally provided with inferior educational experience and support (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 2000; Hattie, 2009; Lee & Smith, 2001). Low track placements have been related to poor attitudes toward school, feelings of incompetence, dropping out of school, and prob- lem behaviors (Oakes, 2005).

Social comparison theory leads to a different prediction regarding the effect of ability grouping and curricular tracking on one aspect of develop- ment: ability self-concepts. People often compare their own performance with the performances of others to determine how well they are doing (Marsh et al., 2008). Ability grouping should narrow the range of possible social comparisons in such a way as to lead to declines in the ability self-perceptions of higher-ability individuals and to increases in the ability self-perceptions of lower-ability individuals. Marsh and colleagues refer to this effect as the Big Fish in a Small Pond Effect. Evidence supports this prediction. For example, Marsh et al. (2008) have shown consistent evidence that attending a more academically elite high school leads to reductions in students’ academic ability self-concepts that persist over time. These results have led Marsh and col-

leagues to conclude that academic tracking comes at a cost of confidence in one’s academic abilities for academically able students. Similarly, Frenzel et al. (2007) have found that individual students experi- ence slightly more negative emotions (anxiety, hopelessness, and shame) and slightly fewer positive emotions (enjoyment and pride) when they are in higher achieving classrooms.

Yet another way to think about the impact of ability grouping on development is in terms of its impact on peer groups: Between-classroom ability grouping and curricular differentiation promotes continuity of contact among adolescents with similar levels of achievement and engagement with school. For those doing poorly in school, such practices can structure and promote friendships among students who are similarly alienated from school and are more likely to engage in risky or delinquent behav- iors, which, in turn, is likely to facilitate increases in all of the students’ engagement in risky behaviors (Crosnoe, 2002; Dishon et al., 2001). The ‘‘collecting’’ of students with poor achievement or adjustment histories also places additional burdens on the teachers in these classrooms, likely further under- mining the quality of instruction that students receive (Oakes, 2005).

Extracurricular Activities and Service Learning

The availability of extracurricular activities and op- portunities for service learning in secondary schools is determined by district level budget decisions and by the availability of interested faculty and staff within each school. During the last 20 years, many districts have responded to budget deficits by re- ducing or eliminating funding for extracurricular activities and service learning opportunities. Should we be concerned about these changes? Do extracur- ricular activities and service influence adolescent development? This question has received a great deal of research in the last decade. By and large, the researchers have been guided by the following hy- potheses: Being involved in constructive, organized activities and service learning settings are good for adolescents because (1) doing good things with one’s time takes time away from opportunities to get involved in risky activities; (2) one can learn good things (like specific competencies, prosocial values, and attitudes) while engaged in constructive and/or service learning activities; and (3) involvement in organized activity and service learning settings in- creases the possibility of establishing positive social supports and networks and prosocial values. By and large both the correlational-longitudinal and inter-

SCHOOLS AS DEVELOPMENTAL CONTEXTS 235

vention research supports these assumptions about the positive effects of participation in organized and/or social learning activities (Larson, Hansen, & Moneta, 2006; Mahoney et al., 2005). However, the correlational effect sizes are small, and the evidence from randomized trial interventions is not consis- tent across studies. More specifically, participation in school-based extracurricular activities has been linked to increases on such positive developmental outcomes as high school GPA, strong school en- gagement, and high educational aspirations (Eccles et al., 2003), as well as to educational resilience among at-risk youth (Roeser & Peck, 2003; Peck et al., 2008). Similarly, participation in high school extra- curricular activities, particularly service-based vol- unteer activities, predicts high levels of adult participation in the political process and other types of volunteer activities, continued sport engagement, better physical and mental health and reduced par- ticipation in risky behaviors (Mahoney et al., 2005; Melchior & Bailis, 2002; NRC/IOM, 2004; Scales, Blyth, Berkas, & Kielsmeier, 2000).

CONCLUSIONS AND CRITIQUE

Developmental scientists have made significant contributions to the study of the impact of school experiences on adolescent development over the past decade (see Meece & Eccles, 2010, for a com- prehensive set of chapters outlining all of this progress). We now know a great deal more about the ways in which experiences at school are linked to a wide variety of indicators of intellectual and social – emotional development during adolescence. Much of what has emerged fits well with three broad theoretical perspectives: (1) stage-environment and person-environment fit perspectives, (2) agency and structure life course developmental perspectives, and (3) identity formation perspectives. Both Eccles and Roeser (2010) and Deci and Ryan (2002) argue that students fare best in settings that fit well with their developmental, culture, and psychological needs. Eccles et al. (1993) also argue that much of the decline in school-related motivation and engage- ment reflects developmentally inappropriate chan- ges in the nature of schooling as students move from primary school into secondary school. Many of the findings we summarized are consistent with this perspective. Other findings are consistent with the idea that individual development reflects both agentic processes within the individual and struc- tural supports and constraints (Crosnoe, 2005; Crosnoe et al., 2007; Elder & Conger, 2000). Finally, and we find this among the most novel of findings

during the last decade, many of the results are con- sistent with the following fundamental ideas (see Eccles & Roeser, 2010; Roeser et al., 2006): (1) Ado- lescents actively create their own identities through their social interactions, (2) the nature of the social interactions they can have are influenced by the worlds they inhabit, (3) these worlds are shaped in part by external structures in which they are allowed to participate and in part by their own choices, and (4) these identities have implications for all aspects of their intellectual and social – emotional develop- ment. However, much more work is needed to es- tablish the causal processes assumed to underlie development in each of these perspectives. We be- lieve that this research need is a function of several factors, including a continued heavy reliance on cross-sectional and correlational designs; large, na- tionally representative data sets that include very limited contextual information, the absence of teachers and teacher data in relation to adolescent outcomes in many studies, and the increasing com- plexity of what constitutes a ‘‘school context’’ as youth move into the secondary years (Meece & Eccles, 2010; Quint, 2006; Roeser et al., 2009). What is needed now are cross-disciplinary theories of the context of schooling, coupled with powerful theories of adolescent development such as those described in this paper and in Eccles and Roeser (2010), with sophisticated multilevel statistical techniques. None- theless, because most school research represents a ‘‘simplification’’ of young people’s actual school ex- perience (Lee, 2000), we believe that the need for rich observational and ethnographic studies of schooling will continue to be important sources of inquiry in the field.

In terms of next steps, we believe that several themes merit continued attention. These themes in- clude longitudinal investigations of how students’ cultural, ethnic and racial, and social class back- grounds interact with the learning environment of the school, and thereby shape their educational pathways through the school system (Meece & Kurtz-Costes, 2001; Roeser et al., 2006). Another issue needing more investigation concerns the chal- lenges facing different kinds of schools and com- munities in urban, rural, and suburban settings today (Roscigno, Tomaskovic-Devey, & Crowley, 2006). Approximately 30% of students attended school in cities in 2003 – 2004, with African American and Latinos overrepresented in urban schools. Approximately 40% attended schools in the suburbs, with European Americans overrepresented in these wealthier school districts. The final 30% of students are in rural schools, including an overrepresentation

236 ECCLES AND ROESER

of European and Native Americans. Asian American youth are equally likely to attend schools in cities and suburbs, but are rarely found in rural areas. The point we wish to highlight here is that questions about school effects on adolescent development are situated within each of these different geographical locales.

More work is also needed on different types of individuals. In the last decade, we have seen more work on variations related to sexual identity, body size, and ethnic groups. Students vary along many other individual characteristics as well as in ways that are likely to moderate the ways in which expe- riences at school influence their development. Re- lated to the issue of individual differences, much more work is needed on the reciprocal relationships between identity formation and experiences in school (e.g., Eccles, 2009; Roeser et al., 2006).

Finally, it is important to inquire into how the testing movement in general and the upcoming re- authorization of the No Child Left Behind Act in particular influence the motivational climate in schools and, thereby, aspects of adolescent develop- ment (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Nichols & Berliner, 2007).

In summary, considerable strides have been made in the past decade in recognizing the centrality of the cultural context of schooling to adolescent develop- ment. We hope the next decade will bring a rich in- terdisciplinary set of theories to bear on the growing body of research on schooling and adolescent de- veloping with the aim of improving the science of education generally.

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