18 Nov Developmental Contexts of Adolescence Reading Reaction? Reading reactions should be about one page, typed, single-spaced, and must consist of the following:? 1) brief summaries of the w
Developmental Contexts of Adolescence Reading Reaction
Reading reactions should be about one page, typed, single-spaced, and must consist of the following:
1) brief summaries of the week’s readings
2) connections or contradictions across the readings
3) synthesis of the readings (e.g. how do they together speak to the topic of the week)
4) a commentary of your thoughts about the readings or any lingering questions you have about the content.
Students will receive up to one point for each of these four areas and these reactions must demonstrate critical thinking about the readings. This reading reaction must cover all three readings about schools (e.g., the textbook chapter and two articles).
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
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
123
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
123
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 i