The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to incorporate at least one non-academic indicator—which might include (but isn’t limited to) factors like school climate or safety—into their accountability frameworks. That makes this study, published in Educational Researcher, well-timed. The authors set out to test the theory that reductions in school violence and/or improvements to school climate would lead to improved academic outcomes. Instead, the evidence they discovered suggests that the relationship flows in the opposite direction: A school’s improvement in academic performance led to reductions in violence and improved climate—not the other way around.
The authors found serious gaps in prior studies of school climate and safety, many of which illustrated only correlation (not causation) among the variables examined. This motivated them to test the assumption that improved school climate must come first in the chicken-egg scenario. Using six years of student survey results (2007–13) from a representative sample of 3,100 California middle and high schools, analysts employed a research design known for its ability to test causality when large-scale experimental designs aren’t possible. (For the curious, this is described as a “cross-lagged panel autoregressive modeling design,” which determines whether variables at different points in time are correlated with or impact one another). They looked at three waves of survey data based on student reporting of school violence and school climate, along with schools’ academic performance (as measured by California’s academic performance index). Controlling for each variable’s relationship to the others, the analysts examined whether gains in one time period would lead to improvements in another.
Not surprisingly, the present study confirms that school violence and climate are closely associated. Like past studies, it also confirms that low levels of violence and positive school climates are associated with high levels of school performance. But the characteristics of a safe and positive school aren’t necessarily a prerequisite for higher achievement. Researchers found that higher school performance in the first wave of data (2007–09) led to both lower school violence and higher school climate ratings in the second wave of data (2009–2011). This pattern remained true for the third wave of data (2011–2013). Meanwhile, they found no evidence that reducing violence or improving school climate led to increased academic performance across the time periods studied. (They hypothesized, however, that schools undertaking academic improvements might automatically include “issues of climate and victimization” as part of their reform efforts.)
The researchers conclude that academic improvement is “a central factor in reducing violence and enhancing a school’s climate.” To explain the findings, they noted that teachers who hold high expectations for students academically may have more positive relationships with them generally. In addition, one can imagine that improved teaching contributes to a more positive school culture overall. For example—as any teacher can attest—better instruction diminishes time spent off task, as well as the misbehavior associated with it.
Without further study, however, it’s difficult to know exactly how improved academic outcomes foster better climates and lower violence in the schools studied—or to what extent it was better teaching and school leadership that drove the school improvement to begin with. One is also left wondering how much academic achievement can be boosted in a school with a negative culture and unsafe corridors. Still, this is an interesting study that lends credence to the idea that school improvement efforts must focus on academic outcomes as much as—or at least concurrent with—attempts to improve climate and safety.
Source: Rami Benbenishty, Ron Avi Astor, Ilan Roziner, and Stephanie L. Wrabel, “Testing the Causal Links Between School Climate, School Violence, and School Academic Performance: A Cross-Lagged Panel Autoregressive Model,” Educational Researcher (April 2016).
