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

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. Multilevel 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.

Race, Exclusionary Discipline, and Connectedness to Adults in Secondary Schools

“…Consistent with extant studies that have quantitatively analyzed racial differences in school connectedness (Bottiani et al, 2014(Bottiani et al, , 2016Kim et al, 2014;Voight et al, 2015), findings indicate that Black, Native American, Asian, Latino, and Multiracial students generally reported depressed connectedness compared with their White peers, even after accounting for student gender, grade, and school-level covariates. Theory about the role of cultural discontinuity and cultural ecology in the affective experiences of youth of color at school suggest several potential explanatory mechanisms.…”

“…To our knowledge, only four recent peer-reviewed publications have addressed the question of racial disparities in students' connections to teachers and administrators (Bottiani et al, 2014(Bottiani et al, , 2016Kim et al, 2014;Voight et al, 2015). In their study of 754 California middle schools, Voight et al (2015) documented within-school disparities between Black and White youth in their reports of positive adult-student relationships. They use the term "microclimates" to elucidate that student identities impact their interactions with school adults.…”

“…Advocates and researchers alike have argued that poor relationships between students of color and school adults are one root cause of racial discipline gaps, and recommend that educators increase their focus on the affective dimensions of schooling (Carter, Fine & Russell, 2014). Recent research indicates that there are substantial differences between students of color and their White peers in their experience of care, support, and encouragement from teachers and administrators (Bottiani, Bradshaw & Mendelson, 2014, 2016Kim, Schwartz, Cappella & Seidman, 2014;Voight, Hanson, O'Malley & Adekanye, 2015). For community psychologists committed to reducing social inequalities, understanding the causes and consequences of racial disparities in both school connectedness and discipline is an important area of inquiry.…”

Acculturation and School Adjustment of Immigrant Youth in Six European Countries: Findings from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

“…They also experience a steeper decline in belonging through adolescence (Li and Lerner, 2011). This phenomenon, sometimes referred to as the belonging gap, partly explains the achievement gap between immigrant (or ethnic minority) and non-immigrant (or ethnic majority) students (Motti-Stefanidi and Masten, 2013; Voight et al, 2015). …”

Getting Better All the Time? An Illustrative Investigation of Multilevel Longitudinal Measurement Invariance Based on School Climate Surveys

“…Differences could arise because of differences in organizational location (i.e., grade or department), or differences in personal interactions (Raudenbush, Rowan, & Kang, 1991). There are pervasive systematic disparities in how students experience school climate based on race and socioeconomic status (Hough, Kalogrides, & Loeb, 2017;Voight, Hanson, O'Malley, & Adekanye, 2015). To the extent that the school does not have a singular climate, but rather, there are substantively different climate experiences for different groups of students or teachers, it is appropriate to reflect upon whether the school is, in fact, the most appropriate level of aggregation for representing and understanding climate (Lüdtke, Trautwein, Kunter, & Baumert, 2006), and what may be learned or improved by attending to systematic differences in climate perceptions.…”