In This “Research Insights” Edition

We are excited to kick off Volume 2 of the Research Insights series, a space where we bring together related studies from NNERPP members to help our readers stay current on member research, discover how studies are connected, and advance our collective knowledge by generating new questions, ideas, or strategies. To recap Volume I: We have previously covered early kindergarten transition programs, English Learner time to proficiency, and the cautions one should take when comparing across post-secondary research in two parts (part I and part II). In this edition of Research Insights, we take a look at our members’ work in the school climate space — several RPPs are doing work in this area, which should not come as a surprise given its importance in supporting productive learning environments for students.

In putting together this piece, we were struck by the many ways this research is playing out across contexts, including the variety of surveys that were used, the differences in scope across research questions, and ultimately, the various roles each research artifact is playing in the examination of school climate. This is not entirely surprising, given that partnerships are very attuned to the needs of their practice-side partners, which often look very different across sites. Although we include them below, the focus of this article is not on the actual findings of each individual study; rather, we will take you through a tour of the different ways our members are studying school climate. This is by no means an exhaustive look at what is currently known about school climate, but we hope to offer this tour as a useful place to start your search for knowledge related to school climate.

Overview

Before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at the 4 artifacts we’ll examine in greater detail. In Table 1, you’ll find the partnership name in column 1, the title and link to the article or brief in column 2, and in the last column, either the title or description of the survey used in each study.

Table 1. Four Research Artifacts Included in This Article

You’ll notice that we have not listed the four pieces in Table 1 in alphabetical order; this is intentional. Instead, this order is capturing an increasing scope and complexity to the work across the articles, either because of the research questions being considered or how demanding the work is on the partnership. For example, Cleveland’s efforts represent a landscape scan, something you might take up if you were trying to get an initial understanding of what is being experienced in the schools. The Gardner Center’s piece, in contrast, answers more customized and specific questions raised by the practice-side partners. Third on the list is work from the Research Alliance: This piece is a full-on research project, where learning about the current school climate is not itself the aim; rather, the authors study how school climate interacts with other important outcomes: teacher turnover and student achievement. And finally, the Equity Implemented partnership is entirely built around school climate work, with their report representing the most recent one from a whole portfolio of work that includes annual administration of a survey co-developed by the partnership’s research and practice-side partners. 

It is important to note that we are not advocating for a certain way to conduct this research – local needs should always dictate how and what research is conducted. Instead, as we showcase the many variations this type of work can take in a partnership setting, we hope to provide ideas on the multiple paths partnerships can take to studying this topic. We would note, however, that the paths partnerships choose to take in studying school climate also have implications for how the respective research might contribute and be applicable to the efforts of others. That is, how is the research or certain aspects of the work informative to another site? We take up this topic in greater detail in the Deep Dive article of this issue. Even as you read through our little tour of different research artifacts below, you might notice different research instruments, research questions, research findings, or overall approaches to examining school climate as being more or less applicable to your own context, partnership, and questions/wonderings. We invite you to keep these observations in mind as you learn about four ways partnerships in NNERPP are studying school climate.

Part I: Four Ways Partnerships Are Studying School Climate 

In this section, we present a snapshot of each of the studies listed in Table 1. As you’ll see in the tables below, each snapshot includes a short description of the article, the research questions examined in the work (if applicable), the data collected to support the research, a short description of the findings, and links to the article and where available, to related materials.

Part II: Two Additional School Climate Tools to Consider 

In addition to the four research artifacts shared above, our scan of NNERPP members’ work turned up two more pieces related to school climate, which we discuss below. Although these pieces are not research dissemination efforts, in that their purpose is not to share findings, they both discuss school climate related tools that others might consider using when studying this topic in their own contexts.

1. BALTIMORE EDUCATION RESEARCH CONSORTIUM | Measuring School Climate Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health (2014)

This report provides an overview of four data sources Baltimore City Schools, the practice-side partner of the Baltimore Education Research Consortium, has available related to school climate. These include the School Survey data (Likert-type responses from students, school staff, and parents), the School Effectiveness Review data (school-level data collected by the Office of Achievement and Accountability), Climate Walk data (school-level qualitative data set on climate observations), and Student Surveys on Teacher Practice (student-level responses to Likert scaled questions concerning several school climate related aspects). The affordances and constraints of using each of these data sources to assess school climate are discussed in the report. 

The research questions considered include:

• What data are being systematically collected by Baltimore City Schools that can speak to school climate, effectiveness, and organizational health? 
• What are the strengths and limitations of each data source? 
• How do the different data sources relate and correspond to each other?  

The report finds that data from existing tools or measures, even those not necessarily designed with school climate in mind, can be useful in informing school climate efforts – if the tools and measures are aligned with domains and indicators that correspond to each other. The authors additionally propose a tool that would synthesize the data collected from these different sources.

2. UCHICAGO CONSORTIUM ON SCHOOL RESEARCH | The Essential Supports for School Improvement (2006)

This UChicago Consortium report goes beyond a single measure of school climate and provides a comprehensive look at what supports schools and communities should consider, one element of which is school climate, when working towards school improvement efforts. The report presents a framework that identifies five “essential supports” critical for school improvement efforts: Effective Leadership, Professional Capacity, Parent-Community Ties, Student-Centered Learning Climate, and Ambitious Instruction. Based on data from Chicago public elementary schools in the 1990s, the framework captures and summarizes evidence-based findings on widely-agreed upon characteristics of good schools. This particular report used a natural experiment within Chicago Public Schools, where there was a great diversity in principal leadership, to explore which supports had the most impact on school improvement efforts. The findings suggest that schools measuring strongly in most of the essential supports were at least 10 times more likely than school weak in most of the supports to show substantial gains in reading in math. 

[An interesting side note here: When redesigning their annual School Survey (the one used in the New York study outlined above), the New York City Department of Education together with the Research Alliance for New York City Schools relied heavily on this research on school improvement by the UChicago Consortium – just one example for how research by one partnership can inform other partnerships’ efforts.]

Since the publication of this report, several additional artifacts have emerged, including the following:

• Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons from Chicago | 2010 book by Anthony S. Bryk, Penny Bender Sebring, Elaine Allensworth, Stuart Luppescu, and  John Q. Easton
• The Five Essential Supports for School Improvement | 2014 article by Penny Bender Sebring and Nicholas Montgomery
• A First Look at the 5Essentials in Illinois Schools | A 2015 report by Joshua Klugman, Molly F. Gordon, Penny Bender Sebring, and Susan E. Sporte 
• How a Chicago School is Using Data to Improve School Climate | 2017 EdWeek blog post by Isaac Castelaz

In Closing

As we’ve seen in this edition of Research Insights, there are many ways NNERPP members are studying school climate with their practice-side partners, including different tools to measure school climate and differently scoped research questions – and this is to be expected given the localized nature of RPP work. Through the tour of the four research articles, as well as the two additional school climate related resources shared in Part II, we hope to have given you some ideas for your own school climate research. As this is a topic that is gaining importance and is not completely well defined just yet, we are excited to see the next round of research in this area!

Paula Arce-Trigatti is Director of the National Network of Education Research-Practice Partnerships (NNERPP). Nina Spitzley, Marketing Specialist with NNERPP, contributed to this report.

Suggested citation: Arce-Trigatti, P. (2020). Exploring School Climate with NNERPP Members. NNERPP Extra, 2(1), 2-7.