Relationships among Parent, Student, and Teacher Responses to the Missouri School Improvement Program Cycle Four Advanced Questionnaire Climate Items and Student Mathematics Achievement on the Missouri Assessment Program

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE1

Introduction1

Overview of School Climate2

The History of School Climate3

Definition of School Climate5

Dimensions of School Climate6

School Climate and Student Success8

Middle School Climate and Adolescent Needs10

The Evolution of School Climate14

No Child Left Behind (NCLB)15

Impact of Negative School Climate/Low Levels of Trust: Students, Teachers, and the Community20

Teachers: Emotional Aspects of School Climate and Student Impact21

School Administrators and School Climate Intervention22

Systems Level Change and Continuing Professional Development22

Team Building and Communication23

Assessing School Climate (Connection of dimensions to Missouri AQ) (Stakeholders)23

Summary24

REFERENCES26

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Introduction

This chapter of the literature review incorporates the relevant literature on the topic of relationships among parent, student, and teacher responses to the Missouri school improvement program cycle. The literature has been extracted from electronic libraries, journals, books, articles, etc.

This chapter addresses the No Child Left behind Act and its accountability mandates, which forms the basis for current schooling contexts and plays a significant role in the way that teachers, administrators, children, and parents may perceive the school climate. The history of school climate, including the definition of school climate, the dimensions of school climate and the effect school climate has on academic achievement will be reviewed. In addition, this chapter addresses middle school climate, which is the focus of this study. Adolescents' needs are defined and their association with academic learning, and interaction, as it interacts with school climate are discussed.

Lastly, this chapter examines the dimensions of school climate and how those dimensions are associated with the survey used in this study to measure student, staff, and parent perceptions regarding school climate. In addition, the importance of recognizing student, staff, and parent perceptions of school climate is discussed. The gap in research lies in understanding the specific processes associated with school climate that affect achievement the most. Educators and researchers no longer debate the influence of school climate. The major concerns according to Anderson (1982) are: what should we look at in schools regarding climate, and how should we look at it in order to include all stakeholders.

Overview of School Climate

School climate has been studied for decades. It has been defined variously as the atmosphere, ethos, tone, ideology, community, personality, or milieu of a school (Hoy, 2008), how one feels about the school and the people involved in the school (Chandler and Kern, 1996), or how one feels about their experiences in a school.

Only recently, however, has there been a consolidated, formally agreed upon, definition of school climate. The definition refers to four areas of school functioning: 1) physical safety, 2) relationships of those in the school environment, including faculty, students, and parents, 3) teaching and learning methods, and 4) the actual physical environment of the school. This definition of school climate was agreed upon during a consensus-building meeting in April, 2007 by the National Center for Learning and Citizenship, Education Commission of the States, and the National School Climate ...