Background: With the passage of No Child Left Behind, schools are being held more accountable for student achievement. However, student achievement is not directly proportional to classroom instruction, as certain non-academic factors also can significantly effect student achievement (e.g., school climate). Over 40 years of school climate research has produced little consensus as to what comprises school climate, nor are there complete psychometric data on existing instruments to measure it. This presentation aims to review the most cited school climate instruments, their psychometric properties, and to recommend what is believed to be the best instrument available for public consumption.
Methods: The authors of this proposal conducted a literature review of school climate, including how it is measured from a students' perspective using Medline, PsychLit, ERIC, and CINAHL databases. Key search terms included reported school climate, adolescents, school environment, organization, and health.
Results: There is a dearth of information available related to the measurement of school climate, especially from the vantage of students themselves. Although certain instruments have been used more than others, results suggest no instrument has been determined to stand out from the rest. Most studies have pulled from a small number of instruments, including the US Department of Education's “National Educational Longitudinal Study Student Questionnaire (NELS)” (1988), the San Diego County “Effective Schools Student Survey (ESS)” (1984), the “California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS)” (2005), and the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) “Comprehensive Assessment of School Environments (CASE)” (1987), and “The School Development Program (SDP)”. Five common domains were identified by these instruments: order and safety, academic outcomes, social relationships, school facilities, and school connectedness. Although each survey covers a number of these domains, only one survey covers all of the domains (CASE). Most surprisingly, only the CASE and SDP surveys report any psychometric data, but even the CASE and SDP surveys report only reliability data.
Conclusions: There is a lack of psychometrically sound student-reported school climate instruments available in the current literature. The most promising instrument, the CASE, was still developed in 1987. Consequently, as schools are requested to develop 1) bullying and harassment and 2) school climate policies and systems based data-driven decision-making structures and accountability for program and services, the need for such school climate instruments would seem to be important. Attempts should be made to reinvest in student-reported school climate instruments to meet emerging policy mandates.