School climate has increasingly been recognized as an essential component of school improvement owing to the established associations between a positive school climate and academic outcomes for students. Our study examines associations among a brief measure of school climate assessing elementary student perceptions and the College and Career Ready Performance Index, Georgia's comprehensive school improvement and accountability index. Individual factors including student grade, race/ethnicity, and gender were also examined in relation to perceptions of school climate. Multilevel analyses and hierarchical linear modeling indicated that student-level variables accounted for the majority of variation in perceptions of school climate. Notably, results revealed a significant and negative interaction among school climate, school achievement, and gender. These findings suggest that personal characteristics have a notable impact on students' experiences and perceptions of climate and should be considered in the development and implementation of school climate improvement efforts.