Using LatCrit and QuantCrit, we examined the effect of school climate, ethnic identity, and self-esteem on GPA in a sample of 300 Latinx high school students. We found significant positive correlations between climate and GPA as well as self-esteem and GPA. Moreover, using structural equation modeling, we found self-esteem mediated the…

Few studies holistically examine how students experience the multiple dimensions of school climate and resilience promoting characteristics, or how these two constructs may be interrelated. This study utilised a sample of 78,550 7th, 9th, and 11th grade students in California. Roughly half of the participants were female (52%), and roughly half…

Improving school climate remains a priority for improving academic achievement and social emotional learning, and for reducing violence and promoting safe schools. This study examined staff member experiences of school climate with the goal of identifying the quality of climate (negative or positive) that staff experience and how certain…

The report contains real-world, proven school climate strategies to guide policymakers in building a comprehensive and coherent state-wide approach for improving school climate. It features 12 recommendations linked to existing state policy examples policymakers can use to build a comprehensive, coherent state-wide approach for improving school…

A growing body of literature indicates that Latinx immigrant families are adversely affected by restrictive immigration policies and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Little is known about how educators working with Latinx immigrant communities in restrictive immigration climates fare. Using mixed-methods, this study sought to better understand how the…

School climate is increasingly intertwined with efforts to create safe schools and improve social-emotional learning and academic outcomes. While current definitions of school climate implicate the decisions and actions of school staff members, the majority of school climate research focuses on the perspectives of students. This study presents an…

The purpose of this study was to gain recently graduated Black high school students' perceptions of racial climate and to examine to what extent their perceptions impact their overall perception of school climate. Additionally, the study explored the opportunities students were given to use their voice and how this may have affected change in…

Practical educational assessment tools for adolescents champion student voice, use technology to enhance engagement, highlight discrepancies in school experience, and provide actionable feedback. We report a series of studies that detail an iterative process for developing a new school climate assessment tool: (1) item generation that centres…

School climate is important for continuous improvement. California's LCFF requires districts to report on school climate and use data to inform decision making. Qualitative data, derived from an explanatory sequential mixed-methods study, explored three belief constructs and sub-groups by response patterns. Education leaders have a range of…

Parental involvement plays a significant role in students' social and academic outcomes. Nevertheless, systemic ways of gathering parental views have not been used or highlighted in the policy arena or the literature. Using data from the first major statewide survey of parents in California, drawn from the California School Parent Survey (N =…

The overuse and misuse of exclusionary and punitive discipline practices in schools have been consistently linked to social and educational inequities across the globe, particularly for students of color. However, there is an ongoing need for a greater understanding of how school climate factors (e.g., adult-student relationships, racial climate)…

The primary purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between school climate and academic achievement in the Common Core State Standards era. This quantitative study involved 79 high school-level school districts from five counties in the southern California area. The essential research questions used to guide the study were designed…

Background: The increase in the number of autistic children being identified has led to increased demand on public schools to provide high-quality services. Effectively scaling up evidence-based practice (EBP) use for autistic students is challenging, given the complicated organization of special education. Teachers have significant challenges…

California's CORE Districts--a consortium of eight school districts serving a racially and socioeconomically diverse population of over one million students--have since 2014 led the way in deploying measures of social and emotional learning (SEL) and school climate and culture. Influenced by surging interest and research support over the past…

The purpose of this quantitative correlational-predictive study was to examine if and to what extent one or more administrators' emotional intelligence (EI) abilities of emotional perceiving and expressing (EPE), emotional utilization (EUT), emotional understanding (EUN) and emotional regulation (ERE), predicted teacher rating of school…