“Where We Learn”: Report on Urban Schools Emphasizes Climate

“Students care about where they learn,” writes Brian K. Perkins in the new report from the National School Boards Association’s Council of Urban Boards of Education (CUBE), “Where We Learn: The CUBE Survey of Urban School Climate.” He argues, “Researchers and educators agree that school climate influences students, teachers, and staff members and affects student achievement.” In recognition of this, researchers from CUBE created a survey to better understand how students in urban districts perceive their school environments. Their report summarizes the survey results from 15 districts across the country, and uses them to highlight elements of the school environment that should be the focus of future efforts towards school improvement. This is an especially important undertaking, Perkins writes, because “many school improvement initiatives primarily address school structure and procedures and virtually ignore school climate.”

Elements of School Climate

In devising their survey, the CUBE researchers focused on five elements of school climate: school safety; bullying; trust, respect, and ethos of caring; racial self-concept; and general climate. The report notes that “problems with safety can disrupt the learning environment, directly influencing the potential for achievement,” as can bullying in physical and psychological forms. The report emphasizes the importance of “[t]rust and respect between teachers and students,” and the survey tried to determine students’ attitudes towards their teachers, their sense of their relationships with their teachers, and the sense of fairness experienced by students in the classroom. Racial self-concept was measured as somewhat predictive of academic success, while general climate was taken as a measure of parent and community involvement in schools.

Results

The students surveyed came from fifteen urban districts: New Haven, CT; Towson, MD; Phoenix, AZ; Chicago, IL; El Paso, TX; Sugar Land, TX; Grand Rapids, MI; Lincoln, NE; Mobile, AL; Portsmouth, VA; New Orleans, LA; San Francisco, CA; St. Paul, MN; and Tulsa, OK. 108 schools were surveyed, including 40 elementary schools, 26 middle schools, 28 high schools, and 14 K-8 schools. The population surveyed was 32 percent African American, 26 percent white, 29.6 percent Hispanic, 6.8 percent Asian, 2.5 percent Native American, and 2.2 percent identified themselves as another ethnicity. 61% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

Overall, the students surveyed were very positive about the climate at their school. 68.3 percent of students surveyed said they enjoyed learning at their school, and 79.9 listed plans to continue their education following high school. However, several areas of concern stood out to the researchers.

Safety and Bullying
Feeling safe in school is an essential prerequisite to receiving a quality education. A majority of students surveyed felt safe in their school, but this was less so for older students, 15.4 percent of who report not feeling safe. Furthermore, 60 percent of students in grades 7-8 say that students in their school fight a lot, while only 48 percent of students in lower and higher grades report this. Over half of students surveyed say there is a lot of fighting at their school, especially Native American and African American students, who identified the most fighting. One fifth of all students reported that some children carry knives or guns in their school.

Bullying is a troubling problem to a notable percentage of students, and many of them have little faith in their teachers’ ability to curb bullying. 50.5 percent of students “agree or strongly agree that they witness children being bullied at least once per month.” Bullying was more prevalent amongst students in grades 7 and 8 than amongst those in grades 4-6 and 9-12, although almost half of students in grades 9-12 did not agree that teachers have the power to stop bullying in schools, compared with only a fifth of students in grades 4-6. That so many students witness bullying on a regular basis is indicative of a broad problem in preserving a positive school climate. Though researchers note many efforts to end bullying in schools have been undertaken in recent years, it clearly remains a persistent problem for students.

Trust, Respect, and Ethos of Caring
Survey results also indicated that, as students get older, they lose trust in their teachers and feel less respected by their teachers. Only 48.5 percent of African American students felt their teachers are respectful, as compared with 66.7 percent of Hispanic students. 60 percent of students in grades 4-6 feel that their teachers are fair to everyone, a number that drops to 42 percent in grades 7-8 and again to 30 percent in grades 9-12. African American students were also much less likely to be confident that their teachers are fair than their Hispanic peers. Though overall feelings towards teachers were positive, as were the students’ assessments of their relationships with their teachers, there are notable gaps in trust and feelings of respect and fairness for older students and many African American students.

More than two-thirds of students surveyed reported enjoying learning at their school, but fully 20.4 percent of Native Americans, and 18.8 percent of white students, do not enjoy learning at their school. 85.6 percent of Asians look forward to continuing their education, compared with only 71.8 percent of Native Americans. Life expectancy was also skewed between races, as 82.5 percent of white students believe they will live beyond the age of 25, compared with only 68.6 percent of Hispanic students. There are many possible explanations for these variations in responses, but they are precisely the reason that classroom tone is a crucial element in ensuring that students are able to achieve academically and personally. Counteracting a student’s sense of frustration and lack of hope or ambition is perhaps one of the most important goals of a school community.

Racial Self-Concept
Overwhelmingly, students feel positively about their race, with only 7.1 percent wishing they were of another race. However, while 56.1 percent “do not believe that students who are of a different race generally do better in school,” 32 percent are not sure, and 15.7 percent of African Americans believe that children of other races generally do better in school—something only 7 percent of white students believe.

General Climate
The survey used parent and community involvement as a proxy for general climate, reasoning that a school with a positive climate would have high levels of outside participation. However, almost half of the students reported that no adult visits their school regularly. 40.9 percent of African American students have an adult that visits their school often, compared with 32.9 percent of Hispanic students and only 22.5 percent of Asian students.

Recommendations

After compiling and analyzing the survey results, CUBE researchers made the following recommendations to improve school climate (page 7):

1. Districts should include a school climate assessment in their annual evaluation processes…
2. Schools should identify one or more key areas on the basis of these assessment findings…and implement strategies to improve these conditions and students’ perceptions of them.
3. Parents should be encouraged to participate in the discussion, development, and implementation of strategies to improve school climate.
4. Students should engage with their peers, teachers, and administrators to address school climate issues and contribute to a healthy school climate.
5. School officials should engage members of the community about the ways they can participate in and support the creation and development of healthy school climate.
6. Boards of education should establish clear policies to create a positive school climate and clarify expectations for teachers and administrators around their responsibilities to carry out these policies.

As schools and districts race to improve their test scores, the climate in their schools is overlooked when, in reality, it may be a key element of improving student achievement. The results offered by CUBE’s report offer powerful strategies for urban schools to reform going forward.

Prepared by Nelly Ward, April 12, 2006