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School Climate, Family Structure, and Academic Achievement: A Study of Moderation Effects

Meagan O’Malley and Adam Voight WestEd, Los Alamitos, California

Tyler L. Renshaw Louisiana State University

Katie Eklund University of Arizona

School climate has been lauded for its relationship to a host of desirable academic, behavioral, and social– emotional outcomes for youth. The present study tested the hypothesis that school climate counteracts youths’ home–school risk by examining the moderating effects of students’ school climate perceptions on the relationship between family structure (i.e., two-parent, one-parent, foster-care, and homeless households), and academic performance (i.e., self-reported [grade point average] GPA). The present sample consisted of 902 California public high schools, including responses from over 490,000 students in Grades 9 and 11. Results indicated that, regardless of family structure, students with more positive school climate perceptions self-reported higher GPAs. Youths with two-parent, one-parent, and homeless family structures displayed stepwise, linear improvements in self-reported GPA as perceptions of climate im- proved. Foster-care students’ positive school climate perceptions had a weaker effect on their self-reported GPA compared with students living in other family structures. A unique curvilinear trend was found for homeless students, as the relationship between their school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA was stronger at lower levels. Overall, the moderation effect of positive school climate perceptions on self-reported GPA was strongest for homeless youth and youth from one-parent homes, suggesting that school climate has a protective effect for students living in these family structures. A protective effect was not found for youth in foster-care. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Keywords: school climate, family structure, academic achievement, foster care, homeless

A child’s home and school represent distinct microsystems that shape important develop- mental outcomes. Each microsystem presents its own set of potential risks, or threats to de- velopment, as well as protective and promotive

factors that counteract those threats and facili- tate wellbeing (Masten, Herbers, Cutuli, & Lafavor, 2008). Promotive factors are those in- ternal or external assets (e.g., supportive adult relationships at home) that improve outcomes for all youths, but that do not help close the academic and social outcome gaps between at- risk students and their peers. Protective factors, on the other hand, are those assets (e.g., positive school relationships) that disproportionately bolster the outcomes of youth who are identified as at-risk, thereby decreasing the outcome gaps between them and their peers (Furlong, Shar- key, Quirk, & Dowdy, 2011). Moreover, risk factors, which are the negative counterparts of promotive and protective factors, are those in- ternal or external stressors (e.g., poverty) that hinder or worsen youths’ outcomes. The accu- mulation of multiple risk factors across micro-

This article was published Online First August 11, 2014. Meagan O’Malley and Adam Voight, Health and Human

Development Program, WestEd, Los Alamitos, California; Tyler L. Renshaw, Department of Psychology, Louisiana State University; Katie Eklund, College of Education, Uni- versity of Arizona.

We thank the California Department of Education for encouraging the collection and analysis of these California Healthy Kids Survey data, which yield important insights into the wellbeing of youth.

Correspondence concerning this article should be ad- dressed to Meagan O’Malley, Health and Human Develop- ment Program, WestEd, 4665 Lampson Avenue, Los Alamitos, CA 90720-5139. E-mail: [email protected]

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School Psychology Quarterly © 2014 American Psychological Association 2015, Vol. 30, No. 1, 142–157 1045-3830/15/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/spq0000076

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systems—referred to as cumulative risk—is more predictive of deleterious outcomes in youth than exposure to any one risk alone (Ob- radović, Shaffer, & Masten, 2012; Sameroff, 2006).

The nature of the relationship between home and school microsystems has been examined for decades using a unidirectional model, wherein home environment characteristics are analyzed for their effects on school-related outcomes. Because of the abundance of work in this area, scholars of economics, sociology, education, and psychology now largely agree that parental education, socioeconomic status, and family structure have main effects on the academic performance of youth (Coleman et al., 1966; Reardon, 2011) and an aggregated effect on system-level school performance indicators, such as state-mandated standardized test scores (Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Eas- ton, 2010). In other words, students who expe- rience more family related advantages and re- sources at home tend to perform better academically, and schools that enroll higher proportions of these students tend to be deemed successful by state accountability standards.

More recently, this line of research has been extended to examine the possibility that school environments may play an important role in counteracting or buffering youths’ home-related risks, especially as they relate to school perfor- mance. For instance, Hopson and Lee (2011) found that students’ positive school climate per- ceptions attenuated the relationship between family poverty and negative behavioral out- comes at school (e.g., truancy, fights with other students, and suspensions). Moreover, students’ positive school climate perceptions are nega- tively related to disruptive school behaviors for all students, with the strongest effect observed for youth living in low-income homes (Hopson & Lee, 2011). Furthermore, in their analysis of the relations between students’ standardized test scores and school climate perceptions, Voight, Austin, and Hanson (2013) demonstrated that students’ positive school climate perceptions were a distinguishing indicator of secondary schools that outperformed academic achieve- ment (indicated by state-mandated standardized test scores) predictions based on their student demographics.

The present study extends this line of re- search by examining whether students’ percep-

tions of a positive school climate might function as both a promotive and protective factor: en- hancing the academic achievement of all youth, while offering greater benefits to youth living in more disadvantaged family structures. Thus, be- cause the educational research literature is re- plete with studies investigating factors affecting students’ school performance—with race, eth- nicity, and socioeconomic status being chief among these (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Dun- can & Murnane, 2011; Sirin, 2005)—the re- mainder of the introduction focuses squarely on the two major variables of interest in the present study—family structure and school climate— and their relationship with academic outcomes.

Family Structure

Family structure is a sociodemographic indi- cator that differentiates youths’ living situations by the number of caregiving adults with whom they live. Family structure is sometimes mea- sured as a proxy for family stress, as decades of research have demonstrated that children living in single-parent homes are more likely than those living in two-parent homes to experience poverty and its associated stressors (McLana- han & Garfinkel, 2000). Closely related to fam- ily structure, parental involvement is generally defined as a constellation of adult behaviors that support youths’ achievement of school-related demands (El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba- Drzal, 2010). Because of the myriad demands placed upon them, single parents may have less time available to commit to their child’s school life than can be provided in two-parent homes (Jeynes, 2005). Indeed, children living in sin- gle-parent homes receive, on average, less aca- demic encouragement and guidance at home than their peers living in two-parent families (Astone & McLanahan, 1991).

Single-Parent and Two-Parent Students

Family structure is sometimes considered in research designs investigating the relationship between parental involvement and school per- formance. For instance, using data from a large national dataset with predominantly White (69%) high school-aged students, Jeynes (2005) found that, compared with youth living in sin- gle-parent homes (i.e., single-parent never mar- ried, divorced), children living in two-parent

143SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT

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homes displayed superior academic achieve- ment across various academic outcomes (i.e., reading, math, science, and social science stan- dardized test results) than children from single- parent homes (Jeynes, 2005). Moreover, family structure proved to be a more powerful predic- tor of students’ academic achievement than the types of parental involvement behaviors (e.g., checking on homework) that are often encour- aged by school personnel. In a related study, El Nolaki, Bachman, and Votruba-Drzal (2010) found that, after controlling for family structure and other known covariates in a sample of ele- mentary-aged students, parent involvement ex- erted no meaningful effect on students’ aca- demic achievement. Disheartening though they may be, these findings suggest that living in a single-parent home asserts a level of risk that even a conscientious home adult might not be able to overcome alone. To our knowledge, similar research has yet to be conducted with secondary school students.

Foster-Care Students

Approximately 1% of all children in the United States are currently placed in the foster- care system (Pecora et al., 2006). Placement in foster-care settings is typically prompted by the deterioration of caregiving in the child’s native home setting (Lawrence, Carlson, & Egeland, 2006). Although many children placed in foster care are there for a short period of time, nearly half of all children remain in foster care for a year or longer (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2005). Once placed in foster- care settings, youths’ experiences are often characterized by prolonged separation from par- ents and family members, disrupted relation- ships with foster parents, and frequent transi- tions between foster placements (Newton, Litrownik, & Landsverk, 2000; U.S. Depart- ment of Health & Human Services, 2012). For these reasons, youths in foster care often have family structures characterized by unstable caregiver relationships.

Current, methodologically advanced studies examining school-related outcomes for youths living in foster care are scant in the peer- reviewed literature. More frequently, analyses of foster-care youths’ academic achievement are conducted by state and federal public health agencies. For instance, in their analysis of fos-

ter-care youths’ academic achievement in the state of Washington, Burley and Halpern (2001) found that, compared with their nonfoster peers, youths in foster-care homes scored lower on state achievement tests, had lower graduation rates, were more likely to be enrolled in special education, and were more likely to have re- peated a grade or changed schools during the school year. In addition to suffering from more frequent and debilitating mental health prob- lems, children in foster care are also at greater risk of becoming involved in criminal activities, dropping out of school, and discontinuing post- secondary education (Pecora et al., 2006; Rubin et al., 2004). Taken together, these findings suggest that youth in foster care are among those in greatest need of thoughtfully designed, enriched, developmentally supportive school environments that are intended to prevent dele- terious outcomes and promote their wellbeing.

Homeless Students

Over 1 million youth are estimated to be homeless in the United States, although precise rates are difficult to determine because of high residential mobility and the variability of con- struct definitions used for policy purposes (Perl et al., 2013). Despite such measurement chal- lenges, researchers have made progress in ex- amining the experiences of homeless children and youth. For example, studies have shown that homeless children are at higher risk for a variety of emotional, behavioral, and academic challenges, although poverty likely accounts for some proportion of these effects. Research has also indicated that homeless children experi- ence more mental health and behavior problems than peers living in average-income homes, al- though when poverty is accounted for, the mag- nitude of the difference between groups de- creases (Buckner, 2008; Samuels, Shinn, & Buckner, 2010). Children who are homeless and highly mobile have also been shown to have lower reading and math achievement than their housed counterparts, even after the effects of poverty are controlled (Obradović et al., 2009; Rafferty, 2004; Voight, Shinn, & Nation, 2012).

In addition to the poor mental health and achievement outcomes associated with home- lessness, the family structure of homeless chil- dren is often fragile, characterized by increased risk for parent– child separation. For instance,

144 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND

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Bassuk and colleagues (1997) found that chil- dren were more likely to be placed in foster care when their families experienced homelessness than when they experienced poverty. Indeed, one study found that the likelihood of mother– child separation is quadrupled after an experi- ence of homelessness (Cowal, Shinn, Weitz- man, Stojanovic, & Laba, 2002). In another study, nearly 20% of youth who entered shelters with their families had prior or future experi- ences in the state’s child welfare system (Park, Metraux, Brodbar, & Culane, 2004). What is more, the mobility associated with homeless- ness exposes youth to the loss of social capital gained by youth in stable homes who benefit from persistent relationships with teachers and friends in school settings (Rafferty, 2004).

School Climate

Some scholars have posited that develop- mentally supportive school environments may counteract the effects of adverse home expe- riences through the reduction of cumulative risk (Masten et al., 2008). One of the primary school-level characteristics implicated in fos- tering student resilience is a multidimensional construct referred to as school climate (Mas- ten & Motti-Stefanidi, 2009). One of the most common definitions found within the educa- tion-related literature defines school climate as “the quality and character of school life,” which is derived from “patterns of people’s experi- ences of school life and reflects norms, goals, values, interpersonal relationships, teaching, learning and leadership practices, and organiza- tional structures” (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, & Pickeral, 2009, p. 182). Thus, social support at school, including relationships between and among students and adults, is considered an essential dimension of school climate (You, O’Malley, & Furlong, 2014). Also included in theoretical and measurement models of school climate are opportunities for belonging and con- nectedness, school safety, physical school re- sources, and discipline practices (O’Malley, Katz, Renshaw, & Furlong, 2012; Zullig, Koop- man, Patton, & Ubbes, 2010).

Studies measuring the school climate percep- tions of youth and school staff have indicated that more positive perceptions of school climate are associated with more desirable academic, behavioral, and social– emotional outcomes.

Teachers’ perceptions of positive school cli- mates, for example, have been positively related with higher student achievement in reading and mathematics (Brand, Felner, Seitsinger, Burns, & Bolton, 2008; Uline & Tschannen-Moran, 2008). What is more, youths who perceive that they attend schools with positive climates en- gage in fewer risk-taking and violent behaviors (Resnick et al., 1997), experience fewer disci- pline referrals and school suspensions (Nelson, Martella, & Marchand-Martella, 2002; Welsh, 2000), and report stronger feelings of safety and greater willingness to report safety threats at school (Syvertsen, Flanagan, & Stout, 2009; Welsh, 2000). Furthermore, research has dem- onstrated that students’ school climate percep- tions are related to their complete mental health status, with positive climate perceptions being associated with both increases in life satisfac- tion and decreases in internalizing and external- izing symptoms (Suldo, McMahan, Chappel, & Loker, 2012). Such findings suggest that school climate may have moderating effects on various student wellbeing outcomes.

Purpose of the Present Study

Although cross-sectional research indicating relations between students’ positive school cli- mate perceptions and desirable academic, be- havioral, and social– emotional outcomes has burgeoned recently, the particular dynamics of school climate, such as its potential moderating effects on students’ exposure to various risk factors, have gone largely unexplored. Specifi- cally, there is little available empirical evidence supporting the assertion that positive school cli- mates can compensate for the risk associated with living in disadvantaged family structures. The present study intended to address this gap in the literature by investigating two related research questions:

1. Are students’ positive school climate per- ceptions associated with improved aca- demic outcomes for youth living in differ- ent family structures (i.e., single-parent, two-parent, foster-care, and homeless)?

2. Are students’ positive school climate per- ceptions associated with a reduction in the academic achievement gap commonly ob- served between at-risk youth and their peers?

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Given these questions, we hypothesized that students’ school climate perceptions would op- erate as a protective factor, yielding greater moderation effects on academic achievement for youth living in higher-risk family structures (i.e., single-parent, foster-care, and homeless households) compared with youth living in low- er-risk family structures (i.e., two-parent house- holds).

Method

Sampling Procedure and Student Demographics

This study is based on existing survey data collected from �1.5 million high school stu- dents in 902 California public high schools from 2008 to 2010. The sample was limited to schools that administered the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS; WestEd, 2014), a state-adopted measure of student risk and pro- tective factors, during the 2008 –2009 and 2009 –2010 school years. In a recent psycho- metric analysis of the CHKS conducted for the California Department of Education (2014), Hanson (2012) reported that the measure was characterized by a nine-factor latent structure (i.e., school connectedness, relationships with school adults, opportunities for meaningful par- ticipation, perceived school safety, positive learning environment, low racial or ethnic ten- sion, low substance use, low violence victim- ization, and low violence perpetration). A single administration of the CHKS was required of California public schools during the 2008 –2009 to 2009 –2010 period as a condition of the Safe and Drug-Free School and Communities (Title IV) funding or the state Tobacco Use Preven- tion Education (TUPE) program. Approxi- mately two thirds of all comprehensive public high schools in the state had students complete the survey. However, in one large district, only a small sample of the entire population of schools completed the survey. Other schools did not administer the survey because of not receiv- ing Title IV or TUPE funding, being exempt from this requirement under the Rural Educa- tion Achievement Program, or for unknown rea- sons. Parental permission was collected via pas- sive or active consent procedures, which were determined at the discretion of individual school districts. Survey proctor instructions

specified that students were to be informed that their participation in the survey was both vol- untary and anonymous.

At the high-school level, the CHKS is only administered to students in Grades 9 and 11. The present sample was comprised of 305,956 students in Grade 9 (61.6%) and 190,946 stu- dents in Grade 11 (38.4%). In each of the 2 years of data collection, there were slightly over one million public school students in Grades 9 and 11 combined in California (California De- partment of Education, 2014); thus, the study sample constitutes approximately half of all stu- dents in Grades 9 and 11 statewide. The average age of sample students was 15.09 years, and 52.4% of the sample was female. In terms of race, 45.4% of sample students identified as Latino/a, 33.7% as White, 17.2% as Asian, 7.1% as Black, 3.8% as American Indian, and 8.5% as another race. For comparison, accord- ing to the California Department of Education (2014), in the 2009 –2010 school year, 48.8% of all students in Grades 9 and 11 statewide were Latino/a; 28.4% were White; 11.9% were Asian; 7.4% were Black; and 0.8% were Amer- ican Indian. See Table 2 for a full presentation of available student demographics data.

Measures

Family structure. The family structure of sample students was measured using a single survey question on the CHKS, “What best describes where you live?,” which had 12 response options, including “A home with both parents,” “A home with only one par- ent,” “Foster home, group care, or waiting placement,” and “On the street (no fixed hous- ing), car or van, park campground or abandoned building.” Given students’ response to this item, they were classified into one of four family structure categories: (a) two-parent, (b) one- parent, (c) foster-care, and (d) homeless (that included all home statuses that meet the defini- tion of homelessness under the federal Housing and Urban Development authority). Using this classification system, 69.6% of participants re- ported living in two-parent homes, 26.6% in one-parent homes, 0.5% in foster-care homes, and 1.8% in homeless households. One of the unique advantages of this dataset for studying homeless and foster-care students was that, de- spite the low proportions of students repre-

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sented in these categories, there were still suf- ficient overall group counts (n � 8,582 and n � 2,310, respectively) to power inferential analy- ses.

School climate. Students’ perception of school climate was calculated as the average of four CHKS constructs identified by Hanson (2012): (a) school connectedness (four items; Cronbach’s � � .78 in the present sample), (b) relationships with adults at school (six items; � � .88), (c) opportunities for meaningful par- ticipation in school (three items; � � .75), and (d) perceived school safety (two items; � � .69). Each of these first-order constructs was the average of two or more standardized survey items (shown in Table 1), and each of the first- order construct scores were then averaged to create a second-order construct of school cli- mate perceptions (� � .73), which was, in turn, standardized to create z-scores. Descriptive sta- tistics for this standardized school climate per- ceptions variable indicated that students living in two-parent homes had the most positive school climate perceptions (M � 0.08, SD � 0.98), followed by students in one-parent homes (M � �0.13, SD � 0.99), foster-care homes

(M � �0.31, SD � 1.14), and homeless house- holds (M � �0.80, SD � 1.33).

Academic achievement. The outcome variable in the present study was students’ self- reported academic achievement, which was measured using a single item from the CHKS, “During the past 12 months, how would you describe the grades you mostly received in school?” This item had eight potential re- sponse options, ranging from “Mostly A’s” to “Mostly F’s.” Student responses were re- coded such that a response of “Mostly A’s” was scored 4.0, a response of “A’s and B’s” was scored 3.5, and so on, with a response of “Mostly F’s” being scored 0.0. In this sense, this self-reported academic achievement met- ric was conceptualized analogous to the stan- dard four-point metric for grade point average (GPA). Thus, for analog purposes, students’ self-reported academic achievement is re- ferred to hereafter as GPA. Within the present sample, students’ average GPA was 2.92 (SD � 0.96), with the highest mean GPA observed for students living in two-parent homes (M � 3.01, SD � 0.91), followed by students in one-parent homes (M � 2.73,

Table 1 Survey Items Used in the Construction of the School Climate Perceptions Variable

Relationships with adults at school 1. At my school there is an adult who really cares about me. 2. At my school there is an adult who tells me when I do a good job. 3. At my school there is an adult who notices when I am not there. 4. At my school there is an adult who always wants me to do my best. 5. At my school there is an adult who listens to me when I have something to say. 6. At my school there is an adult who believes I will be a success.

Opportunities for meaningful participation in school 7. At school, I do interesting activities. 8. At school, I help decide things like class activities or rules. 9. At school, I do things that make a difference.

Perceived school safety 10. I feel safe in my school. 11. How safe do you feel when you are at school?

School connectedness 12. I feel close to people at this school. 13. I am happy to be at this school. 14. I feel like I am a part of this school. 15. The teachers at this school treat students fairly.

Note. All items, with the exception of #11, use the response options: (1) “Strongly Dis- agree”; (2) “Disagree”; (3) “Neither Disagree Nor Agree”; (4) “Agree”; or (5) “Strongly Agree.” Item #11 uses the response options” (1) “Very Safe”; (2) “Safe”; (3) “Neither Safe Nor Unsafe”; (4) “Unsafe”; (5) “Very Unsafe.” Item #11 was reverse coded. All item responses were standardized before scale construction.

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SD � 1.01), homeless households (M � 2.60, SD � 1.33), and foster-care homes (M � 2.53, SD � 1.18) (Table 2).

Analytic Approach

To examine the association of students’ school climate perceptions with their family structure and GPA, we estimated a series of regression models. All regression models were estimated using a multilevel, random-intercept approach that accounted for the clustered nature of the data (i.e., students in schools). No school- level variables were modeled, but the multilevel approach renders parameter standard error esti- mates more conservative by accounting for common variance in the outcome variable among same-school students. A variance de- composition of the GPA outcome variable showed that only 6% of the overall variance in GPA was because of between-school phenom-

ena (i.e., the intraclass correlation), indicating that individual student characteristics explain the majority of the variance in GPA compared with school-level characteristics. Student age (treated as a continuous variable) and gender (treated as binary variable; 0 � female, 1 � male) were controlled to isolate the relationship between family structure and GPA. Race was also controlled because of its recognized corre- lation with academic achievement (Coleman et al., 1966; Duncan & Murnane, 2011) by creat- ing a series of dummy variables for American Indian, Asian, Black, Latino/a, and other race (the dummy variable representing White stu- dents was the reference category, and omitted from models). All control variables were grand- mean centered to allow main effects to be in- terpreted in terms of an “average” student in the study sample.

Model 1: Relationship of family structure and GPA. In the first model, the self-reported GPA of student i in school j was treated as the outcome variable in a two-level linear regres- sion, using the equations:

GPAij � �0j � �1oneparentij � �2fosterij

� �3homelessij � �4demoij � rij

�0j � �00 � �0j

The family structure of student i in school j was modeled as three binary variables representing one-parent, foster-care, and homeless house- holds. The two-parent household was treated as the reference category. Student age, gender, and binary variables for race—represented by the vector demo—were included in the model as control variables. The model parameters �1, �2, and �3 estimated differences in GPA by family structure groups. Student- and school-level er- ror terms were represented by rij and �j, respec- tively.

Model 2: Moderating relationship of school climate perceptions, linear. The sec- ond model was identical to the first, with the addition of the school climate perceptions vari- able as a covariate and three interaction terms of school climate perceptions and the three family structure binary variables. The coefficients as- sociated with the school climate perceptions main effect—�1—and the three interaction terms—�3, �5, and �7— estimated the differen-

Table 2 Sample Demographics, School Climate Perceptions, and Academic Grades

Percent

Home status Two-parent home 69.6 One-parent home 26.6 Foster care 0.5 Homeless 1.8

Grade level 9th grade 61.6 11th grade 38.4

Gender and race Male 47.6 American Indian 3.8 Asian 17.2 Black 7.1 Latino/a 45.4 White 33.7

Mean SD

Age, in years 15.06 1.09 GPA, overall 2.92 0.96

Students in two-parent homes 3.01 0.91 Students in one-parent homes 2.73 1.01 Students in foster care 2.53 1.18 Students who are homeless 2.60 1.33

School climate perceptions, overall 0.00 1.00 Students in two-parent homes 0.08 0.98 Students in one-parent homes �0.12 0.99 Students in foster care �0.31 1.14 Students who are homeless �0.80 1.33

Note. N � 496,902. GPA � grade point average.

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tial association of school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA for each of the four family structure groups:

GPAij � �0j � �1jclimateij � �2oneparentij

� �3oneparentXclimateij � �4 fosterij

� �5 fosterXclimateij � �6homelessij

� �7homelessXclimateij � �8demoij

� rij

�0j � �00 � �0j

Interaction effects of the family structure variables and each of the six demographic con- trol variables were also included in this model to isolate the interaction of family structure and school climate perceptions. These 18 interaction terms are included in the demo vector in the above equation.

Model 3: Moderating relationship of school climate perceptions, quadratic. The third model was identical to the second, except that it relaxed the assumption of a linear rela- tionship between school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA for each family structure group, with the inclusion of a quadratic term for school climate perceptions and for each of the interaction terms. This model estimated whether the association of school climate perceptions and GPA was different for each family structure group at different levels of school climate per- ceptions:

GPAij � �0j � �1climateij � �2climateij 2

� �3oneparentij

� �4oneparentXclimateij

� �5oneparentXclimateij 2 � �6fosterij

� �7fosterXclimateij

� �8 fosterXclimateij 2 � �9homelessij

� �10homelessXclimateij

� �11homelessXclimateij 2 � �12demoij

� rij

�0j � �00 � �0j

Of the 496,902 sample students in Grades 9 and 11 who completed the survey, complete case data was available for 461,388 (92.9%). Students without complete case data were not included in analyses. The resulting analytic sample had similar demographics to the full sample, within a half percentage point for all gender, racial composition, and family structure variables, 0.03 years difference in terms of mean age, and less than one hundredth differ- ence in terms of mean perceptions of school climate and GPA.

Results

Model 1: Relationship of Family Structure and GPA

The regression of self-reported GPA on the family structure binary variables and student de- mographics showed that the GPA associated with each of the three modeled family structures was significantly different from that of students living in two-parent homes (Table 3, first column). After controlling for age, gender, and race, the model implied that students living in two- parent homes had GPAs of 2.96, students in one-parent homes had GPAs of 2.72, students in foster care had GPAs of 2.59, and those in homeless households had GPAs of 2.60.

Model 2: Moderating Relationship of School Climate Perceptions, Linear

The results of the moderation model with linear relationships of school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA are shown in the second col- umn of Table 3. Although each family structure group evinced different associations of school cli- mate perceptions and GPA, the findings suggest that the relationship was positive and significant for each group, with students endorsing more pos- itive school climate perceptions having higher GPAs. The magnitude of the school climate per- ceptions–GPA association was strongest for homeless students. For these students, a SD in- crease in school climate perceptions was associ- ated with a GPA increase of 0.42 (the coefficient of school climate perceptions, � � 0.30, p � .001, plus the coefficient of the homeless-school climate perceptions interaction, � � 0.12, p � .001). The next strongest association was observed for stu- dents living in one-parent homes (0.34), followed

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by students living in two-parent homes (0.30) and students living in foster care (0.22). Overall, across all four family structures, higher self- reported GPA was associated with more positive school climate perceptions. The magnitude of this association, however, differed by group.

Model 3: Moderating Relationship of School Climate Perceptions, Quadratic

The final model relaxed the assumption of lin- earity in the relationship between school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA for each family structure group, with the inclusion of a quadratic school climate perceptions term and an interaction between this term and each family structure group. The model results (see Table 3, Column 3) sug- gest that a quadratic relationship of school climate perceptions and GPA does not offer significant improvement in fit over a linear relationship for the two-parent, one-parent, and foster-care groups. For the homeless group, however, the quadratic term was significant (� � �0.08, p � .001), suggesting that, for homeless students, the rela- tionship between school climate perceptions and

GPA is stronger at lower levels of school climate perceptions and decreased at higher levels of school climate perceptions. These findings imply that, for homeless students, an increase from be- low-average to average levels of school climate perceptions is associated with a greater gain in GPA than an increase in school climate percep- tions from average to above-average levels. The implied relationships between school climate per- ceptions and GPA of Model 3 are depicted in Figure 1.

To illustrate the model-implied family structure group differences in the association between school climate perceptions and GPA estimated in Model 3, consider a hypothetical “average” stu- dent living in a two-parent home. If this student had very low perceptions of school climate (i.e., 2 SD units below the sample mean), she would be expected to have a GPA of 2.31; if she had aver- age perceptions of school climate (i.e., the sample mean), her expected GPA would be 2.95, a dif- ference of 0.64 GPA points. For an “average” student in a one-parent home, the same differences in school climate perceptions would yield ex-

Table 3 Regression Results for School Climate Perceptions on Self-Reported GPA

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

� SE � SE � SE

Intercept (two-parent) 2.96��� 0.01 2.95��� 0.01 2.95��� 0.01 School climate perceptions 0.30��� 0.00 0.30��� 0.00 School climate perceptions2 �0.01��� 0.00

One parent �0.22��� 0.00 �0.20��� 0.00 �0.20��� 0.00 School climate perceptions 0.04��� 0.00 0.03��� 0.00 School climate perceptions2 0.00 0.00

Foster care �0.34��� 0.02 �0.31��� 0.02 �0.31��� 0.03 School climate perceptions �0.08�� 0.02 �0.09�� 0.02 School climate perceptions2 0.00 0.02

Homeless �0.38��� 0.01 �0.13��� 0.01 �0.08��� 0.01 School climate perceptions 0.12��� 0.01 0.01 0.01 School climate perceptions2 �0.08��� 0.01

Age �0.04��� 0.00 �0.06��� 0.00 �0.06��� 0.00 Male �0.06��� 0.00 �0.05��� 0.00 �0.05��� 0.00 American Indian �0.01��� 0.00 �0.01��� 0.00 �0.01��� 0.00 Asian 0.21��� 0.00 0.21��� 0.00 0.21��� 0.00 Black �0.03��� 0.00 �0.03��� 0.00 �0.03��� 0.00 Latino/a �0.14��� 0.00 �0.14��� 0.00 �0.14��� 0.00 Other race �0.01��� 0.00 �0.01��� 0.00 �0.01��� 0.00 N 461,409 461,388 461,388

Note. Eighteen linear interaction terms of each combination of the six demographic control variable (i.e., Age, Male, American Indian, Asian, Black, Latino/a, and Other race) and three family structure categorical variables that were included in Models 2 and 3 are not shown for the sake of simplicity. � p � .05. �� p � .01. ��� p � .001.

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pected GPAs of 2.05 and 2.76, respectively (dif- ference of 0.71); for a fostered youth, the expected GPAs would be 2.16 and 2.65, respectively (dif- ference of 0.49); and for a homeless youth the expected GPAs would be 1.89 and 2.87, respec- tively (difference of 0.98). In practical terms, this suggests that a homeless student with average perceptions of school climate would expect a B average on her course grades—nearly on par with students from two-parent homes with the same perceptions of school climate—whereas the same student with very low perceptions of school cli- mate would expect a C average, whereas her two- parent peers with the same perceptions would be nearly a half grade higher.

Discussion

Interpretation of Findings

The present study investigated the moder- ating effects of students’ school climate per- ceptions on the relationship between family structure and academic achievement. We hy- pothesized that students’ school climate percep- tions would operate not only as a promotive factor by bolstering academic achievement for all students, but also as a protective factor, yielding greater effects on academic achieve- ment for youth living in higher-risk family structures (i.e., single-parent, foster-care, and homeless households) compared with youth liv-

ing in lower-risk family structures (i.e., two- parent households). Of particular interest was whether school climate might serve an equity- enhancing function, bolstering the achievement of youth living in disadvantaged family struc- tures. Most basically, findings from this study supported the well-established relationship be- tween home status and academic achievement, indicating that, after controlling for certain de- mographic variables, students living in one- parent, foster-care, and homeless households all self-reported significantly lower GPAs than stu- dents living in two-parent homes. More specif- ically, students living in two-parent homes self- reported higher GPAs than did students living in one-parent homes, whereas students in both of these groups self-reported higher GPAs than their homeless and foster-care peers. This find- ing is consistent with decades of research dem- onstrating that stable home environments are a promotive factor that contributes to students’ school success (Coleman et al., 1966; Reardon, 2011).

The association between self-reported GPA and school climate perceptions was also posi- tive and significant for students classified within each of the four family structure statuses (i.e., two-parent, one-parent, foster-care, and home- less households), indicating that, regardless of family structure type, students with more posi- tive perceptions of school climate self-reported

1. 5

2 2.

5 3

3. 5

G P

A

-3 -2 -1 0 1 2

Perception of School Climate

Two parents One parent Foster Homeless

Figure 1. Moderating effect of school climate perceptions on the relationship of home status and GPA.

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higher GPAs. In addition to lending supporting evidence to a growing body of research demon- strating cross-sectional associations between student achievement and school climate (e.g., Bowen, Rose, & Ware, 2006; Brand et al., 2008), this finding makes a unique contribution by demonstrating that this relationship also held true for youth living in higher-risk family struc- tures—suggesting that school climate operates as a promotive factor. Beyond confirming the expected direct associations between these vari- ables, moderation analyses also demonstrated a positive, linear relationship between self- reported school climate perceptions and GPA for students in two-parent, one-parent, and fos- ter-care households. Specifically, positive per- ceptions of school climate had similarly bene- ficial effects for students living in two-parent and one-parent homes, with both groups show- ing improvements in self-reported GPA as their perceptions of school climate improved. Al- though the results for foster-care youth also indicated a positive linear association between self-reported GPA and perceptions of school climate, the magnitude of this relationship was weakest for this group.

Though the relationship between students’ school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA was positive and significant for all family structure groups, the moderation effect for homeless youth did not follow the same linear trend as observed in the other three groups. Specifically, for homeless students, the relation- ship between school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA appeared to be curvilinear, with a stronger association observed at lower levels of school climate perceptions, suggesting that greater gains in academic achievement are observed when school climate perceptions in- crease from below-average to average levels than when they increase from average to above- average levels. These findings imply that in schools with the poorest climates, homeless stu- dents were likely to have the worst academic achievement, compared with students in all other family structure groups. At even average levels of school climate perceptions, though, findings indicated that homeless students had higher self-reported GPAs than foster-care stu- dents and students living in one-parent homes, and that their GPAs were nearly as good as their peers’ living in two-parent homes. Thus, these findings suggest that positive school climates

are likely to be especially beneficial for home- less youth—functioning as a protective factor that reduces the achievement gap between them and their peers living in lower-risk family struc- tures. However, these findings further suggest that once a basic or average level of school climate is realized, then any further enhance- ment to homeless students’ school climate per- ceptions is likely to have tapered effects on their academic achievement.

Similarly, findings from the present study suggest that the academic achievement of stu- dents in one-parent homes appears to be more strongly affected by positive school climate per- ceptions than the achievement of students in two-parent homes. As with homeless students, the achievement gap between students in one- and two-parent homes seems to be reduced in the context of a positive school climate. This suggests that, for homeless students and stu- dents living in one-parent homes, the social or relational resources lacking within the home environment may be at least partially compen- sated for through a supportive school commu- nity—further suggesting that a positive school climate might serve as a protective factor and have equity-enhancing functions for youth liv- ing in some disadvantaged family situations.

In the present study, however, this equity- enhancing phenomenon did not hold for stu- dents living in foster care. Although foster-care students endorsing more positive school climate perceptions had higher levels of academic achievement, the achievement gap between them and their peers increased as their percep- tions of positive school climate increased. For youth living in foster-care, then, these findings suggest that a positive school climate may op- erate solely as a promotive factor, not as a protective one. Although this finding is incon- sistent with our hypothesis, it seems to accord with transactional and agentic processes posited within ecological—transactional theories of hu- man development, which suggest that youths benefit from cumulative advantage in their eco- logical contexts, bringing the psychological dis- positions (e.g., self-regulation, self-efficacy, and goal direction) they have gained from in- terpersonal transactions in one developmental context into interpersonal transactions in other contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1992; Little, Snyder, & Wehmeyer, 2006). From this theoretical per- spective, it stands to reason that students who

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live in homes with more stable family structures are, on average, provided more frequent and intensive opportunities to cultivate positive ex- pectations of, and dispositions toward, their in- terpersonal interactions with parents. In turn, these positive expectations and dispositions lend themselves to experience the school envi- ronment, including their interpersonal relation- ships with peers and teachers, more positively, and to parlay these positive experiences into improved academic outcomes.

Given this theoretical lens, we reason that the foster-care students in this sample demonstrated the weakest boost to academic achievement when they perceived a positive school climate because they have a unique level of risk, which is characterized by a more severely disadvan- taged family structure, on average, than those of youth living in one-parent and homeless house- holds. We understand that, because of the nature of the self-reported survey items in this study, there is no way to know if the homeless youth in this sample were living with one or more of their biological parents; however, we do know that foster-care youth are, by definition, sepa- rated from their biological parents. This hypoth- esis—that being separated from one’s biologi- cal parents is a critical risk factor that hampers students’ ability to build and benefit from school relationships as well as to perform well academically—is supported by research from the field of developmental psychopathology. Lawrence, Carlson, and Egeland (2006), for in- stance, found that regardless of age of first foster-care placement, length of time in place- ment, and number of placements, youth in foster care demonstrated fewer prosocial behaviors, poorer emotional regulation and tolerance for frustration, and less persistence in problem- solving tasks than their nonfoster peers, even after controlling for demographic variables (e.g., socioeconomic status). That said, we rec- ognize that using such evidence and similar reasoning to explain the findings of foster-care youth in the present study is speculative, and we acknowledge that it may not adequately explain the seemingly paradoxical finding that students from other higher-risk family structure groups (i.e., one-parent and homeless households) ex- perience a protective effect from positive school climate perceptions. Therefore, we recommend that future research be conducted, using meth- ods that can examine causal mechanisms (i.e.,

experimental designs or mixed-methods ap- proaches within longitudinal designs), to pro- vide further insight into this interesting phe- nomenon.

Study Limitations

A few methodological limitations require reconciliation with this study’s implications. First and most fundamentally, considerations must be made for the limitations of self-report data and cross-sectional analytic approaches. Causal inferences should be avoided and future studies intended to replicate and extend these results should involve experimental designs that include a variety of data-collection methods (e.g., student attitudinal reports, standardized achievement outcomes, and teacher observa- tions), preventing against the potential of com- mon-method bias (i.e., the variance attributable to the shared measurement method rather than to the constructs represented by the measures; Podsakoff, McKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003). Second, socioeconomic status, which is a likely covariate of family structure, was not controlled for in this study. This limitation is because of the fact that the existing dataset did not include any individual-level variables that could be used as proxy measure for socioeco- nomic status (e.g., enrollment in the school’s free-or-reduced price lunch program or parent education level). As a result, it is impossible to know what affect socioeconomic status might have, if any, on the main and moderating effects observed in the present study. It is reasonable to infer from existing research (e.g., Sirin, 2005) that inclusion of SES in the current regression models may reduce the amount of variance in academic achievement currently accounted for by family structure. Also not included in the CHKS dataset were validity screening items that could be used to identify students who purposefully lied on their survey and to subse- quently remove their responses from the ana- lytic sample. Cornell and colleagues (2012) found that conclusions drawn about survey structure and risk taking behavior vary when invalid responders are removed from samples of adolescent survey respondents. Third, our out- come variable, self-reported grades, is treated as a continuous variable in this study. This trans- formation of an ordinal variable was based on the assumption that the underlying scale is con-

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tinuous, and precedent for this approach exists in the literature (e.g., Brand et al., 2008). Fi- nally, this study did not account for the relation between parental involvement and family struc- ture. Given the relatedness of these variables and the contribution of both to students’ school success, it is possible that interaction effects were overlooked, as, for example, some youth who report living in two-parent homes may experience less supportive parental relation- ships than youth who live in one-parent homes. To address this potential confound, we recom- mend that future studies either control for pa- rental involvement or investigate its interaction with family structure, both of which would yield more precise findings regarding the rela- tions among family level variables and school climate. Such analyses may be particularly in- formative for gaining further insight into home- less youth, as the data collected in the present study could not be used to determine whether homeless students were actually living with one or both of their biological parents, nor how supportive they perceived their parental rela- tionships to be.

Implications for Practice

Despite the limitations noted above, we sug- gest that findings from the present study have general implications for the practice of school psychology. Foremost, given that positive school climate perceptions were shown to have positive associations with self-reported GPA for all students, and that school climate was shown to moderate the relationship between family structure and self-reported GPA, we suggest that school climate improvement efforts (e.g., student voice and empowerment strategies, staff trainings on communicating effectively to build healthy relationships with youth, implementa- tion of evidence-based programs targeting school safety and connectedness, and adult mentoring) may have utility as universal and targeted interventions within a multitiered sys- tem of student support (cf. Sugai & Horner, 2009). That said, we recognize the unique find- ings regarding foster-care youth and suggest that additional individualized or more intensive social– emotional supports may be necessary to buffer against the greater risks inherent within their family structures.

Moreover, findings from this study also provide support for a phenomenon that Gutkin and Conoley (1990) called “the paradox of school psychology,” which states that, to serve students most effectively, school psychologists must first “concentrate their attention and professional ex- pertise on adults” (p. 212). The profession of school psychology has addressed this paradox throughout the past couple decades, as it has in- creasingly emphasized collaboration, consulta- tion, and other indirect service delivery methods that target adults (i.e., parents, teachers, and ad- ministrators) for the purposes of building school environments that better meet the behavioral, emotional, social, and academic needs of students (cf. National Association of School Psychologists, 2010). As a result, the training and idealized role of school psychologists has evolved to become much more ecological in nature, resulting in a paradigm shift away from solely individualized and direct service delivery. Findings from the present study, considered together with the grow- ing body of research on the effects of family structure and school climate on students’ wellbe- ing, provide further evidence in support of the necessity of this shift and the need for training school psychologists to function as systems-level change agents.

Research indicates that the influence of partic- ular ecological factors, such as family structure and school climate perceptions, should warrant the attention of school psychologists. As school psy- chologists may not have a direct influence on the nature of students’ family structures, we suggest school psychologists focus on the ecological fac- tors within their sphere of influence that are most amenable to change, which, in this study, were students’ school climate perceptions. To posi- tively influence such perceptions, we suggest that school psychologists employ an ecological prob- lem-solving approach that aims to identify and remediate the relational factors contributing to stu- dents’ poor perceptions (cf. Ervin, Gimpel Pea- cock, & Merrell, 2010). Furthermore, given the variability of definitions, school psychologists should also be concerned with operationalizing school climate into methods that have treatment validity in practice. For example, as defined in the present study, students’ school climate percep- tions could be operationalized as a combination of school connectedness, caring relationships with adults, and meaningful participation—all of which are measurable constructs that are amenable to

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change and targetable via prevention and interven- tion programming.

Conclusion

Schools are increasingly expected to address the academic, behavioral, social, and emotional needs of youth, regardless of their students’ home situations. Findings from the present study suggest that focusing on assessing and improving stu- dents’ school climate perceptions may be a viable means for supporting academic achievement, es- pecially for youth living in higher-risk family structures. Additionally, findings from this study suggest that youths experiencing greater family level disadvantages (i.e., living in foster care) are likely to receive less benefit from a positive school climate and therefore may warrant more intensive social– emotional supports. Considering this con- text, we hope that the field of school psychology will continue to transition toward a greater focus on school wide consultative practices that seek to cultivate positive school climates, as both promo- tive and protective factors, within multitiered sys- tems of student support.

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Received January 6, 2014 Revision received April 30, 2014

Accepted May 18, 2014 �

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