Young African American and Latino children in high-poverty urban schools: How they perceive school climate

Journal of Negro Education, The, Winter 1996 by Slaughter-Defoe, Diana T, Carlson, Karen Glinert

METHOD

Sample

Only third-grade African American (N= 1,000) and Latino (N= 260) children are included in the present analyses. Further, only data from subjects who completed all of the interview protocols on the school climate measure are considered.

Instruments

The measure of school climate used in this study was adapted from Habib, Anson, Cook, Clifford, and Antonio's (1993) School Climate Questionnaire (middle-school version), originally designed for use in a study of middle school-aged children in Prince George's County. For children in grades five through eight, alphas ranging from .67 to .90 were obtained by the instrument's developers on items contributing to middle school students' perceptions of school climate in the following areas: (a) predictable and orderly climate, (b) teachers promoting academic performance, (c) student climate (academic/ social), (d) student climate (social), (e) attachment to school, (f) positive relations with adults, (g) school-level affirming climate, (h) home academic environment and style, and (i) home social environment and style. This 90-item instrument, which is normally groupadministered to children in grades five through eight, was adapted for individual administration to our younger sample.

The resulting 24-item instrument yields information about these younger students' perceptions of relationships with teacher and peers within the school and the classroom setting. Dimensions of climate items assess student valuing of school and its academic goals, students' pride in school, their conventional interpersonal social skills, and peer affiliative climate. Items assessing the dimensions of positive relationships between students and adults in the school focus on students' perceptions of the behaviors teachers use to motivate students, including verbal encouragement of academic performance; how fair adults in the school are; how much they respect students; and how much they care about students. In this measure, children were not queried about home academic and social environment.

Procedures

School Selection. Schools were phased into the overall study of the Chicago Comer School Development Program. During academic year 1991-92, 4 pilnt schools were introduced; these Phase I schools were not randomly selected arid had no matched controls. They were predominantly African American primary schools located in Chicago's westside communities. Like most of the schools selected to implement the SDP model in Chicago in subsequent years, all had ESEA Chapter I eligibility, and over 90% of their students qualified for free or reduced-price lunches.

In 1992-93, eight more primary schools were introduced into the study. By design, though all eight schools volunteered for the Comer Program, four of these Phase II schools were randomly designated to implement the SDP model and four served as comparison schools. Latino children were significantly represented in two of the eight schools; one of these was a Comer school, while the other was a comparison school. In 1993-94, twelve schools were introduced into the evaluation. Again, though all had volunteered for the Comer program, 6 were randomly designated to receive SDP implementation and 6 became comparison schools. Latino children were significantly represented in 4 of the 12 schools.