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School Climate
Select a level below to view and/or print
chart in PDF format:
What you are looking at:
You are looking exclusively at student responses that help us understand how they feel while they are at school. These responses are collected from the SALT survey findings field #6 on the individual school charts in
IW! Above are the links to the charts with responses from the students in all the high schools
and middle schools (with response samples larger than
10). By using a combination of free-and-reduced lunch eligibility, minority status and limited English proficiency, we’ve developed an indicator of the degree to which students present the school with certain challenges and sorted the schools from least to most challenged.
What you are looking for:
While a positive, safe, mutually helpful school climate will not by itself improve student achievement, it is a necessary condition for high-performing schools. Thus, you are looking for the degree to which RI’s students report that they feel at ease, reasonably close to the teachers, safe and free of the presence of drugs in school.
Good school climate is an essential platform for improved student achievement
Students’ attention to their school work can be limited either because of upsetting conditions whose sources are outside of school, or because of conditions in the school itself, often referred to as school climate. Sadly, some students are upset by both. On-site school clinics, COZs, family centers and students centers increasingly try to help students connect with social services that address those personal needs they bring with them from home and the neighborhood.
This year’s SALT survey results focus on a few indicators of the conditions or climate within the school that can distract students from academics. Just as a child is often distracted from learning by his parents’ divorce – a condition which he brings from outside the school – so students are distracted by fear of being bullied, robbed or just feeling helpless or “out of it.” Students need to feel they have an adult to turn to at all times.
Every child needs to be known well by at least one adult
Though a guarantee of 100% safety is not possible, research repeatedly shows that to create a truly safe school the adults need to be close to the lives of the students and they need to have options for what to do when students flag problems that can not be handled by school personnel alone. This closeness is one of the key components of the collection of educational best practices known as “personalization.” When the adult culture has time to discuss the students and time to “hang,” if you will, with students, they know when a fight is brewing, when an infestation of drugs is just starting, when a child is despondent and why. If all students trust at least one adult in the building, they can help the adults handle the climate/culture problems well before fights, drugs or despair have managed to take hold.
Necessary, but not sufficient
Many schools – indeed, a fair number of middle schools who were involved in the Carnegie project and a handful of new, small high schools – have managed to implement strong personalization strategies and this work is reflected in the students’ responses on the SALT survey. However, more often than not, this good work has not yet translated into higher student achievement. Good school climate is necessary, but not sufficient. Schools still have to develop strong curricula, high expectations for all, diverse teaching methods for a range of learning styles, and so on, to make good use of the attention to academics liberated by supportive school climate.
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