Selected School
Climate SALT Survey Findings: Elementary
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What you are looking at
You are looking at two different sources of data – teacher and students responses – that provide some information as to how students behave, especially towards one another. While a positive, safe, mutually helpful school climate will not by itself improve student achievement, it is a necessary condition for high-performing schools. The Teacher Reports of Student Behavior (TSRS) data helps us understand to what extent the youngest children come to school ready to learn (K-2) and what impact the school and its climate has had on the older children’s readiness to learn (3-5). The students themselves tell us to what extent they feel safe.
What you are looking for
You are looking to see the extent to which this school has children whom teachers identify as challenged in the extent to which they are ready-to-learn. You are also looking at the extent to which the school appears to have a positive impact on the student behavior as the students move from K-2 to 3-5. You hope the students report that they feel perfectly safe.
Selected School
Climate SALT Survey Findings: High 
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/or print this graph 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. While a positive, safe, mutually helpful school climate will not by itself improve student achievement, it is a necessary condition for high-performing schools.
What you are looking for
You hope the students report that they feel at ease and reasonably close to the teachers and that they feel safe and free of the presence of drugs.
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 source is 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 – more than a handful of schools in Rhode Island – have managed to implement strong personalization strategies and this work is reflected in the students’ responses on the SALT survey. 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.
 Special to the State
Middle and High School Climate Charts
This year the secondary school SALT survey findings are shown together by level – middle and high – to give a sense of the state’s school climate as a whole. Select a
grade level to view and/or print School Climate chart in PDF
format:
Middle Schools (9 KB)
|| High Schools (8 KB)
For more discussion on these charts, see the state
section.
Special to the District
(student and parent responses)
Selected SALT
Survey Findings: District
Click here to download and
/or print this graph in PDF format
What you are looking at
You are looking at student and parent responses to survey items designed to indicate how well the time spent out of school supports student achievement. The student responses, by grade level, are represented by the three-dimensional bars in the foreground of the chart. The patterned bars along the back wall of the third segment of the chart indicate the level of the parents’ willingness to help their children with homework.
What you are looking for
You are hoping to see strong levels of student literacy independent of school assignments, very low levels of children left unsupervised for extended periods of time, and evidence that students are using out-of-school time to support their schoolwork by doing appropriate amounts of homework. Schools can not help students make large achievement gains by working in a vacuum, so you are looking to see if the larger community encourages the students with various kinds of good stewardship, such as independent literacy programs, after-school offerings and so on. Similarly, some schools more than others help the community and its parents by explaining clearly what supports would be helpful, specifically how parents can help with homework.
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