The Baltimore Education Research Consortium (BERC) is pleased to release its new report, Measuring School Climate: Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health.
An increasing awareness of the relationship between school climate and student outcomes is evident in conversations in the national media about suspensions and safety, and schools and communities are realizing that children cannot learn if they do not feel safe and respected.
BERC began researching school climate with its first report entitled Positive School Climate: What It Looks Like and How It Happens – Nurturing Positive School Climate for Student Learning and Professional Growth. During the drafting of that report, Baltimore City district staff began to discuss the many instruments used by the district to capture climate data across schools. Now, six months later, BERC is pleased to release its new report, Measuring School Climate: Using Existing Data Tools on Climate and Effectiveness to Inform School Organizational Health.
This report follows up by examining and comparing the multiple tools Baltimore City Schools is using to capture and improve school climate, such as the School Survey, Climate Walk, School Effectiveness Reviews, and the Student Survey on Teacher Practice, and describes their strengths and weaknesses. The report proposes a new visual measure aligned with the National School Climate Center’s climate dimensions and demonstrates that they are highly correlated with attendance and suspension rates.
The new proposed tool for Organizational Health is highly correlated with the School Effectiveness Review data and can be used by the district as a leading and timely indicator of effective school practices and a means to measure school effectiveness annually and with less expense.
For more detail, please read the two reports:
http://baltimore-berc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/SchoolClimateFeb2014.pdf
http://baltimore-berc.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/ClimateToolsReportOct2014.pdf
