School Climate, Student Engagement, and Academic Achievement - A Latent Variable, Multilevel Multi-Informant Examination

Oct 15, 2026

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Study examining how school climate relates to student engagement and academic achievement tested an authoritative theory in a statewide sample of 60,441 students and 11,442 teachers across 298 high schools. The multilevel multi-informant structural model evaluated whether high structure and student support predict engagement, and whether engagement in turn mediates academic outcomes. Findings showed structure and student support associated with higher engagement, engagement directly linked to academic achievement, and results support an authoritative climate as a contributor to graduation and state testing performance.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Overview

Authoritative school climate model and hypotheses

Data and multilevel multi-informant structural modeling

Findings: structure, support, engagement, and achievement

Background Literature

Positive climate and achievement

Policy and program drivers for climate improvement

Research gaps and calls for multidimensional and multilevel approaches

Mechanisms Linking Climate to Outcomes

Conceptual models and identification of mechanisms

Distinguishing interpersonal, personal, and behavioral factors

Engagement as a Model Builder

Engagement’s role in explaining climate–achievement links

AERA Open October-December 2018, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/2332858418815661 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2018. [http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) School Climate, Student Engagement, and Academic Achievement: A Latent Variable, Multilevel Multi-Informant Examination Tim Konold Dewey Cornell Yuane Jia Marisa Malone University of Virginia This study tested the authoritative school climate theory that schools characterized by high structure and student support have greater levels of student engagement and that these factors are associated with higher academic achievement, as indicated by school graduation rates and school performance on state-mandated testing. The model was tested through a multilevel multi-informant structural model on a statewide sample of 60,441 students and 11,442 teachers in 298 high schools. Consistent with the authoritative school climate model, both structure and student support were associated with higher student engagement in schools. Moreover, student engagement was directly associated with academic achievement and operated as an intervening factor. Results provide new evidence that an authoritative school climate is associated with high school academic achievement. Keywords: achievement, assessment, high schools, school climate, school psychology, structural equation modeling A substantial body of research has found that students are more engaged in school and attain higher academic achievement in schools with a positive school climate (Thapa, Cohen, Guffey, & Higgins-D’Alessandro, 2013) . For example, a meta-analysis of 78 published research articles concluded that “a positive school climate contributed to higher academic achievement and decreased the negative influence of poor SES [socioeconomic status] background characteristics and other risk factors on academic achievement”(Berkowitz, Moore, Astor, & Benbenishty, 2017, p. 33). Another review concluded that a positive school climate leads to higher academic achievement when it is characterized by high academic expectations and high-quality teacherstudent relationships (Wang & Degol, 2016) . With so much supporting research, the improvement of school climate has become an important educational goal (Caskey, Cerna, Hanson, Polik, & Houten, 2016). For example, in 2014, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidelines for improving school climate (U.S. Departments of Education, 2014a) and awarded over $70 million in school climate transformation grants to 138 recipients in 38 states (U.S. Department of Education, 2014b). Its Office of Safe and Healthy Students has promulgated a compendium of school climate surveys and invested in the development of a national survey (American Institutes for Research, 2018). The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; U.S. Department of Education, 2017) encourages schools to measure “school climate and safety” as a nonacademic indicator of school quality or student success. As might be expected, numerous educational programs have been developed with school climate goals such as improving student behavior and strengthening the quality of teacher-student relationships (National School Climate Center, 2017; O’Brennan & Bradshaw, 2013). Across the numerous studies of school climate is therecurrent question of how school climate is linked to academic outcomes. What specific aspects of school climate are associated with student achievement, and what is the mechanism underlying this relationship? In identifying directions for further research, Wang and Degol (2016) asserted that future studies should conceptualize school climate as a multidimensional construct and identify what specific components of school climate are associated with student academic outcomes. They criticized previous studies for their reliance on a unidimension

FAQs

What does the authoritative school climate theory propose?

Schools characterized by high structure and student support should show higher student engagement, and those engagement and climate factors should be associated with academic achievement measured by graduation rates and state-mandated testing.

How was the theory tested in the study?

The researchers used a multilevel multi-informant structural model on a statewide sample of 60,441 students and 11,442 teachers across 298 high schools.

What role does student engagement play in academic achievement?

Student engagement was directly associated with academic achievement and also operated as an intervening factor linking school climate components to outcomes.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Cart