Origins and Consequences of Schools ’ Organizational Culture for Student Achievement

Purpose: Most studies on the impact of school culture focus only on teachers’ average perceptions and neglect the possibility that a meaningful increment to the prediction of school effectiveness might be provided by the variance in teachers ’ culture perceptions. The objectives of this article are to (a) better understand how teachers ’ collective decision making and principal’s leadership are related to the schools ’ culture homogeneity and (b) test the moderating role of the schools ’ culture homogeneity on the relationship between four cultural scales and the schools ’ mathematics achievement. Method: The sample of this study consisted of 2,595 students nested in 52 schools and 125 classes from the French-speaking community of Belgium. Students performed two mathemat-ics achievement tests and answered a self-reported questionnaire on their backgrounds. All the teachers (n = 817) of the 52 schools answered a self-re-ported questionnaire dealing with the principal’s leadership, school culture, and teacher collegiality. Hypotheses are tested using correlation, regression, and hierarchical regression analyses. Research Findings: First, it was found tha