Secondary Student Perceptions of School Climate Elements and Self-Reported Academic Self-Efficacy as Factors of School Continuous Improvement

State and national agencies recognize the link between school quality and student academic and behavioral outcomes. Research has shown that a positive school climate and high academic self-efficacy are associated with positive academic and behavioral student outcomes. Determining the school climate factors that contribute to academic self-efficacy will add to the limited research on the relationship between these two constructs and provide information to prospective and current school leaders in cultivating an effective school. A multiple regression was used to determine how student-perceived school climate factors predict self-reported student academic self-efficacy and of these factors, which one provided the strongest explanation to the amount of variance observed on the outcome variable academic self-efficacy. The factors of school climate investigated in this study are connectedness, classroom environment, safety and belongingness, and academic optimism. In this context, school climate is defined as the quality of a student’s school experiences and academic self-efficacy is defined as a student’s self-reported level of confidence in discrete academic skills such as reading and writing skills. The results of a multivariate statistical analysis conducted on a secondary data set from a school climate survey administered to nearly 20,000 secondary students in a large, urban school district situated on the US-Mexico border will be discussed