Parental Involvement and Perceptions of School Climate in California

Background and Purpose: The school’s social-emotional and affective qualities i.e. the school’s climate, reflect the experiences of the whole school community, including students, school personnel and parents. The school’s climate is known to influence students’ academic and other social-emotional outcomes. By maintaining close relationships and frequent communication with the schools, parents can greatly contribute to their children’s school-related outcomes and to the enhancement of more caring and responsive school climates. Further, evaluating parents’ perceptions of their children’s schools by students’ grade-level, and by major subgroups of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status (SES) could help leverage students’ school-related outcomes and reduce social-economic gaps.     

While researchers and policymakers recognize the need for ongoing data collection on parental perceptions of the school environment, systematic ways of gathering parental views have not been used or highlighted in either the policy arena or within the literature.

This study used the first major parent statewide survey in California to examine parental school-related perceptions of school climate, school problems, and encouragement of parental involvement in public education. Findings would help guide policies and reform in K-12 education and to establish data-driven interventions for healthier and safer schools.

Methods: The study used data gathered from the Core Module of the California School Climate Survey for Parents and Guardians (CSPS), administrated for the first time in 2011 throughout California (N=15,829). The CSPS measured parent’s reports on school climate (14 items; α = .950), school encouragement of parental involvement (five items; α = .870), school problems (eight items; α = .949), and background information (race/ethnicity, SES as manifested by child’s eligibility for free/reduced-price lunch, students’ grade levels). T-tests, analyses of variance, and post-hoc comparisons were used to examine differences in parents’ reports according to background characteristics.

Results:

Findings indicate more negative reports from parents of lower SES backgrounds on school problems (t (13,914) = 19.74; p < .001). However with regard to perceptions of school’s encouragement of parental involvement, no significant differences were obtained between parents of higher and lower SES backgrounds (t (15,102) = 1.954; n.s.).   

Further, while some minority groups feel that schools suffer from many problems (F(5,13675) = 55.468; p<.001), no systematic associations between race/ethnicity and school climate perceptions were found: Only Native American-Indians or Alaskan natives had significantly worst perception of school climate (M = 2.69; SD = .62) compared with all other race/ethnicity groups who reported similarly on more positive school climate (M = 3.17; SD = .50; F(5,14839) = 32.814; p<.001). This gap in positive perceptions of school climate and negative school problems may indicate that parents, especially those from ethnic minority groups, are not provided with proper opportunities to develop profound conversancy and familiarity with their children’s schools.

Conclusions and Implications:

The current findings indicate that maintaining and promoting a positive climate in schools serving marginalized communities seem attainable. However, the findings question the roles that the schools, as well as federal, state, and local policymakers, play in supporting active school involvement of parents and empowering families from vulnerable ethnicities in the community.