Using School and Classroom Climate Surveys to Improve Learning Environments (Part 1)

Designing and implementing high-quality surveys

This is the first in a two-part series about using school climate surveys to gain insight into students’ experiences. Click here to read Part 2.

Over the past several years, state and local education leaders have faced an increasingly complex set of challenges: persistent chronic absenteeism, widening opportunity gaps, increasing student stress, and concerns about the impact of technology on students’ learning and well-being. Often overlooked amid these pressures is a powerful yet low-cost tool that can help leaders understand and improve students’ experiences: survey-based measurement of school and classroom climate.

“School climate” generally refers to the “quality and character of school life,” including the interpersonal relationships, organizational structures, and safety conditions that shape students’ daily experiences. “Classroom climate” is similar but describes conditions including teaching practices that promote engagement, a sense of belonging, respect for individuals’ contributions, and high expectations. The boundary between these is not always clear; some definitions and measures of school climate include aspects of classroom climate. 

Climate data can be gathered through surveys, interviews, focus groups or observations. In this blog, I focus on surveys—because they are inexpensive, scalable and supported by a robust foundation of research.

Why Should Schools Measure Climate?

Educators and policymakers continue to debate how best to measure school performance and how much to prioritize non-academic indicators in the context of large-scale assessment systems that prioritize achievement tests. Climate surveys offer a promising complement to existing large-scale assessment systems for three reasons.

First, they are low-cost and low-burden. School climate surveys can be administered quickly, typically in 10-20 minutes. They require no specialized technology and can even be administered on paper if needed. Because climate is defined by people’s perceptions, beliefs and experiences, self-reporting is arguably the most appropriate way to measure it.

Second, climate is strongly associated with meaningful education outcomes. A growing evidence base shows that students who experience positive school and classroom climates are more likely to attend school regularly, engage academically, experience fewer disciplinary incidents and feel a sense of belonging.

Examples include:

• A study of over 25,000 middle and high school students found that students who reported strong student-teacher relationships had significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism.
  
• Multiple national studies (including CDC reports) show that school connectedness, which is related to supportive school and classroom climate, predicts lower engagement in risky behaviors and better well-being among teenagers.
  
• A review of research on school climate and achievement found consistent relationships between supportive climates and higher academic performance.
  
• Research in Chicago showed that high-growth high schools tended to have “supportive, collaborative, and instructionally ambitious climates,” reflecting evidence from the science of learning about the conditions under which learning flourishes.

Third, climate is malleable, and educators can improve it. Research demonstrates that targeted supports can strengthen climate, including professional learning focused on relationship-building, adopting structures for mentoring and advising, and strengthening school-family partnerships. Because positive climates are beneficial to students and can be developed through concerted action, climate surveys offer a promising approach to expanding school performance measures.

What Purposes Can School Climate Measures Serve?

Climate surveys, like large-scale academic achievement tests, can serve a variety of purposes. If designed and implemented appropriately, they provide valuable data to inform school-level decisions about instruction and other supports, identify areas of strength and need and shed light on disparities across student groups. 

They also serve a powerful signaling function, communicating to students, educators, families and others that supportive learning environments are a priority. On a broader scale, survey data can be helpful for monitoring broad trends and understanding the conditions that might contribute to academic learning gaps or challenges. And they can empower young people to exercise agency by sharing their experiences and perspectives with the goal of informing improvement to the educational environment. 

Several states and districts have successfully used climate surveys for these purposes. Washoe County School District in Nevada administers climate surveys to students, families and school staff to monitor progress and identify challenges. North Carolina administers a Teacher Working Conditions survey that includes questions about climate. The results help educators create supportive environments for teaching and learning. 

Oregon gathers data on students’ experiences through its annual Student Educational Equity Development (SEED) Survey to inform resource allocation and interpretations of achievement data. And the District of Columbia’s school system administers the DC Survey About Your School (DC SAYS) to “provide LEAs with a critical tool, bolster the District’s school and community supports, and inform the public.”

As with any measure, climate surveys should be used only for purposes supported by validity evidence. Lower-stakes uses, such as classroom or school improvement, generally require less stringent evidence than high-stakes accountability decisions. Users of climate surveys should be judicious, especially when it comes to assigning consequences for individuals or institutions to these measures. High-stakes, punitive approaches are likely to backfire by reducing participation, distorting responses and threatening trust. 

Getting Started: Key Decisions

Adopting or revising a climate survey involves several considerations:

1. What do you want to measure, and for what purpose? Because “school climate” and “classroom climate” can refer to a variety of concepts, leaders should identify the specific constructs aligned to their goals. For example, a district might prioritize student-teacher relationships and engaging classroom instruction, and these priorities will inform the selection or creation of the survey. 
2. Who will you survey? Students provide essential insight into their lived experiences, but teachers, staff and families add perspectives on safety, communication, leadership and working conditions. Teacher surveys are particularly valuable for understanding organizational culture and barriers to instructional improvement.
3. Do you need to create a new survey? Often, the answer is no. Several resources offer information about existing climate surveys that have been widely used, such as the Annenberg Institute’s EdInstruments database and the National School Climate Center. Educators can adopt existing instruments as-is or tailor them—ideally with support from measurement experts or through a research-practice partnership.
4. How will you report results? Key considerations include what information to report publicly (if any), how to combine items into scales, whether and how to disaggregate results by student group, whether anonymity is needed (and for which groups), and what dashboards or visualizations will help leaders make sense of the data.
5. How will you ensure capacity to interpret and use results appropriately? Educators benefit from clear interpretive guides, communities of practice, and access to actionable strategies for addressing identified needs. 
6. How will climate data be used in conjunction with other information to guide decisions? Climate data become more powerful when combined with other indicators such as attendance, discipline, course-taking, grading patterns or academic growth. Together, they help create a holistic picture of the learning environment.
7. What will it take to support a culture of trust and transparency for the use of climate data? Students, families, and staff are much more likely to respond honestly when they understand how the data will be used and are assured that guardrails have been adopted to prevent inappropriate use. Leaders should communicate survey findings openly and describe plans for using them to inform improvement. 

Answers to these questions will be most likely to lead to productive use of climate survey data when relevant constituencies, including students, teachers, school staff, families and school board members, have opportunities to weigh in, and to see how their feedback shapes changes made as a result. This type of engagement can help ensure that climate surveys become meaningful tools for improvement rather than compliance exercises.

Next week, I’ll provide more detailed guidance on a few of these considerations.