We examined data from an on-going longitudinal natural experiment , which has followed a cohort of mostly Latinx students starting at the beginning of 9th grade through age 23 currently. Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities exist in youth outcomes and comparative studies suggest that ethnicity may influence perception of school climate. Furthermore, within the Latinx experience there exists a diversity of national and indigenous heritages, degrees of acculturation and integration, and immigration stories. While ethnicity was not the focus of this analysis, we believe study of this predominantly Latinx population makes a valuable contribution to the extant literature. Additionally, RISE-UP examined a range of school climate characteristics, including school safety and order, student-teacher relationships and support, and disciplinary style. We examined a variety of different adolescent behaviors , and academic outcomes , so as to permit a more holistic analysis that incorporates health and behavior with cognitive development.This is a secondary analysis of data from the RISE-UP study, a longitudinal natural experiment designed to assess the effects of high-performing high schools on health behaviors among low-income, minority adolescents in Los Angeles. Five high-performing charter high schools were selected based on: enrollment of predominantly economically disadvantaged students , academic performance in the top tertile of public schools in Los Angeles County based on 2012 Academic Performance Index derived from standardized test scores, and use of an admissions lottery. Eighth grade students who were applying for 9th grade admission into high school were randomly sampled from the admissions lottery list of “winners” and “losers” during two consecutive years in the spring before entry into high school . To be eligible, plants rack students had to speak English or Spanish fluently and reside in Los Angeles County. Of 1509 eligible students, 1270 were enrolled and consented to participate in the study .
Further details of the original study are published elsewhere. 11 The institutional review board of the RAND Corporation and the University of California Los Angeles approved this study. Written parental consent and student assent were obtained from all participants.Participants completed a baseline, face-to-face, computer-assisted survey from March of 8th grade through November of 9th . Similar follow-up surveys were conducted in the spring semester of 10th grade and 11th grade . Interviews were conducted in the patient’s primary language with the aid of bilingual research assistants and in a sufficiently private location of the participant’s choice. A computer-assisted self-interview was used to minimize social desirability bias for potentially sensitive topics related to substance use and sexual and delinquent behaviors. A total of 1159 students completed the survey in 10th grade and 1114 students completed the survey in 11th grade for an 87.8% retention rate through 11th grade.At each survey, students reported their frequency of alcohol and cannabis use in the last 30 days, dichotomized . Students also completed an alcohol misuse scale and a cannabis misuse scale , which assessed high risk substance use behaviors and its negative consequences . Scale items were dichotomized and summed to produce a total score with higher scores representing greater misuse characteristics. Students reported on delinquent behaviors that are associated with negative life outcomes using the delinquent behavior index from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health and included: painting graffiti, damaging someone else’s property, shoplifting or stealing, running away from home, driving a car without the owner’s permission, burglary, armed robbery, selling illicit drugs, participation in a gang in the last year, and having ever participated in a gang fight. The score was dichotomized . Students were asked if they carried a weapon such as a real gun or knife in the last 30 days and if they had been in a physical fight in the last 12 months. These questions were combined into one dichotomous variable of any of the two behaviors .
Students responded to several questions about high-risk sex behaviors including not using contraception, ever becoming pregnant, and having multiple sexual partners . Students also answered two questions about bullying at school in the last 12 months, which were dichotomized: 1)whether someone had bullied or picked on them and 2) whether they themselves had bullied or picked on someone . We also collected information on several academic outcomes. For truancy, students reported if they had cut or skipped classes in the last 12 months, dichotomized . Students also responded whether they transferred to another school for any reason in the last academic year, dichotomized . We obtained student grade point average from official school transcript records . We used self-reported GPA when we could not obtain school transcripts . We obtained standardized test scores for each student for 8th grade and 11th grade from the California Department of Education. Math and English proficiency were determined by the California Standardized Testing and Reporting Program and the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress . We compared those who failed to meet 11th grade standard versus those who were proficient or above. We obtained data on college matriculation into a 4-year college from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization providing enrollment and degree-verification services to colleges and universities. These data were obtained on 10/30/2019 corresponding to about 1.5-2.5 years after the end of 12th grade.In the 10th and 11th grade surveys, students were asked about several aspects of their school environment. These school climate measures are not comprehensive but chosen to represent a diversity of school climate domains. School order refers to the amount of confusion and chaos in the classroom34 and was assessed using a scale based on the Confusion, Hubbub, and Order Scale developed by Matheny and colleagues.
We analyzed the measure as school order, the inverse of school chaos, so that higher scores indicated a more positive schoolclimate . School safety was assessed using the Chicago Consortium on School Research Student Perceptions of Safety Scale, a 4-item measure of self reported safety in and around school . Using a modified questionnaire from the annual survey of Chicago public schools students reported perceptions of teacher-student relationships on a four point scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. We simply summated the responses to three questions into a single variable representing perceived teacher respect for students . We combined three additional questions into a second variable representing teacher support for college . School disciplinary style was assessed according to student ratings of school support and structure as previously described. These two rating scales were categorized into tertiles, and then combined to create a single perceived school disciplinary style variable with five categories: authoritative , authoritarian , permissive , neglectful , and average .We conducted linear and logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between each school climate variable and each adolescent health, behavioral, and academic outcome separately. For these analyses, the continuous school climate variables were standardized so that a 1-point change in each scale equaled one standard deviation. All models were adjusted for student gender, Latinx ethnicity, USA birthplace, native English language, parental birthplace, plant growing trays parental employment, parental education and parenting style. In each model, we also controlled for the outcome measures at baseline . For models examining GPA and standardized test scores, we controlled for these outcomes from middle school. All models used generalized estimating equations with a random effect for school to adjust for clustering of outcomes at the school-level. The analyses were restricted to the sample of respondents who completed baseline, 10th grade and 11th grade surveys. Among this analytic sample, values were missing for 2.3% or less of the sample for any single measure. 5.1% of the sample were missing data for the 8th grade standardized test scores, 11.7% were missing 11th grade standardized test scores, 2.3% were missing transcript and self-reported GPA from middle school, and 0.3% were missing transcript and self reported GPA from high school. Missing values were multiply imputed using 100 replicates so as to maximize the use of available data across a large number of variables. Sensitivity analyses using list wise deletion produced similar results. STATA 14.0 was used for all analyses. The original RISE-Up sample was comprised of 1270 students at baseline , 91% of whom completed the 10th grade survey. This study was limited to the 1114 students who completed the baseline through 11th grade surveys. Table 1 summarizes student and parental demographic characteristics. Just under half of the sample were males , 90% were Latinx, 87% were born in the USA, and 40% were native English speakers. One-quarter of students reported having at least one parent born in the USA, 89% had one or more parent working full-time, and 52% had one or more parents graduate from high school. Compared to those in the analytic sample, subjects who were lost to follow up before the 11th grade survey were more likely to be male , white , native English speaker , and have at least 1 parent born in the USA . Those who were lost to follow up were less likely to have at least 1 parent working full-time .
There were no differences between the analytic sample and those lost to follow-up in parental education, birth in the USA, and parenting style.A minority of the sample reported engaging in risky behaviors . At 11th grade, 15% reported using alcohol and 11% reported using cannabis in the last 30 days. One-fifth reported engaging in one or more alcohol misuse behaviors in the past year,such as drinking alcohol at school, getting into trouble because of alcohol, or missing school because of alcohol use . Sixteen percent reported engaging in similar cannabis misuse behaviors . One-fifth of the sample also reported engaging in one or more delinquent behaviors in the last year such as stealing, graffiti, selling drugs or being in a gang. One in eight students reported either carrying a weapon in the last 30 days or being in a physical fight in the last 12 months. Approximately 9% of students reported engaging in high-risk sex. Nearly one in five reported being the victim of bullying and 15% reported bullying others in the last 12 months. Among respondents, 22% of students reported being truant. From the start of 9th grade to the time of 11th grade survey, 23% of students reported changing schools at least once. Mean high school GPA was 2.83 , 35% and 71% of students were proficient in Math and English on 11th grade standardized tests respectively, and 43% matriculated at a 4-year college after high school.In the process of displacing millions of adolescents from school settings across the nation and the world, SARS-CoV-2 has reminded parents and policymakers alike of the irreplaceable role schools have in adolescent growth and health. It has also reinvigorated interest in the importance of the social climate that each school cultivates. These findings add longitudinal evidence that student reported metrics of school climate – including an orderly environment, teacher-student relationships, and disciplinary style – are important upstream predictors of both health and academic outcomes in subsequent years. Departing from the current literature that tends to isolate one or two school climate variables and outcomes, this analysis took a comprehensive approach in analyzing the longitudinal relationship between multiple school climate variables and an array of both health and academic outcomes. This permits a more holistic analysis that better captures the effect of a multifaceted school climate not just on cognitive development but also on health and behavioral development. While perceptions of school order and teacher respect for students were protective for nearly all risky behaviors, perceptions of safety were surprisingly only associated with less bullying. This supports some researchers’ assertion that, except in the case of bullying, school safety is only inconsistently protective for many outcomes. Similarly, perceptions of order and teacher respect for students was beneficial for a number of academic outcomes. Yet surprisingly, teacher support for college was not linked to any of our objective academic outcomes. Other authors have attributed such divergences to variations in measurement, however, as yet unidentified modifiers such as cultural norms cannot be excluded. Aligning well with the literature, neglectful disciplinary style was associated with several serious and concerning behaviors as well as poor academic outcomes . In contrast, permissive disciplinary style was strongly predictive of English proficiency and college matriculation, providing additional evidence for the critical role of teacher support.