School Psychology Quarterly © 2014 American Psychological Association

2014, Vol. 29, No. 2, 000 1045-3830/14/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/spq0000076

School Climate, Family Structure, and Academic Achievement:

A Study of Moderation Effects

Meagan O’Malley and Adam Voight Tyler L. Renshaw

WestEd, Los Alamitos, California Louisiana State University

Katie Eklund
University of Arizona
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School climate has been lauded for its relationship to a host of desirable academic,
behavioral, and social– emotional outcomes for youth. The present study tested the
hypothesis that school climate counteracts youths’ home–school risk by examining the
moderating effects of students’ school climate perceptions on the relationship between
family structure (i.e., two-parent, one-parent, foster-care, and homeless households),
and academic performance (i.e., self-reported [grade point average] GPA). The present
sample consisted of 902 California public high schools, including responses from over
490,000 students in Grades 9 and 11. Results indicated that, regardless of family
structure, students with more positive school climate perceptions self-reported higher
GPAs. Youths with two-parent, one-parent, and homeless family structures displayed
stepwise, linear improvements in self-reported GPA as perceptions of climate im-
proved. Foster-care students’ positive school climate perceptions had a weaker effect
on their self-reported GPA compared with students living in other family structures. A
unique curvilinear trend was found for homeless students, as the relationship between
their school climate perceptions and self-reported GPA was stronger at lower levels.
Overall, the moderation effect of positive school climate perceptions on self-reported
GPA was strongest for homeless youth and youth from one-parent homes, suggesting
that school climate has a protective effect for students living in these family structures.
A protective effect was not found for youth in foster-care. Implications for research and
practice are discussed.

Keywords: school climate, family structure, academic achievement, foster care, homeless

A child’s home and school represent distinct
microsystems that shape important develop-
mental outcomes. Each microsystem presents
its own set of potential risks, or threats to de-
velopment, as well as protective and promotive
Meagan O’Malley and Adam Voight, Health and Human
Development Program, WestEd, Los Alamitos, California;
Tyler L. Renshaw, Department of Psychology, Louisiana
State University; Katie Eklund, College of Education, Uni-
versity of Arizona.
We thank the California Department of Education for
encouraging the collection and analysis of these California
Healthy Kids Survey data, which yield important insights
into the wellbeing of youth.
Correspondence concerning this article should be ad-
dressed to Meagan O’Malley, Health and Human Develop-
ment Program, WestEd, 4665 Lampson Avenue, Los
Alamitos, CA 90720-5139. E-mail: momalle@wested.org
1
factors that counteract those threats and facili-
tate wellbeing (Masten, Herbers, Cutuli, &
Lafavor, 2008). Promotive factors are those in-
ternal or external assets (e.g., supportive adult
relationships at home) that improve outcomes
for all youths, but that do not help close the
academic and social outcome gaps between at-
risk students and their peers. Protective factors,
on the other hand, are those assets (e.g., positive
school relationships) that disproportionately
bolster the outcomes of youth who are identified
as at-risk, thereby decreasing the outcome gaps
between them and their peers (Furlong, Shar-
key, Quirk, & Dowdy, 2011). Moreover, risk
factors, which are the negative counterparts of
promotive and protective factors, are those in-
ternal or external stressors (e.g., poverty) that
hinder or worsen youths’ outcomes. The accu-
mulation of multiple risk factors across micro-
 2 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
systems—referred to as cumulative risk—is
more predictive of deleterious outcomes in
youth than exposure to any one risk alone (Ob-
radović, Shaffer, & Masten, 2012; Sameroff,
2006).
The nature of the relationship between home
and school microsystems has been examined for
decades using a unidirectional model, wherein
home environment characteristics are analyzed
for their effects on school-related outcomes.
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Because of the abundance of work in this area,
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scholars of economics, sociology, education,
and psychology now largely agree that parental
education, socioeconomic status, and family
structure have main effects on the academic
performance of youth (Coleman et al., 1966;
Reardon, 2011) and an aggregated effect on
system-level school performance indicators,
such as state-mandated standardized test scores
(Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Eas-
ton, 2010). In other words, students who expe-
rience more family related advantages and re-
sources at home tend to perform better
academically, and schools that enroll higher
proportions of these students tend to be deemed
successful by state accountability standards.
More recently, this line of research has been
extended to examine the possibility that school
environments may play an important role in
counteracting or buffering youths’ home-related
risks, especially as they relate to school perfor-
mance. For instance, Hopson and Lee (2011)
found that students’ positive school climate per-
ceptions attenuated the relationship between
family poverty and negative behavioral out-
comes at school (e.g., truancy, fights with other
students, and suspensions). Moreover, students’
positive school climate perceptions are nega-
tively related to disruptive school behaviors for
all students, with the strongest effect observed
for youth living in low-income homes (Hopson
& Lee, 2011). Furthermore, in their analysis of
the relations between students’ standardized test
scores and school climate perceptions, Voight,
Austin, and Hanson (2013) demonstrated that
students’ positive school climate perceptions
were a distinguishing indicator of secondary
schools that outperformed academic achieve-
ment (indicated by state-mandated standardized
test scores) predictions based on their student
demographics.
The present study extends this line of re-
search by examining whether students’ percep-
tions of a positive school climate might function
as both a promotive and protective factor: en-
hancing the academic achievement of all youth,
while offering greater benefits to youth living in
more disadvantaged family structures. Thus, be-
cause the educational research literature is re-
plete with studies investigating factors affecting
students’ school performance—with race, eth-
nicity, and socioeconomic status being chief
among these (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Dun-
can & Murnane, 2011; Sirin, 2005)—the re-
mainder of the introduction focuses squarely on
the two major variables of interest in the present
study—family structure and school climate—
and their relationship with academic outcomes.
Family Structure
Family structure is a sociodemographic indi-
cator that differentiates youths’ living situations
by the number of caregiving adults with whom
they live. Family structure is sometimes mea-
sured as a proxy for family stress, as decades of
research have demonstrated that children living
in single-parent homes are more likely than
those living in two-parent homes to experience
poverty and its associated stressors (McLana-
han & Garfinkel, 2000). Closely related to fam-
ily structure, parental involvement is generally
defined as a constellation of adult behaviors that
support youths’ achievement of school-related
demands (El Nokali, Bachman, & Votruba-
Drzal, 2010). Because of the myriad demands
placed upon them, single parents may have less
time available to commit to their child’s school
life than can be provided in two-parent homes
(Jeynes, 2005). Indeed, children living in sin-
gle-parent homes receive, on average, less aca-
demic encouragement and guidance at home
than their peers living in two-parent families
(Astone & McLanahan, 1991).
Single-Parent and Two-Parent Students
Family structure is sometimes considered in
research designs investigating the relationship
between parental involvement and school per-
formance. For instance, using data from a large
national dataset with predominantly White
(69%) high school-aged students, Jeynes (2005)
found that, compared with youth living in sin-
gle-parent homes (i.e., single-parent never mar-
ried, divorced), children living in two-parent
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT
homes displayed superior academic achieve-
ment across various academic outcomes (i.e.,
reading, math, science, and social science stan-
dardized test results) than children from single-
parent homes (Jeynes, 2005). Moreover, family
structure proved to be a more powerful predic-
tor of students’ academic achievement than the
types of parental involvement behaviors (e.g.,
checking on homework) that are often encour-
aged by school personnel. In a related study, El
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Nolaki, Bachman, and Votruba-Drzal (2010)
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found that, after controlling for family structure
and other known covariates in a sample of ele-
mentary-aged students, parent involvement ex-
erted no meaningful effect on students’ aca-
demic achievement. Disheartening though they
may be, these findings suggest that living in a
single-parent home asserts a level of risk that
even a conscientious home adult might not be
able to overcome alone. To our knowledge,
similar research has yet to be conducted with
secondary school students.
Foster-Care Students
Approximately 1% of all children in the
United States are currently placed in the foster-
care system (Pecora et al., 2006). Placement in
foster-care settings is typically prompted by the
deterioration of caregiving in the child’s native
home setting (Lawrence, Carlson, & Egeland,
2006). Although many children placed in foster
care are there for a short period of time, nearly
half of all children remain in foster care for a
year or longer (U.S. Department of Health &
Human Services, 2005). Once placed in foster-
care settings, youths’ experiences are often
characterized by prolonged separation from par-
ents and family members, disrupted relation-
ships with foster parents, and frequent transi-
tions between foster placements (Newton,
Litrownik, & Landsverk, 2000; U.S. Depart-
ment of Health & Human Services, 2012). For
these reasons, youths in foster care often have
family structures characterized by unstable
caregiver relationships.
Current, methodologically advanced studies
examining school-related outcomes for youths
living in foster care are scant in the peer-
reviewed literature. More frequently, analyses
of foster-care youths’ academic achievement
are conducted by state and federal public health
agencies. For instance, in their analysis of fos-
3
ter-care youths’ academic achievement in the
state of Washington, Burley and Halpern (2001)
found that, compared with their nonfoster peers,
youths in foster-care homes scored lower on
state achievement tests, had lower graduation
rates, were more likely to be enrolled in special
education, and were more likely to have re-
peated a grade or changed schools during the
school year. In addition to suffering from more
frequent and debilitating mental health prob-
lems, children in foster care are also at greater
risk of becoming involved in criminal activities,
dropping out of school, and discontinuing post-
secondary education (Pecora et al., 2006; Rubin
et al., 2004). Taken together, these findings
suggest that youth in foster care are among
those in greatest need of thoughtfully designed,
enriched, developmentally supportive school
environments that are intended to prevent dele-
terious outcomes and promote their wellbeing.
Homeless Students
Over 1 million youth are estimated to be
homeless in the United States, although precise
rates are difficult to determine because of high
residential mobility and the variability of con-
struct definitions used for policy purposes (Perl
et al., 2013). Despite such measurement chal-
lenges, researchers have made progress in ex-
amining the experiences of homeless children
and youth. For example, studies have shown
that homeless children are at higher risk for a
variety of emotional, behavioral, and academic
challenges, although poverty likely accounts for
some proportion of these effects. Research has
also indicated that homeless children experi-
ence more mental health and behavior problems
than peers living in average-income homes, al-
though when poverty is accounted for, the mag-
nitude of the difference between groups de-
creases (Buckner, 2008; Samuels, Shinn, &
Buckner, 2010). Children who are homeless and
highly mobile have also been shown to have
lower reading and math achievement than their
housed counterparts, even after the effects of
poverty are controlled (Obradović et al., 2009;
Rafferty, 2004; Voight, Shinn, & Nation, 2012).
In addition to the poor mental health and
achievement outcomes associated with home-
lessness, the family structure of homeless chil-
dren is often fragile, characterized by increased
risk for parent– child separation. For instance,
 4 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
Bassuk and colleagues (1997) found that chil-
dren were more likely to be placed in foster care
when their families experienced homelessness
than when they experienced poverty. Indeed,
one study found that the likelihood of mother–
child separation is quadrupled after an experi-
ence of homelessness (Cowal, Shinn, Weitz-
man, Stojanovic, & Laba, 2002). In another
study, nearly 20% of youth who entered shelters
with their families had prior or future experi-
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ences in the state’s child welfare system (Park,
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Metraux, Brodbar, & Culane, 2004). What is
more, the mobility associated with homeless-
ness exposes youth to the loss of social capital
gained by youth in stable homes who benefit
from persistent relationships with teachers and
friends in school settings (Rafferty, 2004).
School Climate
Some scholars have posited that develop-
mentally supportive school environments may
counteract the effects of adverse home expe-
riences through the reduction of cumulative
risk (Masten et al., 2008). One of the primary
school-level characteristics implicated in fos-
tering student resilience is a multidimensional
construct referred to as school climate (Mas-
ten & Motti-Stefanidi, 2009). One of the most
common definitions found within the educa-
tion-related literature defines school climate as
“the quality and character of school life,” which
is derived from “patterns of people’s experi-
ences of school life and reflects norms, goals,
values, interpersonal relationships, teaching,
learning and leadership practices, and organiza-
tional structures” (Cohen, McCabe, Michelli, &
Pickeral, 2009, p. 182). Thus, social support at
school, including relationships between and
among students and adults, is considered an
essential dimension of school climate (You,
O’Malley, & Furlong, 2014). Also included in
theoretical and measurement models of school
climate are opportunities for belonging and con-
nectedness, school safety, physical school re-
sources, and discipline practices (O’Malley,
Katz, Renshaw, & Furlong, 2012; Zullig, Koop-
man, Patton, & Ubbes, 2010).
Studies measuring the school climate percep-
tions of youth and school staff have indicated
that more positive perceptions of school climate
are associated with more desirable academic,
behavioral, and social– emotional outcomes.
Teachers’ perceptions of positive school cli-
mates, for example, have been positively related
with higher student achievement in reading and
mathematics (Brand, Felner, Seitsinger, Burns,
& Bolton, 2008; Uline & Tschannen-Moran,
2008). What is more, youths who perceive that
they attend schools with positive climates en-
gage in fewer risk-taking and violent behaviors
(Resnick et al., 1997), experience fewer disci-
pline referrals and school suspensions (Nelson,
Martella, & Marchand-Martella, 2002; Welsh,
2000), and report stronger feelings of safety and
greater willingness to report safety threats at
school (Syvertsen, Flanagan, & Stout, 2009;
Welsh, 2000). Furthermore, research has dem-
onstrated that students’ school climate percep-
tions are related to their complete mental health
status, with positive climate perceptions being
associated with both increases in life satisfac-
tion and decreases in internalizing and external-
izing symptoms (Suldo, McMahan, Chappel, &
Loker, 2012). Such findings suggest that school
climate may have moderating effects on various
student wellbeing outcomes.
Purpose of the Present Study
Although cross-sectional research indicating
relations between students’ positive school cli-
mate perceptions and desirable academic, be-
havioral, and social– emotional outcomes has
burgeoned recently, the particular dynamics of
school climate, such as its potential moderating
effects on students’ exposure to various risk
factors, have gone largely unexplored. Specifi-
cally, there is little available empirical evidence
supporting the assertion that positive school cli-
mates can compensate for the risk associated
with living in disadvantaged family structures.
The present study intended to address this gap
in the literature by investigating two related
research questions:
1. Are students’ positive school climate per-
ceptions associated with improved aca-
demic outcomes for youth living in differ-
ent family structures (i.e., single-parent,
two-parent, foster-care, and homeless)?
2. Are students’ positive school climate per-
ceptions associated with a reduction in the
academic achievement gap commonly ob-
served between at-risk youth and their
peers?
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT
Given these questions, we hypothesized that
students’ school climate perceptions would op-
erate as a protective factor, yielding greater
moderation effects on academic achievement
for youth living in higher-risk family structures
(i.e., single-parent, foster-care, and homeless
households) compared with youth living in low-
er-risk family structures (i.e., two-parent house-
holds).
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Method
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Sampling Procedure and Student
Demographics
This study is based on existing survey data
collected from !1.5 million high school stu-
dents in 902 California public high schools
from 2008 to 2010. The sample was limited to
schools that administered the California
Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS; WestEd, 2014), a
state-adopted measure of student risk and pro-
tective factors, during the 2008 –2009 and
2009 –2010 school years. In a recent psycho-
metric analysis of the CHKS conducted for the
California Department of Education (2014),
Hanson (2012) reported that the measure was
characterized by a nine-factor latent structure
(i.e., school connectedness, relationships with
school adults, opportunities for meaningful par-
ticipation, perceived school safety, positive
learning environment, low racial or ethnic ten-
sion, low substance use, low violence victim-
ization, and low violence perpetration). A single
administration of the CHKS was required of
California public schools during the 2008 –2009
to 2009 –2010 period as a condition of the Safe
and Drug-Free School and Communities (Title
IV) funding or the state Tobacco Use Preven-
tion Education (TUPE) program. Approxi-
mately two thirds of all comprehensive public
high schools in the state had students complete
the survey. However, in one large district, only
a small sample of the entire population of
schools completed the survey. Other schools did
not administer the survey because of not receiv-
ing Title IV or TUPE funding, being exempt
from this requirement under the Rural Educa-
tion Achievement Program, or for unknown rea-
sons. Parental permission was collected via pas-
sive or active consent procedures, which were
determined at the discretion of individual
school districts. Survey proctor instructions
5
specified that students were to be informed that
their participation in the survey was both vol-
untary and anonymous.
At the high-school level, the CHKS is only
administered to students in Grades 9 and 11.
The present sample was comprised of 305,956
students in Grade 9 (61.6%) and 190,946 stu-
dents in Grade 11 (38.4%). In each of the 2
years of data collection, there were slightly over
one million public school students in Grades 9
and 11 combined in California (California De-
partment of Education, 2014); thus, the study
sample constitutes approximately half of all stu-
dents in Grades 9 and 11 statewide. The average
age of sample students was 15.09 years, and
52.4% of the sample was female. In terms of
race, 45.4% of sample students identified as
Latino/a, 33.7% as White, 17.2% as Asian,
7.1% as Black, 3.8% as American Indian, and
8.5% as another race. For comparison, accord-
ing to the California Department of Education
(2014), in the 2009 –2010 school year, 48.8% of
all students in Grades 9 and 11 statewide were
Latino/a; 28.4% were White; 11.9% were
Asian; 7.4% were Black; and 0.8% were Amer-
ican Indian. See Table 2 for a full presentation
of available student demographics data.
Measures
Family structure. The family structure of
sample students was measured using a single
survey question on the CHKS, “What best
describes where you live?,” which had 12
response options, including “A home with
both parents,” “A home with only one par-
ent,” “Foster home, group care, or waiting
placement,” and “On the street (no fixed hous-
ing), car or van, park campground or abandoned
building.” Given students’ response to this item,
they were classified into one of four family
structure categories: (a) two-parent, (b) one-
parent, (c) foster-care, and (d) homeless (that
included all home statuses that meet the defini-
tion of homelessness under the federal Housing
and Urban Development authority). Using this
classification system, 69.6% of participants re-
ported living in two-parent homes, 26.6% in
one-parent homes, 0.5% in foster-care homes,
and 1.8% in homeless households. One of the
unique advantages of this dataset for studying
homeless and foster-care students was that, de-
spite the low proportions of students repre-
 6 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND

sented in these categories, there were still suf-
ficient overall group counts (n " 8,582 and n "
2,310, respectively) to power inferential analy-
ses.
School climate. Students’ perception of
school climate was calculated as the average of
four CHKS constructs identified by Hanson
(2012): (a) school connectedness (four items;
Cronbach’s # " .78 in the present sample), (b)
relationships with adults at school (six items;
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(M " $0.31, SD " 1.14), and homeless house-
holds (M " $0.80, SD " 1.33).
Academic achievement. The outcome
variable in the present study was students’ self-
reported academic achievement, which was
measured using a single item from the CHKS,
“During the past 12 months, how would you
describe the grades you mostly received in
school?” This item had eight potential re-
sponse options, ranging from “Mostly A’s” to

# " .88), (c) opportunities for meaningful par- “Mostly F’s.” Student responses were re-
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ticipation in school (three items; # " .75), and
(d) perceived school safety (two items; # "
.69). Each of these first-order constructs was the
average of two or more standardized survey
items (shown in Table 1), and each of the first-
order construct scores were then averaged to
create a second-order construct of school cli-
mate perceptions (# " .73), which was, in turn,
standardized to create z-scores. Descriptive sta-
tistics for this standardized school climate per-
ceptions variable indicated that students living
in two-parent homes had the most positive
school climate perceptions (M " 0.08, SD "
0.98), followed by students in one-parent homes
(M " $0.13, SD " 0.99), foster-care homes
coded such that a response of “Mostly A’s”
was scored 4.0, a response of “A’s and B’s”
was scored 3.5, and so on, with a response of
“Mostly F’s” being scored 0.0. In this sense,
this self-reported academic achievement met-
ric was conceptualized analogous to the stan-
dard four-point metric for grade point average
(GPA). Thus, for analog purposes, students’
self-reported academic achievement is re-
ferred to hereafter as GPA. Within the present
sample, students’ average GPA was 2.92
(SD " 0.96), with the highest mean GPA
observed for students living in two-parent
homes (M " 3.01, SD " 0.91), followed by
students in one-parent homes (M " 2.73,

Table 1
Survey Items Used in the Construction of the School Climate
Perceptions Variable
Relationships with adults at school
1. At my school there is an adult who really cares about me.
2. At my school there is an adult who tells me when I do a good job.
3. At my school there is an adult who notices when I am not there.
4. At my school there is an adult who always wants me to do my best.
5. At my school there is an adult who listens to me when I have something to say.
6. At my school there is an adult who believes I will be a success.
Opportunities for meaningful participation in school
7. At school, I do interesting activities.
8. At school, I help decide things like class activities or rules.
9. At school, I do things that make a difference.
Perceived school safety
10. I feel safe in my school.
11. How safe do you feel when you are at school?
School connectedness
12. I feel close to people at this school.
13. I am happy to be at this school.
14. I feel like I am a part of this school.
15. The teachers at this school treat students fairly.
Note. All items, with the exception of #11, use the response options: (1) “Strongly Dis-
agree”; (2) “Disagree”; (3) “Neither Disagree Nor Agree”; (4) “Agree”; or (5) “Strongly
Agree.” Item #11 uses the response options” (1) “Very Safe”; (2) “Safe”; (3) “Neither Safe
Nor Unsafe”; (4) “Unsafe”; (5) “Very Unsafe.” Item #11 was reverse coded. All item
responses were standardized before scale construction.
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT 7

SD " 1.01), homeless households (M " 2.60,
SD " 1.33), and foster-care homes (M "
2.53, SD " 1.18) (Table 2).
Analytic Approach
To examine the association of students’
school climate perceptions with their family
structure and GPA, we estimated a series of
regression models. All regression models were
estimated using a multilevel, random-intercept
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ena (i.e., the intraclass correlation), indicating
that individual student characteristics explain
the majority of the variance in GPA compared
with school-level characteristics. Student age
(treated as a continuous variable) and gender
(treated as binary variable; 0 " female, 1 "
male) were controlled to isolate the relationship
between family structure and GPA. Race was
also controlled because of its recognized corre-
lation with academic achievement (Coleman et

al., 1966; Duncan & Murnane, 2011) by creat-

approach that accounted for the clustered nature
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ing a series of dummy variables for American

of the data (i.e., students in schools). No school- Indian, Asian, Black, Latino/a, and other race
level variables were modeled, but the multilevel (the dummy variable representing White stu-
approach renders parameter standard error esti- dents was the reference category, and omitted
mates more conservative by accounting for from models). All control variables were grand-
common variance in the outcome variable mean centered to allow main effects to be in-
among same-school students. A variance de- terpreted in terms of an “average” student in the
composition of the GPA outcome variable study sample.
showed that only 6% of the overall variance in Model 1: Relationship of family structure
GPA was because of between-school phenom- and GPA. In the first model, the self-reported
GPA of student i in school j was treated as the
outcome variable in a two-level linear regres-
Table 2 sion, using the equations:
Sample Demographics, School Climate Perceptions,
and Academic Grades
GPAij ! "0j # "1oneparentij # "2 fosterij
Percent
# "3homelessij # !4demoij # rij
Home status
Two-parent home 69.6
One-parent home 26.6 "0j ! $00 # %0j
Foster care 0.5
Homeless 1.8 The family structure of student i in school j was
Grade level modeled as three binary variables representing
9th grade 61.6 one-parent, foster-care, and homeless house-
11th grade 38.4
Gender and race
holds. The two-parent household was treated as
Male 47.6 the reference category. Student age, gender, and
American Indian 3.8 binary variables for race—represented by the
Asian 17.2 vector demo—were included in the model as
Black 7.1 control variables. The model parameters %1, %2,
Latino/a 45.4 and %3 estimated differences in GPA by family
White 33.7
structure groups. Student- and school-level er-
Mean SD ror terms were represented by rij and &j, respec-
Age, in years 15.06 1.09 tively.
GPA, overall 2.92 0.96 Model 2: Moderating relationship of
Students in two-parent homes 3.01 0.91 school climate perceptions, linear. The sec-
Students in one-parent homes 2.73 1.01
ond model was identical to the first, with the
Students in foster care 2.53 1.18
Students who are homeless 2.60 1.33 addition of the school climate perceptions vari-
School climate perceptions, overall 0.00 1.00 able as a covariate and three interaction terms of
Students in two-parent homes 0.08 0.98 school climate perceptions and the three family
Students in one-parent homes $0.12 0.99 structure binary variables. The coefficients as-
Students in foster care $0.31 1.14 sociated with the school climate perceptions
Students who are homeless $0.80 1.33 main effect—%1—and the three interaction
Note. N " 496,902. GPA " grade point average. terms—%3, %5, and %7— estimated the differen-
 8 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
tial association of school climate perceptions
and self-reported GPA for each of the four
family structure groups:
GPAij ! "0j # "1jclimateij # "2oneparentij
# "3oneparentXclimateij # "4 fosterij
# "5 fosterXclimateij # "6homelessij
# "7homelessXclimateij # !8demoij
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# rij
"0j ! $00 # %0j
Interaction effects of the family structure
variables and each of the six demographic con-
trol variables were also included in this model
to isolate the interaction of family structure and
school climate perceptions. These 18 interaction
terms are included in the demo vector in the
above equation.
Model 3: Moderating relationship of
school climate perceptions, quadratic. The
third model was identical to the second, except
that it relaxed the assumption of a linear rela-
tionship between school climate perceptions
and self-reported GPA for each family structure
group, with the inclusion of a quadratic term for
school climate perceptions and for each of the
interaction terms. This model estimated whether
the association of school climate perceptions
and GPA was different for each family structure
group at different levels of school climate per-
ceptions:
GPAij ! "0j # "1climateij # "2climate2ij
# "3oneparentij
# "4oneparentXclimateij
# "5oneparentXclimate2ij # "6 fosterij
# "7 fosterXclimateij
# "8 fosterXclimate2ij # "9homelessij
# "10homelessXclimateij
# "11homelessXclimate2ij # !12demoij
# rij
"0j ! $00 # %0j
Of the 496,902 sample students in Grades 9
and 11 who completed the survey, complete
case data was available for 461,388 (92.9%).
Students without complete case data were not
included in analyses. The resulting analytic
sample had similar demographics to the full
sample, within a half percentage point for all
gender, racial composition, and family structure
variables, 0.03 years difference in terms of
mean age, and less than one hundredth differ-
ence in terms of mean perceptions of school
climate and GPA.
Results
Model 1: Relationship of Family Structure
and GPA
The regression of self-reported GPA on the
family structure binary variables and student de-
mographics showed that the GPA associated with
each of the three modeled family structures was
significantly different from that of students living
in two-parent homes (Table 3, first column). After
controlling for age, gender, and race, the
model implied that students living in two-
parent homes had GPAs of 2.96, students in
one-parent homes had GPAs of 2.72, students
in foster care had GPAs of 2.59, and those in
homeless households had GPAs of 2.60.
Model 2: Moderating Relationship of
School Climate Perceptions, Linear
The results of the moderation model with linear
relationships of school climate perceptions and
self-reported GPA are shown in the second col-
umn of Table 3. Although each family structure
group evinced different associations of school cli-
mate perceptions and GPA, the findings suggest
that the relationship was positive and significant
for each group, with students endorsing more pos-
itive school climate perceptions having higher
GPAs. The magnitude of the school climate per-
ceptions–GPA association was strongest for
homeless students. For these students, a SD in-
crease in school climate perceptions was associ-
ated with a GPA increase of 0.42 (the coefficient
of school climate perceptions, % " 0.30, p ' .001,
plus the coefficient of the homeless-school climate
perceptions interaction, % " 0.12, p ' .001). The
next strongest association was observed for stu-
dents living in one-parent homes (0.34), followed
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT 9

Table 3
Regression Results for School Climate Perceptions on Self-Reported GPA
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
% SE % SE % SE
Intercept (two-parent) 2.96!!! 0.01 2.95!!! 0.01 2.95!!! 0.01
School climate perceptions 0.30!!! 0.00 0.30!!! 0.00
School climate perceptions2 $0.01!!! 0.00
One parent $0.22!!! 0.00 $0.20!!! 0.00 $0.20!!! 0.00
School climate perceptions 0.04!!! 0.00 0.03!!! 0.00
School climate perceptions2 0.00 0.00
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Foster care $0.34!!! 0.02 $0.31!!! 0.02 $0.31!!! 0.03

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School climate perceptions $0.08!! 0.02 $0.09!! 0.02

School climate perceptions2 0.00 0.02
Homeless $0.38!!! 0.01 $0.13!!! 0.01 $0.08!!! 0.01
School climate perceptions 0.12!!! 0.01 0.01 0.01
School climate perceptions2 $0.08!!! !!!
0.01
!!!
Age $0.04 0.00 $0.06!!! 0.00 $0.06!!! 0.00
Male $0.06!!! 0.00 $0.05!!! 0.00 $0.05!!! 0.00
American Indian $0.01!!! 0.00 $0.01!!! 0.00 $0.01!!! 0.00
Asian 0.21!!! 0.00 0.21!!! 0.00 0.21!!! 0.00
Black $0.03!!! 0.00 $0.03!!! 0.00 $0.03!!! 0.00
Latino/a $0.14!!! 0.00 $0.14!!! 0.00 $0.14!!! 0.00
Other race $0.01!!! 0.00 $0.01!!! 0.00 $0.01!!! 0.00
N 461,409 461,388 461,388
Note. Eighteen linear interaction terms of each combination of the six demographic control variable (i.e., Age, Male,
American Indian, Asian, Black, Latino/a, and Other race) and three family structure categorical variables that were included
in Models 2 and 3 are not shown for the sake of simplicity.
!
p ' .05. !! p ' .01. !!! p ' .001.

by students living in two-parent homes (0.30) and
students living in foster care (0.22). Overall,
across all four family structures, higher self-
reported GPA was associated with more positive
school climate perceptions. The magnitude of this
association, however, differed by group.
Model 3: Moderating Relationship of
School Climate Perceptions, Quadratic
The final model relaxed the assumption of lin-
earity in the relationship between school climate
perceptions and self-reported GPA for each family
structure group, with the inclusion of a quadratic
school climate perceptions term and an interaction
between this term and each family structure group.
The model results (see Table 3, Column 3) sug-
gest that a quadratic relationship of school climate
perceptions and GPA does not offer significant
improvement in fit over a linear relationship for
the two-parent, one-parent, and foster-care groups.
For the homeless group, however, the quadratic
term was significant (% " $0.08, p ' .001),
suggesting that, for homeless students, the rela-
tionship between school climate perceptions and
GPA is stronger at lower levels of school climate
perceptions and decreased at higher levels of
school climate perceptions. These findings imply
that, for homeless students, an increase from be-
low-average to average levels of school climate
perceptions is associated with a greater gain in
GPA than an increase in school climate percep-
tions from average to above-average levels. The
implied relationships between school climate per-
ceptions and GPA of Model 3 are depicted in
Figure 1.
To illustrate the model-implied family structure
group differences in the association between
school climate perceptions and GPA estimated in
Model 3, consider a hypothetical “average” stu-
dent living in a two-parent home. If this student
had very low perceptions of school climate (i.e., 2
SD units below the sample mean), she would be
expected to have a GPA of 2.31; if she had aver-
age perceptions of school climate (i.e., the sample
mean), her expected GPA would be 2.95, a dif-
ference of 0.64 GPA points. For an “average”
student in a one-parent home, the same differences
in school climate perceptions would yield ex-
 10 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
3.5
3
GPA
2.5
2
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1.5
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-3 -2 -1
Perception of School Climate
Two parents
Foster
Figure 1. Moderating effect of school climate perceptions on the relationship of home status
and GPA.
pected GPAs of 2.05 and 2.76, respectively (dif-
ference of 0.71); for a fostered youth, the expected
GPAs would be 2.16 and 2.65, respectively (dif-
ference of 0.49); and for a homeless youth the
expected GPAs would be 1.89 and 2.87, respec-
tively (difference of 0.98). In practical terms, this
suggests that a homeless student with average
perceptions of school climate would expect a B
average on her course grades—nearly on par with
students from two-parent homes with the same
perceptions of school climate—whereas the same
student with very low perceptions of school cli-
mate would expect a C average, whereas her two-
parent peers with the same perceptions would be
nearly a half grade higher.
Discussion
Interpretation of Findings
The present study investigated the moder-
ating effects of students’ school climate per-
ceptions on the relationship between family
structure and academic achievement. We hy-
pothesized that students’ school climate percep-
tions would operate not only as a promotive
factor by bolstering academic achievement for
all students, but also as a protective factor,
yielding greater effects on academic achieve-
ment for youth living in higher-risk family
structures (i.e., single-parent, foster-care, and
homeless households) compared with youth liv-
0 1 2
One parent
Homeless
ing in lower-risk family structures (i.e., two-
parent households). Of particular interest was
whether school climate might serve an equity-
enhancing function, bolstering the achievement
of youth living in disadvantaged family struc-
tures. Most basically, findings from this study
supported the well-established relationship be-
tween home status and academic achievement,
indicating that, after controlling for certain de-
mographic variables, students living in one-
parent, foster-care, and homeless households all
self-reported significantly lower GPAs than stu-
dents living in two-parent homes. More specif-
ically, students living in two-parent homes self-
reported higher GPAs than did students living in
one-parent homes, whereas students in both of
these groups self-reported higher GPAs than
their homeless and foster-care peers. This find-
ing is consistent with decades of research dem-
onstrating that stable home environments are a
promotive factor that contributes to students’
school success (Coleman et al., 1966; Reardon,
2011).
The association between self-reported GPA
and school climate perceptions was also posi-
tive and significant for students classified within
each of the four family structure statuses (i.e.,
two-parent, one-parent, foster-care, and home-
less households), indicating that, regardless of
family structure type, students with more posi-
tive perceptions of school climate self-reported
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT
higher GPAs. In addition to lending supporting
evidence to a growing body of research demon-
strating cross-sectional associations between
student achievement and school climate (e.g.,
Bowen, Rose, & Ware, 2006; Brand et al.,
2008), this finding makes a unique contribution
by demonstrating that this relationship also held
true for youth living in higher-risk family struc-
tures—suggesting that school climate operates
as a promotive factor. Beyond confirming the
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expected direct associations between these vari-
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ables, moderation analyses also demonstrated a
positive, linear relationship between self-
reported school climate perceptions and GPA
for students in two-parent, one-parent, and fos-
ter-care households. Specifically, positive per-
ceptions of school climate had similarly bene-
ficial effects for students living in two-parent
and one-parent homes, with both groups show-
ing improvements in self-reported GPA as their
perceptions of school climate improved. Al-
though the results for foster-care youth also
indicated a positive linear association between
self-reported GPA and perceptions of school
climate, the magnitude of this relationship was
weakest for this group.
Though the relationship between students’
school climate perceptions and self-reported
GPA was positive and significant for all family
structure groups, the moderation effect for
homeless youth did not follow the same linear
trend as observed in the other three groups.
Specifically, for homeless students, the relation-
ship between school climate perceptions and
self-reported GPA appeared to be curvilinear,
with a stronger association observed at lower
levels of school climate perceptions, suggesting
that greater gains in academic achievement are
observed when school climate perceptions in-
crease from below-average to average levels
than when they increase from average to above-
average levels. These findings imply that in
schools with the poorest climates, homeless stu-
dents were likely to have the worst academic
achievement, compared with students in all
other family structure groups. At even average
levels of school climate perceptions, though,
findings indicated that homeless students had
higher self-reported GPAs than foster-care stu-
dents and students living in one-parent homes,
and that their GPAs were nearly as good as their
peers’ living in two-parent homes. Thus, these
findings suggest that positive school climates
11
are likely to be especially beneficial for home-
less youth—functioning as a protective factor
that reduces the achievement gap between them
and their peers living in lower-risk family struc-
tures. However, these findings further suggest
that once a basic or average level of school
climate is realized, then any further enhance-
ment to homeless students’ school climate per-
ceptions is likely to have tapered effects on their
academic achievement.
Similarly, findings from the present study
suggest that the academic achievement of stu-
dents in one-parent homes appears to be more
strongly affected by positive school climate per-
ceptions than the achievement of students in
two-parent homes. As with homeless students,
the achievement gap between students in one-
and two-parent homes seems to be reduced in
the context of a positive school climate. This
suggests that, for homeless students and stu-
dents living in one-parent homes, the social or
relational resources lacking within the home
environment may be at least partially compen-
sated for through a supportive school commu-
nity—further suggesting that a positive school
climate might serve as a protective factor and
have equity-enhancing functions for youth liv-
ing in some disadvantaged family situations.
In the present study, however, this equity-
enhancing phenomenon did not hold for stu-
dents living in foster care. Although foster-care
students endorsing more positive school climate
perceptions had higher levels of academic
achievement, the achievement gap between
them and their peers increased as their percep-
tions of positive school climate increased. For
youth living in foster-care, then, these findings
suggest that a positive school climate may op-
erate solely as a promotive factor, not as a
protective one. Although this finding is incon-
sistent with our hypothesis, it seems to accord
with transactional and agentic processes posited
within ecological—transactional theories of hu-
man development, which suggest that youths
benefit from cumulative advantage in their eco-
logical contexts, bringing the psychological dis-
positions (e.g., self-regulation, self-efficacy,
and goal direction) they have gained from in-
terpersonal transactions in one developmental
context into interpersonal transactions in other
contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1992; Little, Snyder,
& Wehmeyer, 2006). From this theoretical per-
spective, it stands to reason that students who
 12 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
live in homes with more stable family structures
are, on average, provided more frequent and
intensive opportunities to cultivate positive ex-
pectations of, and dispositions toward, their in-
terpersonal interactions with parents. In turn,
these positive expectations and dispositions
lend themselves to experience the school envi-
ronment, including their interpersonal relation-
ships with peers and teachers, more positively,
and to parlay these positive experiences into
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improved academic outcomes.
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Given this theoretical lens, we reason that the
foster-care students in this sample demonstrated
the weakest boost to academic achievement
when they perceived a positive school climate
because they have a unique level of risk, which
is characterized by a more severely disadvan-
taged family structure, on average, than those of
youth living in one-parent and homeless house-
holds. We understand that, because of the nature
of the self-reported survey items in this study,
there is no way to know if the homeless youth
in this sample were living with one or more of
their biological parents; however, we do know
that foster-care youth are, by definition, sepa-
rated from their biological parents. This hypoth-
esis—that being separated from one’s biologi-
cal parents is a critical risk factor that hampers
students’ ability to build and benefit from
school relationships as well as to perform well
academically—is supported by research from
the field of developmental psychopathology.
Lawrence, Carlson, and Egeland (2006), for in-
stance, found that regardless of age of first
foster-care placement, length of time in place-
ment, and number of placements, youth in foster
care demonstrated fewer prosocial behaviors,
poorer emotional regulation and tolerance for
frustration, and less persistence in problem-
solving tasks than their nonfoster peers, even
after controlling for demographic variables
(e.g., socioeconomic status). That said, we rec-
ognize that using such evidence and similar
reasoning to explain the findings of foster-care
youth in the present study is speculative, and we
acknowledge that it may not adequately explain
the seemingly paradoxical finding that students
from other higher-risk family structure groups
(i.e., one-parent and homeless households) ex-
perience a protective effect from positive school
climate perceptions. Therefore, we recommend
that future research be conducted, using meth-
ods that can examine causal mechanisms (i.e.,
experimental designs or mixed-methods ap-
proaches within longitudinal designs), to pro-
vide further insight into this interesting phe-
nomenon.
Study Limitations
A few methodological limitations require
reconciliation with this study’s implications.
First and most fundamentally, considerations
must be made for the limitations of self-report
data and cross-sectional analytic approaches.
Causal inferences should be avoided and future
studies intended to replicate and extend these
results should involve experimental designs that
include a variety of data-collection methods
(e.g., student attitudinal reports, standardized
achievement outcomes, and teacher observa-
tions), preventing against the potential of com-
mon-method bias (i.e., the variance attributable
to the shared measurement method rather than
to the constructs represented by the measures;
Podsakoff, McKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff,
2003). Second, socioeconomic status, which is a
likely covariate of family structure, was not
controlled for in this study. This limitation is
because of the fact that the existing dataset did
not include any individual-level variables that
could be used as proxy measure for socioeco-
nomic status (e.g., enrollment in the school’s
free-or-reduced price lunch program or parent
education level). As a result, it is impossible to
know what affect socioeconomic status might
have, if any, on the main and moderating effects
observed in the present study. It is reasonable to
infer from existing research (e.g., Sirin, 2005)
that inclusion of SES in the current regression
models may reduce the amount of variance in
academic achievement currently accounted for
by family structure. Also not included in the
CHKS dataset were validity screening items
that could be used to identify students who
purposefully lied on their survey and to subse-
quently remove their responses from the ana-
lytic sample. Cornell and colleagues (2012)
found that conclusions drawn about survey
structure and risk taking behavior vary when
invalid responders are removed from samples of
adolescent survey respondents. Third, our out-
come variable, self-reported grades, is treated as
a continuous variable in this study. This trans-
formation of an ordinal variable was based on
the assumption that the underlying scale is con-
 SCHOOL CLIMATE, FAMILY STRUCTURE, AND ACHIEVEMENT
tinuous, and precedent for this approach exists
in the literature (e.g., Brand et al., 2008). Fi-
nally, this study did not account for the relation
between parental involvement and family struc-
ture. Given the relatedness of these variables
and the contribution of both to students’ school
success, it is possible that interaction effects
were overlooked, as, for example, some youth
who report living in two-parent homes may
experience less supportive parental relation-
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ships than youth who live in one-parent homes.
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To address this potential confound, we recom-
mend that future studies either control for pa-
rental involvement or investigate its interaction
with family structure, both of which would
yield more precise findings regarding the rela-
tions among family level variables and school
climate. Such analyses may be particularly in-
formative for gaining further insight into home-
less youth, as the data collected in the present
study could not be used to determine whether
homeless students were actually living with one
or both of their biological parents, nor how
supportive they perceived their parental rela-
tionships to be.
Implications for Practice
Despite the limitations noted above, we sug-
gest that findings from the present study have
general implications for the practice of school
psychology. Foremost, given that positive
school climate perceptions were shown to have
positive associations with self-reported GPA for
all students, and that school climate was shown
to moderate the relationship between family
structure and self-reported GPA, we suggest
that school climate improvement efforts (e.g.,
student voice and empowerment strategies, staff
trainings on communicating effectively to build
healthy relationships with youth, implementa-
tion of evidence-based programs targeting
school safety and connectedness, and adult
mentoring) may have utility as universal and
targeted interventions within a multitiered sys-
tem of student support (cf. Sugai & Horner,
2009). That said, we recognize the unique find-
ings regarding foster-care youth and suggest
that additional individualized or more intensive
social– emotional supports may be necessary to
buffer against the greater risks inherent within
their family structures.
13
Moreover, findings from this study also provide
support for a phenomenon that Gutkin and
Conoley (1990) called “the paradox of school
psychology,” which states that, to serve students
most effectively, school psychologists must first
“concentrate their attention and professional ex-
pertise on adults” (p. 212). The profession of
school psychology has addressed this paradox
throughout the past couple decades, as it has in-
creasingly emphasized collaboration, consulta-
tion, and other indirect service delivery methods
that target adults (i.e., parents, teachers, and ad-
ministrators) for the purposes of building school
environments that better meet the behavioral,
emotional, social, and academic needs of students
(cf. National Association of School Psychologists,
2010). As a result, the training and idealized role
of school psychologists has evolved to become
much more ecological in nature, resulting in a
paradigm shift away from solely individualized
and direct service delivery. Findings from the
present study, considered together with the grow-
ing body of research on the effects of family
structure and school climate on students’ wellbe-
ing, provide further evidence in support of the
necessity of this shift and the need for training
school psychologists to function as systems-level
change agents.
Research indicates that the influence of partic-
ular ecological factors, such as family structure
and school climate perceptions, should warrant the
attention of school psychologists. As school psy-
chologists may not have a direct influence on the
nature of students’ family structures, we suggest
school psychologists focus on the ecological fac-
tors within their sphere of influence that are most
amenable to change, which, in this study, were
students’ school climate perceptions. To posi-
tively influence such perceptions, we suggest that
school psychologists employ an ecological prob-
lem-solving approach that aims to identify and
remediate the relational factors contributing to stu-
dents’ poor perceptions (cf. Ervin, Gimpel Pea-
cock, & Merrell, 2010). Furthermore, given the
variability of definitions, school psychologists
should also be concerned with operationalizing
school climate into methods that have treatment
validity in practice. For example, as defined in the
present study, students’ school climate percep-
tions could be operationalized as a combination of
school connectedness, caring relationships with
adults, and meaningful participation—all of which
are measurable constructs that are amenable to
 14 O’MALLEY, VOIGHT, RENSHAW, AND EKLUND
change and targetable via prevention and interven-
tion programming.
Conclusion
Schools are increasingly expected to address
the academic, behavioral, social, and emotional
needs of youth, regardless of their students’ home
situations. Findings from the present study suggest
that focusing on assessing and improving stu-
dents’ school climate perceptions may be a viable
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means for supporting academic achievement, es-
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pecially for youth living in higher-risk family
structures. Additionally, findings from this study
suggest that youths experiencing greater family
level disadvantages (i.e., living in foster care) are
likely to receive less benefit from a positive school
climate and therefore may warrant more intensive
social– emotional supports. Considering this con-
text, we hope that the field of school psychology
will continue to transition toward a greater focus
on school wide consultative practices that seek to
cultivate positive school climates, as both promo-
tive and protective factors, within multitiered sys-
tems of student support.
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44205
Received January 6, 2014
Revision received April 30, 2014
Accepted May 18, 2014 !