Validating the Department of Education’s School Climate Survey Using the CLASS-S

Until recently, the time and expense required to select research-based measures of school climate and administer them at the school level has made it difficult for administrators to monitor school climate. This changed in 2016 with the release of the EDSCLS (Department of Education School CLimate Survey), a freely-available web-based school tool developed under the direction of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The EDSCLS measures climate in the domains of engagement, safety, and environment, with several topic areas within each domain (e.g., the engagement domain includes a relationships topic area; the safety domain includes a bullying/cyberbulling topic area).

The present study focuses on the criterion validity of the EDSCLS, asking whether associations between EDSCLS scales and other well-established measures are in the expected directions. The CLASS-Secondary (CLASS-S, Pianta et al., 2008) is used as a validation instrument. The CLASS-S is a reliable and valid observation tool used to measure classroom interactions in three domains: emotional support, instructional support, and classroom organization. CLASS-S domains have shown significant associations with students’ achievement gains, suggesting that the measure captures important aspects of the classroom environment (Allen et al., 2012).

Data were collected during the baseline phase of an evaluation of a school safety initiative in schools serving middle- or high-school-aged youth (grades 7-12) in a large urban school district. Students and teachers from 30 schools responded to the web-based EDSCLS. Five randomly-selected classrooms per school were rated on the CLASS-S by two independent observers. In each school, two grades were required to complete the EDSCLS and receive CLASS-S observations (if randomly selected). The EDSCLS is anonymous but includes respondent race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and grade.

Positive associations between the EDSCLS and CLASS-S, where such associations were expected, will be evidence of concurrent validity. Small or non-significant associations where no association was expected will be evidence of discriminant validity. For example, it is hypothesized that the EDSCLS topic area relationships will have a significant, positive association with CLASS-S domain of emotional support, but have a weak association with CLASS-S instructional support. Each hypothesis will be tested with a two-level regression model, with classrooms nested within schools. Follow-up analyses will explore whether validity is observed when analyzing EDSCLS scores from subgroups (e.g., girls; LGBT).

Implications for using the EDSCLS and the CLASS-S to measure school climate will be discussed.