School Culture, Climate, and Violence: Safety in Middle Schools of the Philadelphia Public School System, 1990-1994

This study was designed to explore school culture and climate and their effects on school disorder, violence, and academic performance on two levels. At the macro level of analysis, this research examined the influences of sociocultural, crime, and school characteristics on aggregate-level school violence and academic performance measures. Here the focus was on understanding community, family, and crime compositional effects on disruption and violence in Philadelphia schools. This level included Census data and crime rates for the Census tracts where the schools were located (local data), as well as for the community of residence of the students (imported data) for all 255 schools within the Philadelphia School District. The second level of analysis, the intermediate level, included all of the variables measured at the macro level, and added school organizational structure and school climate, measured with survey data, as mediating variables. Part 1, Macro-Level Data, contains arrest and offense data and Census characteristics, such as race, poverty level, and household income, for the Census tracts where each of the 255 Philadelphia schools is located and for the Census tracts where the students who attend those schools reside. In addition, this file contains school characteristics, such as number and race of students and teachers, student attendance, average exam scores, and number of suspensions for various reasons. For Part 2, Principal Interview Data, principals from all 42 middle schools in Philadelphia were interviewed on the number of buildings and classrooms in their school, square footage and special features of the school, and security measures. For Part 3, teachers were administered the Effective School Battery survey and asked about their job satisfaction, training opportunities, relationships with principals and parents, participation in school activities, safety measures, and fear of crime at school. In Part 4, students were administered the Effective School Battery survey and asked about their attachment to school, extracurricular activities, attitudes toward teachers and school, academic achievement, and fear of crime at school. Part 5, Student Victimization Data, asked the same students from Part 4 about their victimization experiences, the availability of drugs, and discipline measures at school. It also provides self-reports of theft, assault, drug use, gang membership, and weapon possession at school.

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