School characteristics, school academic indicators and student outcomes: implications for policies to improve schools

This study investigated the relationship between school environmental characteristics (e.g., student background, school size, school level) and school academic indicators (e.g., attitudes toward knowledge and achievement, staff professional development) that are useful in explaining the types of outcomes that are produced. School academic indicators appear to be enabling or constraining factors that shape both in‐school processes and a variety of outcomes produced. Monitoring the school's context, therefore, may provide useful information to policy‐makers about why schools produce certain outcomes. The sample included all elementary, intermediate and high schools (n = 235) in one state in the western USA. A series of regression equations indicated that many observed differences among schools are due to background characteristics of students and the demographic variables of the schools that they attend. After controlling for many of these differences, however, the school's press for achievement through curricular and structural reform and staff professionalism also exerted small, yet significant, effects that help explain between‐school differences in reading, mathematics, attendance and behavioural outcomes. The findings are discussed in terms of their relevance to policy‐making efforts to improve schools.