School Climate Perception among Latinx and White Students: An Examination of Intersecting Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Identities in Context

Abstract

Limited research has explored how the characteristics of student and teacher racial/ethnic composition may explain students’ perceptions of school climate. This study used stratified analysis to assess the associations of two prominent diversity aspects (i.e., student racial/ethnic diversity and teacher racial/ethnic diversity) with students’ perceived school climate. Particularly, this study controlled for student- and school-levels demographic characteristics among 41,237 Latinx students and 23,819 White students from 7th grade to 12th grade enrolled in 250 California public schools. The findings indicated that higher teacher racial/ethnic diversity had a mild to moderate positive association with perceived school attitudes to parental participation (Economically Disadvantaged Latinx: β = 0.20, p