Do School Resources Influence the Relationship between Adolescent Financial Background and Their School Perceptions

Adolescents’ perceptions of school influence their school performance, engagement, and personal beliefs.1,2 Positive perceptions of school may inspire students to form a commitment to school, enabling them to benefit from schools’ social, emotional, and intellectual skill building.1 Conversely, students who perceive school negatively are at a greater risk of engaging in risky behaviors such as substance use, truancy, and violence.3 Risky behaviors established during adolescence may last into adulthood.4 Subjective perceptions of specific situations influence subsequent behavior;5 students’ perceptions of their school environment influence their behavior and academic performance.6 For example, studies of adolescents show students who like school having higher educational motivation and higher grade point averages than students who do not like school.7 The association between school perceptions and academic achievement illustrates the influence that students’ school perceptions have on their behavior at school. However, determinants of school perceptions have not been investigated thoroughly. From an ecological perspective, students’ school outcomes are strongly influenced by their neighborhoods, home environment, schools they attend, and resources available to them.8,9 Student socioeconomic status (SES) has been associated with poor academic achievement,10 and specifically SES differences in family and neighborhood characteristics.11 However, it is also possible that student and school SES are related to school perceptions, with consequences for the students’ academic performance. In the United States, school population SES is related to school funding, resources, and demographic composition,12 and may influence students’ perceptions of the school environment. Furthermore, peer groups influence student behaviors, attitudes, and perceptions.13 Students attending schools with the majority of the population coming from a low SES household, usually live in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty, unemployment, violence, and crime,14 and generally have the poorest academic achievement and social skills.15,16 In part, this may be attributable to the negative behaviors children from low income neighborhoods observe in their homes and neighborhoods16 which may result in student norms of negative school behaviors and poorer academic performance. According to findings in the 2011 United States National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), 74% of the students eligible for free or reduced meals had math and reading scores below the 25th percentile.17 Schools with an even distribution of students’ individual SES may foster higher academic achievement18 and protect against negative school perceptions among low SES students. In contrast, in schools where there is an imbalance among SES groups, student attitudes may be overly influenced by the school’s dominant SES group. In a study investigating school and individual SES influence on Australian students’ educational outcomes, Perry and McConney18 found a consistent increase in mathematics and literacy performance across student SES quintiles as school population SES increased. Notably, although high SES students in low SES schools outperformed low SES students in high SES schools, both groups performed significantly better in high SES schools compared to their SES groups in low SES schools.18 Similarly, Caldas and Bankston19 demonstrated a collective influence of home and school SES on academic achievement. These findings suggest that the general affluence of the school may have an independent influence on school perceptions in addition to academic achievement. Students’ school perceptions also may be influenced by the school’s SES, through the resources provided by schools. Psychological, social, and environmental support provided by the schools’ resources may stimulate and sustain students’ sense of belonging to the school.20 Schools with low SES populations may have less adequate educational resources, including inexperienced or undertrained teachers, insufficient academic materials, deficient health education courses, and a lack of after school recreational activities, which may increase negative school perceptions.21 Highly affluent schools can finance school physical activity programs and extracurricular activities; conversely, economically disadvantaged schools frequently have to reduce physical activity programs because of pressure to concentrate on standardized test scores.22 Potentially, schools provide students with learning opportunities, teacher support, and a sense of belonging.23 As such, high SES schools may provide a reprieve for students from high-risk home environments that is not as available to students attending schools with insufficient resources. In general, students in higher grades, are more likely to dislike school and have higher rates of truancy, delinquency, and school dropout, and lower academic achievement.24 This vulnerable period marked by increasing self-consciousness and social acceptance may help shape adolescents’ school perceptions.25 Furthermore, older students may have more responsibilities, such as increased academic workload, social pressures, and afterschool employment,26 which may negatively influence their school perceptions. This increase in responsibility may disproportionately affect youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, with these youths experiencing greater responsibilities at a younger age than their more affluent peers.27 However, there is little research on the effect of student grade level on students’ school perceptions. Most research has focused on understanding individual and school-based determinants of academic achievement. However, students’ school perceptions may influence their motivation to achieve academically. Research is needed that investigates the roles that individual and school level factors play in students’ school perceptions. Few studies have looked at the relations of school perceptions with measures of institutional resources and school population SES or the effect of student grade level on school perceptions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine whether the associations between student SES and perceptions of school are linked to school population SES and resources, and whether these relations differ across sex, grade level, and urban/rural metropolitan status. We hypothesized that school perceptions are positively associated with student SES, school population SES, and school resources, and negatively associated with student grade level. Finally, we hypothesized that school population SES and school resources explain variation in student perceptions of school beyond that explained by student SES alone.