The Enduring Influence of School Size and School Climate on Parents’ Engagement in the School Community Lauri Goldkind and G. Lawrence Farmer Abstract This study sought to examine the direct and indirect associations between school size and parents’ perceptions of the invitations for involvement pro- vided by their children’s school in a school system that has actively attempted to reduce the negative effects of school size. Using data from the New York Public Schools’ annual Learning Environment Survey, path analysis was used to examine the role that school climate plays in mediating the relationship between school size and parents’ perceptions of invitations for involvement. Results from an analysis of middle and high school parents who participated in the annual school survey provided evidence that parents’ perceptions of safety and of respect from the school mediated the relationship between school size and perceptions of the extent of the invitations for involvement provided by the school. The indirect effect of school size via perception of safety and respect was larger than the direct effect of school size on parents’ perceptions of invita- tion for involvement. Key Words: school size, climate, urban, middle, high, small schools, reform, mediation analysis, parents, engagement, family involvement, safety, respect Introduction Parental involvement in schools continues to be a critical issue for the stake- holders of the nation’s education system (i.e., teachers, parents, educational School Community Journal, 2013, Vol. 23, No. 1 223 SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL administrators, policymakers, etc.; Epstein & Jansorn, 2004; Fan & Chen, 2001; Fege, 2000; Lloyd-Smith & Baron, 2010; Teicher, 2007). Parents’ in- volvement as educators in the home, participants on school committees, and advocates for school reform both outside and within the system has been found to have positive impacts both individually, resulting in increased academic per- formance of the recipient daughter or son, and on the school community as a whole (Fan & Chen, 2001; Green, Walker, Hoover-Dempsey, & Sandler, 2007; Walsh, 2010). For those seeking to promote parental involvement, Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1995, 1997) provide a framework which iden- tifies associated factors. In this model, the school environment (school climate), teachers, and children contribute to parents’ motivation to be involved (Hoover- Dempsey et al., 2005). The extent to which both the school and their children invite parents and provide opportunities for involvement shapes the nature and extent of involvement (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005). The school improve- ment/reform literature has focused on the school’s structure and management practices as important aspects of the school which shape parents’ perceptions of the invitations for involvement. School reform models, for example, “Suc- cess for All” (Slavin, Karweit, & Madden, 1989) and the Social Development Model (Comer & Haynes, 1991), seek to promote parental involvement by making changes in school governance which will increase the opportunities for parental involvement (Magolda & Ebben, 2007). School reform efforts target- ing school size also seek to promote greater student and parental involvement (Hartmann et al., 2009; Semel & Sadovnik, 2008). In the face of these reform efforts, there continues to be a need to better understand how structural as- pects of school, for example school size, are related to parents’ perception of the extent to which the school welcomes parental involvement. Literature Review Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler (1995, 1997), using a psychological frame- work, view parental involvement as having its beginnings in a set of perceptions parents have about their role as a parent, their self-efficacy within the school domain, and opportunities and invitations for involvement they receive from their child and the school personnel. Perceived opportunities for involvement focus on parent perception of the extent to which the school and their child want them to be involved. While limited, the literature indicates that children’s stage of social–cognitive development and approaches to learning are all fac- tors that are associated with the types of invitation for involvement provided to parents (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005). The decline in parental involvement that is associated with the transition from middle to senior high school is often 224 SCHOOL SIZE, CLIMATE & PARENTS attributed to parents’ natural response to their child’s increasing developmen- tal need for autonomy (Hoover-Dempsey et al., 2005). Aspects of the school environment such as staff attitudes towards parents and numbers of commu- nication attempts to parents have been found to be associated with parental involvement and the nature of the invitations for involvement provided by the school (Lavenda, 2011). School Size and Academic Progress The structure and quality of the school environment is believed to play an important role in providing opportunities for student and parental involve- ment. Large, impersonal, bureaucratic comprehensive schools are believed to present many barriers to involvement (Meier, 1997). Case studies of effective alternative schools provide evidence of the importance of school size in pro- moting involvement (Wehlage, Rutter, Smith, Lesko, & Fernandez, 1989). Attending small general education secondary schools has been associated with improved student achievement (Cotton, 1996; Darling-Hammond, Ancess, & Ort, 2002; Haller, Monk, & Tien, 1993; Kahne, Sporte, de la Torre, & Easton, 2008). Research has also shown that small schools promote more equitable ac- cess to academically demanding courses (Bryk, Lee, & Holland, 1993), more equitable gains in achievement (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; Lee & Smith, 1995), and lower dropout rates (Darling-Hammond et al., 2002; Kahne et al., 2008; Pittman & Haughwout, 1987). Gardner, Ritblatt, and Beatty (2000) found that the dropout rate was sig- nificantly higher in the larger California public high schools than in small schools. Their finding is consistent with the previous investigations in examin- ing dropout and schools size (Werblow & Duesbery, 2009). The general belief is that in small schools, adolescents develop a sense of belonging, and when young people are part of a small, connected environment, they are less likely to drop out of school (Gardner et al., 2000). The bonds that young people make with their peers and adults are needed to facilitate the development of social capital which promotes successful school completion (Coleman, 1988). There is evidence that school climate improves when larger schools are converted into smaller ones (Hartmann et al., 2009; Huebner, Corbett, & Phillippo, 2007). In the late 1990s, we witnessed the reorganization of schools around the country focused on reducing the size of schools (Hartmann et al., 2009). By 2001, the Bill and Melinda Gates Founda- tion had made grant awards totaling approximately 1.7 billion dollars to school districts seeking to create smaller school settings for their students. 225 SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL School Size and Parental Involvement Mechanisms by which school structural variables are associated with the behavior of parents and their children have not received a great deal of atten- tion in the literature (Datar & Mason, 2008). Additionally, much of the work examining the association between school size and parental involvement has focused on class size during the primary grades K–3 (Datar & Mason, 2008). Studies of class size provide evidence that, during the primary school years, parental involvement is associated with class size in a complementary and sub- stitutable manner (Bonesrønning, 2004; Walsh, 2010). For example, in the study of Norwegian primary school children, decreases in class size were found to result in increases in parental involvement. In a study of United States mid- dle and senior high school students, increases in school size were associated with decreases in parents’ volunteer activities (Walsh, 2010). While the work of Bonesrønning (2003, 2004, 2010) and Walsh (2010) provide insight into the role school size might play on parents’ perceptions and their potential in- volvement in education, more attention to other potential mediators is needed. School Size and Safety and Respect Hoover-Dempsey & Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of parental involvement, along with the existing school climate (Hoy & Miskel, 2005) and school vio- lence (Espelage, Bosworth, & Simon, 2000) literature, highlight the role that perceptions of school climate play in shaping students’, teachers’, and parents’ behavior. A comprehensive case study of 14 effective alternative high schools carried out in the latter part of the 1980s provided evidence of the importance of creating a school climate that is respectful of the student’s and family’s needs as a critical component in facilitating both student and parent involvement which led to improved academic achievement (Wehlage et al., 1989). Moti- vated in part by an understanding of the importance of creating a safe and respectful learning environment as a contributor to a school’s effectiveness, several school reform initiatives that focused on reducing school size in order to create a school climate supportive of high achievement were developed in the early 1990s (Neiman, 2011). Several of the prominent reform efforts in- clude the School District of Philadelphia’s “Going Small” initiative (Benson & Borman, 2010) and similar initiatives in the New York City Public Schools and Chicago Public Schools, both funded out of a 1.7 billion dollar fund es- tablished by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Lachat, 2001). The New York City Public Schools have moved through three waves of small-schools- based reforms starting in the 1970s (DiMartino, 2009). A study of the 2006 graduates of 14 small schools established in 2002 provided evidence of the 226 SCHOOL SIZE, CLIMATE & PARENTS potential for these schools to promote safety and respect within the school set- ting, along with positive academic engagement and performance (Huebner et al., 2007). Aims of the Present Study Building on Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1995, 1997) model of parental involvement, this study investigates the potential mediating role that a par- ent’s perception of the extent to which their child’s school provides a safe and respectful environment plays in the relationship between school size and per- ceptions of the invitations for involvement provided by the school. Green et al. (2007) describe invitations for parent participation as schools presenting explicit opportunities to participate via open school nights and parent–teach- er conferences, as well as implicit environments that encourage participation, such as parent literature written in accessible language, welcoming greetings when parents are dropping students off at school, and otherwise creating a cli- mate where parents can be comfortable helping students to assimilate into the school culture. This study sought to determine if parents’ perceptions of the school climate in the areas of safety and respect mediates the relationship between the enroll- ment size of a school and parents’ perceptions of the degree to which the school provides opportunities for involvement (i.e., opportunities for communica- tion and participation in school activities). An analysis of secondary data from the New York City Department of Education’s Learning Environment Survey (LES), completed by parents in the Spring of 2008 was used to examine the study’s mediation hypothesis. Figure 1 diagrams the hypothesized relationships among enrollment, school climate, and parental involvement that will be ex- amined in this study. The following hypotheses will be tested: H1: Enrollment size is directly related to parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for communication between the school and parents. H2: Enrollment size is directly related to parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for parents to participate in school activities. H3: Safety and Respect are directly related to parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for communication between the school and parents. H4: Safety and Respect are directly related to parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for parents to participate in school activities. 227 SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL H5: Safety and Respect mediate the relationship between enrollment size and parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for communication between the school and parents. H6: Safety and Respect mediate the relationship between enrollment size and parents’ perceptions of the extent to which schools provide opportunities for parents to participate in school activities. Figure 1. Conceptual Model 228 SCHOOL SIZE, CLIMATE & PARENTS Methods Sample and Design This study is based on an analysis of secondary data from the 2008 parents’ version of the annual New York City Department of Education’s Learning En- vironment Survey (LES). First implemented in 2007, the LES is the largest survey of its kind in the U.S. and asks all 1.5 million public school parents, teachers, and 6th- through 12th-grade students about a variety of topics related to the quality of their school experience (Nathanson et al., 2013) The units of analysis in this study are schools, in particular, middle and senior high schools. Those schools providing services primarily to special education youth or other alternative educational programming, for example, schools designed to tran- sition youth from the juvenile justice system back into the general education program, were excluded from this study. School of special emphases, for ex- ample, magnet and charter schools, were included in the analysis only if they serviced middle and senior high school students and were not primarily serv- ing a special education population. For the purposes of this study, only general education middle and senior high schools with parent response rates of 30% or higher were included. This response rate cut off was set in order to insure that each school had an adequate representation of their parents in the sample. Ap- proximately 70% of the middle and senior high schools surveyed had parental response rates of 30% or higher. Certainly, the use of a cutoff score like 30% raises the question of whether the “included” schools, that is, the schools with parental participation rates greater than or equal to 30%, differ from schools which have lower participa- tion rates (i.e., the “excluded” schools). For two variables, the proportion of students receiving a free or reduced fee lunch and the proportion of students who were Black or Latino, both of which were available for the study sample and the population of schools from which the sample was drawn, negligible differences were found between the distributions of the included and excluded schools (details available upon request from the first author). We have reason to believe that a response rate of approximately 30% is typi- cal for a survey of this type. For example, The Fort Worth Independent School District’s 2011–2012 Parent Survey report indicates a response rate of 28.3%, an actual decrease of three percentage points from the prior year’s survey (Mor- rissey & Yuan, 2012). The Los Angeles Unified School District’s average parent response rate in 2012 was only 18% (LAUSD, 2012). Endogenous Variables Two areas of invitations for involvement were assessed by the survey: Par- ticipation and Communication Opportunities. 229 SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL Participation Opportunities All composite scores for the various subscales used in this study were created by the school district. Individual parent responses were not made available to the researchers. All composite scores were based on an average of the parents’ re- sponses for each school. Eight items were used to assess parents’ perceptions of the extent to which, over the recent academic year, the school encouraged care- giver participation either by inviting them to a school function or by designing school activities in a manner that would facilitate caregiver participation. Some of the items asked about attitudes; others asked about the frequency of specific behaviors. Example items included: “My child’s school makes it easy for par- ents to attend meetings by holding them at different times of day, providing an interpreter, or in other ways.” and “I feel welcome in my child’s school.” Parents responded to items like this one using a rating scale that ranged from 0 “Strongly Disagree” to 10 “Strongly Agree.” Items asking about frequency of specific behaviors included the following example: “How often during this school year have you been invited to a workshop, program, performance, or other event at your child’s school?” Parents responded to items like this one us- ing a rating scale that ranged from 0 “Never” to 10 “More than once a month.” The average rating for the eight items was used to create the composite score for the subscale. The secondary data set available for analysis only contained the school-wide composite score of the measures. Higher composite scores in- dicated that parents at the school perceived that the school provided more opportunities for participation in school activities. Thus, the unit of analysis was the school, not individual parents. Communication Opportunities As was the case with the Participation Opportunity measure, individual items were not made available, and the unit of analysis was the school. The Communication Opportunities subscale on the survey measured a parent’s per- ception of the extent to which the school provided opportunities for the parent to communicate with school personnel about their child’s academic progress and behavior. This subscale consists of 10 items. Example items included: “The school keeps me informed about my child’s academic progress.” and “The school contacts me when my child breaks school rules.” High scores indicated parents’ agreement with the idea that the school provided information about its educational goals and offered appropriate feedback on each student’s learn- ing outcomes. Parents responded to items using a rating scale that ranged from 0 “Strongly Disagree” to 10 “Strongly Agree.” The data set available for second- ary analysis only contained the composite measures. Higher composite scores indicated that parents at the school perceived that the school provided more 230 SCHOOL SIZE, CLIMATE & PARENTS opportunities for communication with parents about their children’s progress in school. Exogenous Variables Student Race/Ethnicity For the purpose of this paper, student race/ethnicity has been operational- ized as the proportion of each school which is Black and/or Latino. Student Socioeconomic Status School socioeconomic status (SES) is operationalized as the proportion of the students in each school receiving a free lunch. Enrollment Enrollment size (or enrollment) refers to the total number of students on a schools official roster. This variable is reported annually. Mediator Variable: Safety and Respect The subscale Safety and Respect assessed parents’ perceptions of the ex- tent to which the school worked to develop a school environment focused on keeping individuals free from physical or emotional harm. Ten items made up this subscale on the parents’ survey. Parents responded to the items using a ten-point rating scale. Example items included: “My child is safe at school,” and “Discipline is fairly enforced.” Parents responded to items like these using a rating scale that ranged from 0 “Strongly Disagree” to 10 “Strongly Agree.” The school district recoded negatively worded items when appropriate (e.g., “School staff are disrespectful to students.”). High scores indicated perceptions of a positive school climate. The data set available for secondary analysis only contained the composite of the measures; the average rating for the ten items was used to create the composite score for the subscale. Analysis Strategy Descriptive analysis will be reported below. Figure 1 provides the concep- tual model that will be estimated to evaluate the study’s hypotheses. The path analysis model will be estimated using full-information maximum likelihood in Mplus 7.0. The bootstrapped-t method (Dang et al., 2011) will be used to estimate the significance of the indirect effects. Estimation of the statistical significance of the indirect effect using the bootstrapped-t method has been shown to be more robust than other methods, for example, the Sobel test (Sass- er & Bierman, 2011). 231 SCHOOL COMMUNITY JOURNAL Results School Characteristics Table 1 contains the descriptive statistics for the schools that participated in the study. A total of 545 (73%) of the 727 possible schools were included in the sample. Of the schools included, 42.7% were middle schools (grades 6–8), 9.7% were middle–senior high schools (grades 6–12), and 47.6% were senior high schools (grades 9–12). Approximately 30% of the total population that met the selection criteria for this study was excluded from the analysis because their response rates dropped below 30%. The middle-only schools declined by 40%, the middle–senior high schools declined by approximately 29%, and the senior high schools-only schools by approximately 18%. The schools ranged in size from new charter schools with enrollments under 50 to large, traditional high schools with enrollments above 4,900. Lastly, all five boroughs of New York City were represented in the sample in a manner that was not markedly different from the representation in the population. Table 1. 2008 Survey Data: Sample Characteristics Percentages Sample Total Population (N= 545) (N= 747) School Type Middle 42.7 49.7 Middle/Senior High 9.7 9.6 Senior High 47.6 40.7 Enrollment Size (total student enrollment) 42–200 14.6 13.4 201–400 30.0 29.0 401–600 29.3 27.0 601–800 6.5 7.2 801–1000 6.5 6.6 1001–1200 4.9 4.7 1201+ 8.2 12.0 Borough Bronx 27.4 26.8 Brooklyn 29.5 31.6 Queens 14.8 15.3 Manhattan 24.4 23.4 Staten Island 3.9 2.9 232