Unfair, unsafe, and unwelcome: Do high school students' perceptions of unfairness, hostility, and victimization in school predict engagement and achievement?

Using a national data set, Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS:2002), we examined three dimensions of 10th-grade school climate-unfairness, hostility, and victimization-as predictors of teacher-perceived student engagement and achievement in reading and mathematics in the same year. The dimensions of school climate that predicted engagement and achievement depended on whether differences were examined within schools (individual level) or between schools (school level). Specifically, at the individual level, student perceptions of victimization predicted lower individual engagement and reading and math achievement. At the school level, collective perceptions of hostility predicted lower engagement and reading achievement. This study furthers understanding of the predictors of school engagement and achievement and offers implications for how school climate operates in differentiated ways depending on the level of the school ecology.