School building condition, social climate, student attendance and academic achievement: A mediation model

• Student attendance and perception of social climate mediate building condition and academic outcomes in NYC middle schools.
• Controls include percent minority students in the school and percent eligible for free and reduced price meals.
• The model expands previous research on social climate and student attendance relationship with school building condition.
• The study was conducted at the school level using secondary data.

Research investigating student academic achievement points to the contribution of the physical and social context of schools. Previous studies examined either the physical or social environment. The current study examines the social climate and student attendance as mediators of the relation between the physical environment and academic achievement. Secondary data for 236 NYC middle schools were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The model included: 1) building condition assessed by building professionals, 2) social climate measured by the Learning Quality Survey, 3) school level student attendance rate, 4) standardized math and English Language Arts test scores, 5) percent of student body eligible for free and reduced priced meals, and 6) percent of student body identified as minority. Findings indicate that academic achievement is linked to building condition mediated by the social climate and student attendance. The model accounted for 70 percent of the variance in the outcome measures.