Are We in This Together? An Analysis of the Impact of Individual and Institutional Characteristics on Teachers' Perceptions

The current study addresses certain limitations in prior analyses of teachers’ perceptions of parents’ involvement in education. In our analyses, we draw on teachers’ responses to the School Community Survey (SCS) as well as information on school characteristics to address two limitations in prior studies. The SCS is a descriptive tool that describes the school community from the viewpoint of parents, students, teachers, and principals. Prior studies have relied on responses to the SCS collected from communities in a limited number of areas. In the current study we assess the generalizability of measures of teachers’ perceptions developed within the SCS. Specifically, we assess the internal con sistency of nine subscales as well as a complete index of teachers’ perceptions developed in prior analyses. In addition, we explore the association between the demographic characteristics of teachers, institutional (i.e., school) characteristics, and teachers’ perceptions. Our findings suggest that measures included in the SCS consistently gauge teachers’ perceptions and that multiple measures can be combined to form summary measures of distinct elements of overall perceptions. In addition, our linear regression analyses using robust clustered standard errors suggests there are important variations in both the individual and institutional level correlates of elements of teacher perceptions.