Date Approved

2017

Degree Type

Open Access Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department or School

Leadership and Counseling

Committee Member

Ronald Williamson

Committee Member

James Berry

Committee Member

Robert Carpenter

Committee Member

Jaclynn Tracy

Abstract

Schools must help all students achieve. Leaders who understand the elements of culture and their impact on an organization can be very effective. In 2015, as part of a strategy to cultivate healthy school cultures, the State of Michigan deployed a new self-reporting school culture inventory as part of each school's annual reporting. In this quantitative study, correlational and comparative analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between schools’ self-reported school culture inventories (School Systems Review) and student achievement measured by the state’s reading assessment data (MStep). This study analyzed achievement data from students in Grades 3 through 5 during the 2014-2015 (N = 6758) and the 2015-2016 (N = 6947) school years. All schools (N=32) in the study were traditional public school districts located in the state of Michigan’s southeast counties of Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne. The findings of this study suggested that higher reported levels of school culture on the Michigan’s School System Review (SSR) were significantly correlated to higher levels of student achievement. Further, that higher reported levels of collaborative teams and collective responsibility, indicators of healthy school culture within a school, were significantly correlated to higher levels of academic achievement. Findings of this study offered evidence that school leaders in Michigan can utilize the SSR to analyze school culture, and moreover, school leaders everywhere should recognize the importance collaborative teams and collective responsibility in developing healthy school cultures.

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