A Macro-Level Model of School Disorder

Abstract

Drawing on school climate theory and social disorganization theory, this article examines the influence of major institutional and community factors on disorder in Philadelphia public schools. Using U.S. census data, school district data, and police data, the authors examined the following predictors of disorder in 43 middle schools: community poverty and residential stability, community crime, school size, and school stability. Community was conceptualized in two ways: local (the census tract around the school) and imported (aggregated measures from the census tracts in which students actually reside). Previous studies have failed to make this distinction when assessing community-level influences on school disorder. The authors used path analysis to examine direct and indirect relationships between community characteristics (poverty, residential stability, crime rates), school size, school stability (a factor score based on student attendance and turnover), and school disorder (a factor score based on school incident data and dismissal rates). The local community model fit the data better than the imported model: The communities immediately surrounding schools have a stronger influence on school disorder than the communities from which students are drawn. Community poverty exerted strong indirect effects on school disorder in both models. The effects of community variables on school disorder were strongly mediated by school stability, illustrating that analyses of institutional processes have much to add to the explanation of school disorder.

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