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The intent behind this study was to understand how school principals might work through teachers to engender better trusting teacher-student relationships, particularly in high poverty, high minority schools. Three research questions were advanced for the empirical investigation: (1) What is the relationship between school social composition (e.g. FRL rate and percent students of color) and teacher trust in students? (2) Does Principal Support of Student Psychological Needs moderate the relationship between school composition and teacher trust in students? (3) Do other leadership practices, such as transformational leadership and teacher evaluation, influence teacher trust in students? [Note: The issue number (2) shown in the citation on the PDF is incorrect. The correct issue number is 1.]

Oklahoma is one of 16 states electing to use an A-F letter grade as an indicator of school quality. On the surface, letter grades are an attractive policy instrument for school improvement; they are seemingly clear, simple, and easy to interpret. Evidence, however, on the use of letter grades as an instrument to rank and improve schools is scant at best. We address the gap in the literature by using student test scores to evaluate the use of Oklahoma's A-F grades as a school quality indicator. Achievement differences between letter grades were small and in most cases not statistically significant when student and school characteristics were held constant. School grades did not reveal large achievement gaps in the highest ranked schools. Additionally, free/reduced lunch and minority students in D and F schools outperformed peers in A and B schools.

More than a decade after Goddard, Tschannen-Moran, and Hoy (2001) found that collective faculty trust in clients predicts student achievement in urban elementary schools, we sought to identify a plausible link for this relationship. Our purpose in revisiting the trust effect was twofold: (1) to test the main effect of collective faculty trust on student achievement after controlling for free and reduced-price lunch and prior achievement, and (2) to determine if self-regulated learning mediates the collective trust-achievement relationship. Data were collected from 1,039 teachers and 1,648 students in 56 urban elementary schools. Results confirmed the hypothesized main effect of collective faculty trust and the hypothesized mediating effect of self-regulated learning. Mean math and reading achievement were higher in schools with a stronger culture of collective faculty trust. Schools with a stronger culture of trust also had students with more self-regulated learning. (Contains 3 figures and 5 tables.)

The intent behind this study was to understand how school principals might work through teachers to engender better trusting teacher-student relationships, particularly in high poverty, high minority schools. Three research questions were advanced for the empirical investigation: (1) What is the relationship between school social composition (e.g. FRL rate and percent students of color) and teacher trust in students? (2) Does Principal Support of Student Psychological Needs moderate the relationship between school composition and teacher trust in students? (3) Do other leadership practices, such as transformational leadership and teacher evaluation, influence teacher trust in students? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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