The Impact of Elementary School Climate in South Carolina

The purpose of this non-experimental quantitative correlational study was to research the influence of school climate for all stakeholders at elementary schools in South Carolina. The literature review has unveiled that school leaders can utilize school climate measurements to understand better areas of need concerning school climate, student achievement, and teacher retention. According to The United States News Research (2024), the South Carolina education system ranks in the bottom 20% of the United States. Moreover, this study’s research questions further probed the relationships between school climate, student achievement, and teacher retention. The study intended to use a Pearson correlation coefficient; however, after running a Shapiro-Wilk test, the results were not normally distributed. Therefore, Spearman’s Rho test revealed that all three research questions were statistically significant. The implications of this study’s results have directed the educational field members’ attention to conduct future research in the school-building leadership styles that lead to desired school climate, student achievement, and, or teacher retention results. Additionally, future research could determine how the following variables affect school climate, teacher retention, and student achievement: school policy, political influences, if other states have the same trends, total student enrollment, total teacher enrollment, student-to-teacher ratio per classroom, elementary, middle and high schools compared to one another, pupils in poverty index, teacher salary, and administrative salary.