Teachers’ and principals’ perceptions of school emphasis on academic success: measurement invariance, agreement, and relations to student achievement

Abstract

A school’s emphasis on academic success (SEAS) is a crucial aspect of school climate that can be rated by different informants, such as teachers or principals, and with respect to their perception of different groups’ emphasis on academic success, such as parents or students. We know little about whether there is agreement between these ratings. Utilizing Israeli Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 2019 data and multilevel structural equation modeling, we examined how teachers and principals rate teachers’, students’, and parents’ emphasis on academic success and how these ratings are related to student achievement. We found that (a) ratings are invariant across informants; (b) teachers and principals agree on parents’ and students’ yet not teachers’ emphasis; (c) teacher ratings explain more variation in student achievement than principal ratings. Since SEAS ratings diverge by informants and relations to student achievement, researchers need to craft validity arguments in their studies.