Organizational Health and Student Achievement Gains in Elementary Schools

With increasing pressures to improve student performance, schools are in need of ways to positively affect student achievement that they can control. The concept of organizational health, which includes academic emphasis, teacher affiliation, collegial leadership, resource influence, and institutional integrity, offers educators an opportunity to gauge the climate of their building and in turn positively affect academic outcomes. Using Hoy and Tarter’s (1997) concept of organizational health in elementary schools as a conceptual framework, this study undertook a mixed method approach to examining the relationship between organizational health and student achievement gains in elementary schools. The Organizational Health Inventory-Elementary Version, a 37 item four-point Likert survey, was given to a sample of 25 elementary schools from a southeastern metropolitan school district. The results of the survey were analyzed with value-added student achievement gains using the Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. Quantitative analysis revealed inverse relationships between organizational health, the subcategory academic emphasis, and student achievement gains. A direct relationship was found between organizational health and institutional integrity. Interviews and observations were performed at four of the schools, which were selected through purposeful sampling. These schools were selected based on their survey results and value-added achievement scores. Data from the interviews and observations were analyzed according to Merriam’s (1998) constant comparative method. Qualitative data served to verify and expand upon the quantitative findings.