School Climate and College Attendance for Black Adolescents: Moving Beyond College-Going Culture.

Understanding how contexts promote positive educational outcomes is a critical objective of adolescent research. This study provides support for the established link between school climate and educational outcomes and expands our understanding of this association by examining multiple aspects of school climate in a sample of Black adolescents in the United States (N = 1,740). Data were drawn from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, and multinomial logistic regression and multiple group modeling in a structural equation modeling framework revealed that Black high school students' perceptions of school safety, school liking, and academic press were associated with enrollment in higher education. Null moderation results suggest that these facets of school climate operate similarly for all students regardless of their gender or socioeconomic status.