ORIGINAL PAPER Validation of a brief measure of teachers’ perceptions of school climate: relations to student achievement and suspensions George G. Bear • Chunyan Yang • Megan Pell • Clare Gaskins Received: 9 March 2012 / Accepted: 8 September 2012 / Published online: 24 July 2014 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Based on theory and research on learning environments, the Delaware School Climate Survey–Teacher/Staff (DSCS–T/S) was developed to provide schools with a brief, psychometrically sound measure of teachers’ perceptions of school climate. Multigroup confirmatory factor analyses, conducted on a sample of 5,781 teachers, support staff, administrators and other staff in 132 schools, showed that a bifactor model consisting of seven specific factors best represented the data. Those factors were Teacher–Student Relations, Student–Student Relations, Teacher–Home Communication, Respect for Diversity, School Safety, Fairness of Rules, and Clarity of Expectations. Measurement invariance was found across grade levels (i.e., elementary, middle, and high schools) and subgroups of respondents (i.e., teachers, instructional support staff and noninstructional staff). As evidence of con- current validity across grade levels, nearly all scores, aggregated at the school level and correlated significantly and negatively with suspensions/expulsion rates and positively with academic achievement. The DSCS–T/S is likely to be useful to schools interested in assessing school climate and the effects of various programs, such bullying prevention programs, that target the seven dimensions of school climate measured. Keywords Learning environments Á School climate Á School suspension Á Teacher and student relations Á Teachers’ perceptions Introduction The learning environment at the school-wide level, often referred to as school climate, and its relationship to important educational outcomes have been of much interest to educators G. G. Bear (&) Á C. Yang Á M. Pell College of Education and Human Development, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19709, USA e-mail: gbear@udel.edu C. Gaskins New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA 123 Learning Environ Res (2014) 17:339–354 DOI 10.1007/s10984-014-9162-1