ANN ARBOR—Test scores and grades are influenced by far more than just studying, new research shows.

Students’ attitudes and beliefs about education, behavior at school, family influences and neighborhood factors also determine if students will have positive school outcomes, a new University of Michigan study indicates.

“Unless you promote students’ and families’ positive beliefs about school and create a supportive environment at home and in the neighborhood, some students will not respond to efforts to improve their grades or standardized test scores,” said Michael Woolley, who co-authored the study with Andrew Grogan- Kaylor. Woolley is an assistant professor in the schools of Social Work and Education and Grogan- Kaylor is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work. Their research appears in this month’s issue of Family Relations.

Many education improvement policies focus on test scores and academic issues, but fail to factor other aspects of students’ performance in school, Woolley said.

In the study, the researchers analyzed four family factors: student satisfaction with parenting; family support;social integration of family members; and home academic culture, which involves parents emphasizing the importance of school. Data came from a nationally representative sample of nearly 2,100 students in public middle and high schools from 31 states.

Students who reported a strong home academic culture earned higher grades, however home academic culture did not influence a student’s behavior, beliefs or attitudes about school. Students who reported higher levels of family satisfaction with parenting, family social integration, and home academic culture, reported more positive beliefs and attitudes about attending school and feeling like he or she can succeed in school.

Better grades were also related to students’ perceptions of how safe they feel in their neighborhood and the crime rate in their neighborhood. The nature of the neighborhood peer culture, satisfaction with the quality of the neighborhood, transience, and economic resources were also neighborhood factors related to various aspects of school outcomes from avoiding problem behavior to getting good grades.

The analyses also included two measures of school climate: safety and teacher support. Safety was associated with improvements in school beliefs and attitudes, as well as increased success at avoiding problem behaviors. Teacher support was associated with improvements in all three school outcomes studied: school coherence, avoiding problem behavior and grades.

The research also assessed several demographics, such as race, gender and age. For school behavior and academic performance, race/ethnicity was not a significant factor, once other factors, such as neighborhood, were accounted for, said Grogan- Kaylor. Only in school beliefs and attitudes for African-American students was there a significant effect found for race/ethnicity. This finding may have significant implications for policies that aim to address racial and ethnic disparities in school outcomes.

“The implication is that policy and practice efforts to reduce the achievement gap experienced by African American and Latino students should?not simply focus on academic issues such as curriculum planning and high stakes testing,” the researchers wrote.

Effective strategies to reduce achievement gaps must address all three areas (school, neighborhood and family), as well as promote supportive social climates in school and intervene with neighborhood factors such as violent crime and negative peer culture, Grogan- Kaylor said.

“For many students who are experiencing family problems or live in unsafe neighborhoods, simply focusing on standardized testing and academic issues will not effectively increase school success or eliminate race/ethnicity achievement gaps,” Woolley said.

WoolleyGrogan- KaylorFamily Relations