University Honors

Student perception of school climate and teacher support is strongly associated witheducational persistence (Gale et al., 2020; Hadre & Reeve, 2003). Persistence is a driving forcein motivating students to continue doing well in school, despite changes and challenges (Harris& Kiyama, 2015). Prior work suggests there is a critical time period between middle school tohigh school where students face changes in adult support both inside and outside the classroom(Alspaugh, 1998; Cohen & Smerdon, 2009). Compounding the fragility of this period, it iscommon for adolescents to observe changes and limitations in guidance from teachers after thetransition to high school (Hadre & Reeve, 2003; Wells, 1996). This has deleterious implicationsfor student persistence (Alspaugh, 2010). This study sought to further understand the relationshipbetween student perception of teacher support and persistence. Furthermore, it examined if thisrelation differs for middle school students compared to high school students. Participants (N =3,070) include middle and high school students who anonymously completed the CaliforniaDepartment of Education's California Healthy Kids Survey during the 2021-2022 academic year.A regression analysis found a significant positive relationship between teacher support andstudent persistence. However, this relationship did not change or differ due to grade. Furtherstudies must be done to identify the relationship of teacher support and student persistence basedon other dominant influencers such as gender, parent education, and peer support.