"It Takes a Village": The Role of School Social Capital in Student Achievement

A school’s social capital has much more influence on student achievement than its financial capital, new study finds.
As defined by the authors, social capital refers to the valuable “resources embedded in social relationships” and has three main components...

• Trust: the mutual obligations and expectations among a group of people
• Networks: the flow of information between them
• Norms: the written and unwritten rules that guide their conduct

To compare the impact of social and financial capital on student learning, the team surveyed a representative sample of 78 elementary schools in Michigan.
Social capital was measured based on their teachers’s degree of agreement with the following statements:
Parents in this schoool are reliable in their commitments
Parent involvement supports learning here
Teachers in this school trust the parents to support them
Parents of students in this school encourage good habits of schooling
Community involvement facilitates learning here
Teachers in this school trust their students
Students in this school can be counted on to do their work
Teachers in this school have frequent contact with parents
Students are caring toward one another

Interestingly, findings showed that:

• Levels of social and financial capital were not related
• Both forms of capital had a positive impact on student achievement in reading and mathematics
• The effect of social capital was three to five times larger

As a matter of fact, “social capital was not only more important to achievement than instructional expenditures (three to five times more important) but also more important than the school’s poverty, ethnic makeup, or prior achievement” (all quotes are from the original study.)
As per the article’s conclusion,  “schools need to consider how trust fosters social relationships between home and school in an effort to facilitate educational outcomes. In addition, productive normative environments, both inside and outside of school, which support academic achievement, are essential pieces to consider in the building of social capital.”

Reference: Salloum, Goddard, and Berebitsky (2018), “Resources, Learning, and Policy: The Relative Effects of Social and Financial Capital on Student Learning in Schools”, Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk.