Smerillo, Nicole2022-09-132022-09-132022-03https://hdl.handle.net/11299/241615University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. March 2022. Major: Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development. Advisor: Karen Seashore. 1 computer file (PDF); iv, 138 pages.School climate is an important factor in the socialization and development of children. It touches on essentially every aspect of school life—people and relationships, teaching and learning, and features of schools such as safety, leadership, and collaboration (e.g. Cohen et al, 2009). With so many factors of school life included in this singular construct, there are likely many pathways between school climate, and more specifically parent perceptions of school climate, aspects of parental academic socialization—how parents socialize their children to become students—, and child achievement. Using data from the Midwest Longitudinal Study of the Midwest Child Parent Center Program, this dissertation study explores the associations between preschool parent perceptions of school climate, child achievement, and the potentially mediational relationships of parent expectations and parent involvement. Using multiple imputation and inverse propensity weighting methods, associations between preschool parent perceptions of school climate and child achievement were found in preschool and persisted through study year five, when most study participants were in third grade. Some evidence of the association between parent involvement in preschool and child achievement through third grade was also found. While there was no evidence of mediation in this study, a discussion is provided as to next steps in understanding potential mediators in the relationship between preschool parent perceptions of school climate and child achievement.enchild achievementearly childhood educationparent perceptionspreschoolpreschool parent perceptions of school climateschool climateThesis or Dissertation