In addition to the enrollment and racial/ethnic make-up of the school, the findings from a second study imply that the level of emphasis on academics in a school has important implications for adolescents' school engagement. Phillips (1997) found that adolescents attending schools that have a more "academic" climate in 7th grade (as indicated by teachers' perceptions of how many students expect to go to college and how much homework students do, as well as how many students are enrolled in pre-Algebra in 7th grade) have higher levels of attendance in 8th grade than students enrolled in schools with a less academic climate. This study examined a large sample of primarily African American students in a suburban area of the eastern U.S. The analysis controlled for 7th grade levels of attendance, as well as other indicators of 7th grade educational adjustment and school-level variables, such as the average SES of students' families in the school.