Organizations which is generally defined as “the systems of consciously coordinated personal activities or forces” (Barnard, 1982) need to be effective and efficent in order to survive. An organization is effective if it realizes it goals and objectives and efficient if it satisfies the needs and expectations of its members. Without being efficent, to be an effective organization is extremely difficult. Efficiency is somewhat related to the concept of morale. When the organizational member satisfies his/her needs in the organization, propabaly his/her morale level might be high. The effectiveness is related to accomplishing the bureaucratic expectations by organizational members. So, there should be an harmonius interactions between human and organizational dimensions of the organizations. According to Getzels and Guba (Hoy and Miskel, 1982) while the congruence between these dimensions produce satisfaction, the incongruence produce conflict which is an important barrier of goal realization. From this point of view, we can say that satisfaction and morale is inevitably important variable of organizational effectiveness. Only the members with high morale or high job satisfaction can be successfull in the goal realization process. All countries around the world desire highly effective schools and school systems. Eventhough there are several effectiveness criteria for schools, the student growth and development or student achievement has an important concern among these criteria (Lezotte, 1991; Edmonds, 1982). In the literature many research studies conducted by the scholars of educational administration have findings about the relationships between teacher morale and student achievement. (Layton, 1980; Houchard, 2005; Cook, 1989; Senigaur, 1981; McNitt, 2003). In some studies, this relationships have been found positively or negatively, but the other studies had found no relations between these two variables. These studies showed that the teacher morale should be taken into consideration as an important variables of many school processes. Teacher morale defined as “the emotion and mental reaction of a person to his job” (Bentley and Rempel, 1970; in: Wynn, 2006) and “the extent to which an individual’s needs are satisfied, and the extend to which the individual perceives satisfaction as stemming from the total job satisfaction. (Bentley and Rempel, 1970; in: Robinson Brockington, 2003)” can be thought as a initiative variables of school effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to examine and analyze the relationships between the elementary school teachers morale level and student achievement. For this purpose the following research question were developed: “What are the relationships between total and dimensional teacher morale level and student academic achievement measured by National High Schools Entrance Exam?

The sample of this survey is composed of nearly 420 elementary school teachers and approximately 3110 elementary school students. The sample has been selected by stratified random sampling technique. The data about the morale levels of teachers was collected by administering PTO (Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire) developed by Rempel and Bentley (1968). The instrument is able to measure teacher morale according to ten dimensions including 1. Teacher rapport with principal, 2. Satisfaction with teaching, 3. Rapport among teachers, 4. Teacher Salary, 5. Teacher load, 6. Curriculum issues, 7. Teacher status, 8. Community support of education, 9. School facilities and services, 10. Community pressures. The student academic achievement has been determined according to their scores taken from National High School Entrance Exam. The compulsory National High School Entrance Exam is taken by junior high school students in order to be accepted by senior high schools. According to the scores they obtain, students are allowed to register senior high school including technical and vocational, public or private high schools. The scores taken from National High School Entrance Exam (2007) has been considered as student academic achievement In order to analyze the data collected; the statistical techniques such as t-test, correlation and one way analysis of variance anova will be used.

In the study, it’s expected to be a positive significant relationship between the morale level of teachers and student achievement. In other words, when the morale level of teacher is high in the school, the student academic achievement is expected to be high as well and this relationship is expected to be significant. Previous research shows similar outcomes.