School climate is one of the most important school level factors shaping children's developmental outcomes. More specifically, school climate has been found to contribute to school practices that promote or hinder students' academic achievement, academic engagement, and academic motivation with more positive reports of school climate improving students' academic outcomes compared to more negative school climates. The impact of such school climates for minoritized students' academic outcomes are similar but exacerbated by school characteristics that disproportionately impact Black students compared to White students. These two dissertation studies explore changes in Black students' (N = 180) academic engagement, motivation, and achievement during the transition from late elementary school through middle school in relation to school climate and additional school, individual, and familial level characteristics. In the first study, group-based trajectory modeling was used to identify profiles of change in Black students' academic engagement and motivation while the second study used a latent basis model within growth mixture modeling to explore non-linear trajectories of change for Black students' reading and math achievement. In the first study, profiles of change were identified for academic engagement and motivation and school climate was associated with student membership in decreasing engagement and motivation profiles. In the second study, profiles of change were only identified for math achievement. School quality rather than school climate was associated with membership in the high math achievement profile. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]