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Major school reform efforts have been undertaken in US public schools during the last several decades. These efforts have emphasized academic outcomes, to the relative negative of emotional well-being and/or quality-of-life concerns (Baker, Dilly, Aupperlee, & Patil, 2003; Schalock & Alonso, 2002). As early as 1976, Epstein and McPartland argued that the evaluation of schooling should include quality-of-life variables, including life satisfaction and satisfaction with school experiences, in addition to academic performance variables (eg, standardized achievement test scores). More recently, Rutter and Maughan’s (2002) analysis of the school effectiveness literature led them to conclude that “much more attention needs to be paid to the characteristics of schools that matter most for noncognitive outcomes”(p. 469). Although the association between emotional well-being and academic outcomes is robust (Roeser, 2001), the promotion of emotionally healthy students is important in its own right (Hegarty, 1994).

The study of individual differences in students’ affective reactions to schooling fits well within the general framework of subjective well-being research. Subjective well-being has been defined as a person’s cognitive and affective evaluations of his or her life (Diener, 2000). In the Diener model, these evaluations include