This report focuses on redesigning classrooms to facilitate teaching, alleviate problems, and promote good learning and healthy development. Primary concerns are to prevent and respond quickly to learning, behavior, and emotional problems and reengage students who have become disengaged from learning at school. A key facet of the redesign is…

This report discusses the necessity of expanding school improvement policy and practice in order to meet the growing challenges related to reducing the achievement and opportunity gaps. Specifically, it highlights that student/learning supports are marginalized in current policy and that addressing the matter requires moving from a two to a three…

This report highlights the following four matters that warrant particular attention as the 2021-2022 school year gets underway: (1) Outreaching and reengaging disconnected students; (2) Improving differentiated instruction; (3) Broadly embedding social emotional learning and development; and (4) Reorganizing student/learning supports. To address…

The number of students manifesting learning, behavior, and emotional problems far outstrips the ways schools deal with these matters. As school board members and administrators know, existing programs, services, and special initiatives tend to be fragmented and often engender fights over turf and counterproductive competition for sparse resources.…

The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored that schools must play a greater role in addressing mental health concerns. In reaction, some policy makers are rushing to increase mental health staff in schools. A stated goal is to have a mental health professional in all schools. Given the long-standing short-fall in every category of student/learning…

The current trend in improving student/learning supports involves tinkering in ways that make changes that don't make a dent in reducing the opportunity and achievement gaps. Schools need a unified, comprehensive, and equitable system of student/learning supports that embeds a focus on a full range of mental health and psychosocial and educational…

Schools have long wrestled with how best to deal with student and schooling problems. The COVID-19 pandemic and other recent events have increased the number of such problems. This pressing reality along with growing concerns about social injustice and increasing criticism of public education have heightened calls for changes in how schools play a…

This report underscores that the prevailing view of community schools is "just a beginning" for their ongoing development and contribution to improving schools. We stress that defining the initiative as a "community-based effort to coordinate and integrate ... services" raises some concerns and limits their evolution. We…

Broadly conceived, mental health in schools focuses on (1) promoting social-emotional development, (2) preventing mental health and psychosocial problems, (3) enhancing resiliency and protective buffers, (4) intervening as early after the onset of behavior, learning, and emotional problems as is feasible, and (5) addressing the needs of students…

The intent of this report is to contribute to discussions about what is involved in efforts to implement the type of broad-based, multifaceted system changes seen as essential for fundamentally improving schools. The report begins by stressing four interrelated considerations involved in making multifaceted and complex sustainable changes at a…

The federal "Every Student Succeeds Act" (ESSA) has stimulated states to revisit school improvement. Previously, the Center analyzed ESSA and the related consolidated state plans using the lens of how the federal legislation and state plans address barriers to learning and teaching and re-engage disconnected students. Such analyses…

This report is meant as an imperative wake-up call for expanding the prevailing focus of school improvement policy and practice. The report provides analyses of responses from state departments of education, school districts, and leadership organizations about how they are pursuing the opportunity the "Every Student Succeeds Act"…

This resource provides frameworks and strategies to guide schools as they encounter common psychosocial problems. It is designed as a desk reference aid. After an introductory overview of mental health in schools, Part I stresses ways to keep the environment in perspective as a cause of certain types of problems. Part II frames the full range of…

Given the call for schools to enhance equity of opportunity, the Center for Mental Health in Schools and Student/Learning Supports at UCLA sent out an inquiry across the country asking "Which Schools are Taking Equity Seriously?". The received a variety of responses including: (1) One response which focused on "Colorado's Equity…

The guidebook is divided into seven parts. Part I provides an overview of the Enabling Component and places the concept in the context of current restructuring initiatives. Part II offers an overview of the process for introducing and adapting the Component at a site using a formal diffusion model. A diffusion model is a tool for organizational…