School-based mental health clinics are the ideal venue to provide mental health services for youth due to their accessibility and lack of stigma compared with other community treatment centers. There were challenges associated with the abrupt shift to remote education and clinic services caused by COVID-19, but some school-based mental health…

Equity in education begins with creating structures that support students inclusive of their social-emotional needs. Students exposed to trauma perform best in schools that adopt trauma-sensitive practices. Many of these trauma-sensitive practices naturally prepare students to learn social-emotional skills, as the trauma-informed staff also models…

This study investigated the affective experiences of 30 educators of students with learning differences (sLD) and their use of social-emotional learning (SEL) early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors utilized a convergent parallel mixed-methods research design to collect and analyze data from educators through focus groups, interviews, and surveys.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the shared concerns and remedies school social workers have about safety in their schools. A sample of school social work practitioners across the United States (N = 260) provided a response to the qualitative prompt: "In general, how do you think school safety in the United States can be…

The community school movement represents a promising approach to school reform that brings much-needed attention to the intersections of child, family, and community well-being. Although the community school movement of today shares many core values and goals with school social work, it has undergone a different developmental trajectory. As a…

Military-connected youths experience stressful life events, including deployments and multiple school transitions, that make them vulnerable to bullying. Social workers have highlighted the power of grassroots school community initiatives that address risk issues among youths while empowering the community (see http://www.thecommunityguide.org).…

The authors begin this article by highlighting clinical social casework as a historic trend in school social work practice. They then identify two major shifts in current education policy related to school social work practice. One shift is an emphasis on a multilevel intervention approach, and the other is the differentiation between academic and…

Recent child welfare legislation requires agencies to address the educational well-being of foster youths. Schools face new accountability standards through No Child Left Behind and the Obama "Blueprint for Reform" as they move toward the goal of ensuring that all children receive a quality education. Both of these pieces of legislation…

Despite scholarly calls for school social work (SSW) practice to orient more toward systems within and around schools, evidence indicates that individual and small-group interventions continue to dominate practice as well as the research that informs it. In response, the authors propose a more thorough consideration of educational and sociological…

The school dropout rate in America is too high, especially for low-income students and those from nondominant racial or ethnic groups. For many students, the social-psychological and behavioral disengagement from school that leads to dropping out often begins in middle school. Research on early adolescents confirms that increasing the perceived…

School social work takes place within the dynamic context of the educational landscape, yet research indicates that school social work practice has been slow to adjust to the demands of that landscape. Little research has assessed whether school social workers are being adequately prepared to address the educational shifts that underlie today's…

School social workers often face challenges of having to legitimize their presence as a school professional, especially as compared to school psychologists and school counselors. Why are school social workers more often vulnerable to being underappreciated and not understood by school personnel than other mental health-based school professionals?…

Conventional school improvement models traditionally involve "walled-in" approaches. These models focus primarily on academic learning strategies in response to standards-based accountabilities. Although positive outcomes have been documented, expanded school improvement models such as the Ohio Community Collaboration Model for School…

Since the enactment of the federally funded Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) program, students considered at risk of school failure have received increasing attention. Identification and treatment of students considered at risk often emphasize the risk behaviors themselves. The traditional medical model assumes there is a disease entity or…

In the context of current efforts to increase student performance and to close the significant gaps in performance among student subgroups, school researchers and practitioners are paying increasing attention to schools as learning organizations. Unfortunately, the concept of the learning organization is generally vague, and school personnel have…