There are racial and ethnic disparities in use of out-of-school suspensions within the United States. The present study assessed for the presence of disproportionate suspension by race, special education status, and receipt of free or reduced cost meals using two separate metrics (risk ratios and raw differential representation); evaluated…

The current study examined: (1) the associations of COVID-19 stress with anxiety and depression and whether those associations differed by gender or grade level; and (2) how different coping strategies mitigated the associations of COVID-19 stress with anxiety and depression. During remote learning due to COVID-19, data were collected from 2,738…

Nationally, school-based mental health (SBMH) is seen as an avenue to increase access to children's mental health services and promote mental health awareness. The current article describes the implementation of a statewide SBMH program focusing on partnerships between community-based providers and local school systems, with providers embedded…

This study examined the extent to which disparities in Black and White students' risks of receiving office discipline referrals (ODRs), and out-of-school suspensions (OSSs) were related to differences in implicit and explicit racial biases assessed at the community level. The sample consisted of discipline records for 1,354,010 students enrolled…

Peer victimization is a widespread and heterogeneous phenomenon, especially during the transition to middle school, and is associated with numerous negative consequences. However, previous research is limited by variable-centric analyses and data manipulations that either fail to capture or mask the complexity of peer victimization many students…

Guided by the social-ecological, social identity, and social misfit theories, the present study examined the gender, racial/ethnic, and grade-level differences of students' perceived school safety and their associations with bullying victimization and school-wide bullying using a sample of 25,896 students from 114 public schools. Results of…

Many youth experience mental health problems. Schools are an ideal setting to identify, prevent, and intervene in these problems. The purpose of this study was to investigate patterns of student social, emotional, and behavioral risk over time among a community sample of 3rd through 12th grade students and the association of these risk patterns…

This study used growth curve modeling to map risk by gender across the middle school transition. Participants included 609 (49.5% female) students in grades 4-8 in an urban school serving primarily African American youth from low-income communities. Results indicated that overall risk increased over time and was consistent over the middle school…

Peer-mediated intervention has become a primary education practice in programs for children and youth with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This article traces the emergence of peer-mediated interventions from early laboratory studies to the extensive applied research in the field that has documented the efficacy of the practice. Interventions to…

Research predicting academic achievement from early academic, attention, and socioemotional skills has largely focused on elementary school outcomes and rarely included peer assessments of social competence. We examined associations between these early child characteristics and academic outcomes into young adulthood using the Fast Track normative…

This randomized controlled study examined disciplinary outcomes for 201 students who made threats of violence at school. The students attended 40 schools randomly assigned to use the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines or follow a business-as-usual disciplinary approach in a control group. Logistic regression analyses found, after…