In this conceptual article, the authors identify the current state of racial disproportionality in U.S. public schools and the ethical call for school social workers to engage in anti-racist practice. Using the ecosystems perspective, a familiar perspective for school social work, the authors present a model for addressing racial climate gaps for…

The need for a variety of practice approaches and practice activities for social workers in the schools is a priority. The purpose of the current exploratory-descriptive study was to examine the roles of school social workers (N = 378) and the ways these roles change in different school employment settings and with different caseload sizes.…

With more than six thousand charter schools in the United States, charter school outcomes are a growing field of study within the broad discipline of education and specifically within school social work. However, there is little research to document the demographic and clinical characteristics of social workers in charter schools. The current…

Social work values prioritize the needs of vulnerable and oppressed populations that face social problems and political inequalities. Gifted students do not intuitively fall within this framework. This article describes the treatment of gifted students in American public schools as a vulnerable and oppressed population needing differentiated…

To address a gap in the literature on the impact of healthy relationship programs for teens on the peer facilitators of these programs, three focus groups were conducted with the peer facilitators (N = 49) of a five-week healthy relationship program (Chesterfield Relate), which was provided in two public schools over a two-year period.…

College readiness is increasingly prioritized in federal and state policy initiatives. This study sought to examine the relationship between college readiness and several school-level factors. Specifically, quantitative data from 328 high schools were utilized to investigate the relationships among school-wide academic performance, school size,…

The growing diversification of the kindergarten through twelfth grade (K-12) classroom presents unprecedented challenges that will alter the ways in which school social workers, counselors, and psychologists function in school systems. Education reform continues to breed greater competition for diminishing resources and will ultimately reduce the…

Even as we mark the fortieth anniversary of Title IX, evidence indicates that pregnant and parenting high school students continue to struggle with stigmatization and discrimination within the public school system. To remind school social work practitioners and other concerned administrators of the provisions of this historic legislation, this…

This study examines the relationship between school violence and involvement of community organizations in school safety planning. The study is a secondary analysis of data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety 2003-2004 (U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, 2006). This survey collects data on crime and safety from…

The framework for public school social workers offered in this article is based on the systems approach. The ideas presented might also be useful to social workers in general, and to secondary school social workers in particular. The article deals with the idea of a boundary, which is a line forming a circle around selected variables.…