VCU news

By Sian Wilkerson

With student mental health needs in PK-12 schools on the rise, a new study by a partnership of Richmond-area school districts and Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education investigated how prepared that local school employees feel to meet those needs.

The study, “PK-12 Faculty and Staff Capacity to Support Student Mental Health,” was conducted by the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium and found that professional capacity to provide support can vary across positions and school contexts after surveying approximately 850 faculty and staff in three local school divisions.

While respondents across all positions professed feeling similar levels of personal and professional responsibility to meet student mental health needs, certain personnel – including mental and behavioral health support and school administrators – rated themselves higher on their level of preparation than teachers and other personnel, suggesting “a gap between the      desire to provide support and the ability to do so,” said David Naff, Ph.D., director of MERC and assistant professor in the School of Education’s Department of Foundations of Education.

Naff co-authored the report with Jodie Soracco, Ph.D., director of the Virginia Tiered Systems of Supports Research and Implementation Center within the School of Education’s Partnership of People with Disabilities. Chin-Chih Chen, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Counseling and Special Education, led the analysis of the survey data.

The study also showed that school context – such as high-poverty and higher concentrations of students from racial and ethnic minority backgrounds – can play a large role in the capacity of school employees to support the mental health needs of their students. Faculty and staff in schools with higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students as well as Black and Latinx students and multilingual learners feeling significantly less prepared to support students with their mental health.

“This suggests a need to provide additional resources, training and support in these school environments,” Naff said.

In terms of effectiveness for addressing the mental health needs of students, survey respondents gave the lowest rated responses to Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, a prominent framework utilized in public schools across Virginia that focuses on supporting positive academic, behavioral, social and emotional outcomes for students. Given its prominence, strengthening the mental health components of MTSS could have a meaningful impact across the state, Naff said.

The authors make a number of recommendations, including targeting mental health resources and training for different school contexts, providing more resources for teachers and taking steps to reduce the stigma sometimes associated with mental health in schools. The report also includes a companion dashboard, which allows readers to interact with the data.

The MERC team will also partner with the VTSS Research Implementation Center and the R.E.B. Foundation to conduct a pilot effort with local middle and high schools that have higher levels of economic disadvantage with the goal of improving the efficacy of MTSS for supporting student mental health. Eventually, they plan to expand similar efforts across the state.

Established in 1991, the Metropolitan Educational Research Consortium conducts research that addresses enduring and emerging issues in K-12 education with the goal of informing policy, building the professional knowledge and skills of key stakeholders, contributing to the body of scholarly knowledge, and impacting outcomes relevant to students, schools and communities in the Richmond region.

The consortium’s focus on research relevance and impact has also led to plans for collaborations between VCU and the local divisions that will use parts of the report as a starting point for professional development conversations with teachers, principals and other school leaders.