A new report from the Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports at UCLA finds that current efforts to address barriers to learning and teaching, while valuable, won’t provide lasting progress until policymakers adopt student and learning support systems that are unified, comprehensive and equitable.
The report synthesizes findings from decades of school improvement efforts, analyzing seven major national initiatives designed to strengthen student and learning supports, and identifies lessons, challenges and policy implications vital to developing coherent systems that can meaningfully improve student outcomes.
“The central challenge ahead is system development, not program development,” said Howard S. Adelman, co-director of the UCLA Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports and co-author of the report. “Schools are not suffering from a lack of initiatives. They are suffering from a lack of a coherent system for addressing barriers to learning and teaching.”
The findings largely align with the calls for action and legislative package included in CSBA’s SOS for Student Achievement: Close the State Accountability Gap campaign for a cohesive state education system with reciprocal accountability to help local educational agencies close achievement gaps.
To address the education system’s most pressing problems — including persistent achievement gaps and a lack of accountability for results at the state level — the demands of the campaign are designed to transform the state’s system of education governance by focusing more squarely on supporting LEAs in closing achievement gaps, creating a more coherent and aligned state system, and using data-based outcomes to guide budget and policy decisions.
UCLA researchers noted that schools are now expected to address an ever-growing range of factors that affect student success, including chronic absenteeism, mental health concerns, poverty, housing instability, trauma, school disengagement and social isolation.
LEAs across the country have adopted a range of initiatives to accomplish this, including whole-child approaches, community schools, integrated student supports, Multi-Tiered Systems of Supports, expanding student support personnel, comprehensive school mental health initiatives and other efforts aimed at transforming student and learning support systems
Linda Taylor, also a co-author of the report and co-director of the UCLA Center for MH in Schools & Student/Learning Supports, noted that while such efforts are a positive step, LEAs are not provided a sufficiently comprehensive framework for organizing the many programs, personnel, services, funding streams and community resources districts use to address barriers to learning and teaching.
“Fragmentation is a symptom. The deeper concern is that addressing barriers to learning and teaching has never been established as a primary component of school improvement,” she said in a statement. “As long as these essential supports remain secondary, fragmentation will continue.”
Recommendations
Reorganizing, braiding and strategically deploying existing school and community resources through dedicated leadership, infrastructure and collaboration are vital to addressing this fragmentation, according to the report.
Researchers offered several recommendations to accomplish this, including:
- Elevating student and learning supports as a primary component of school improvement policy
- Organizing fragmented initiatives within a unified intervention framework
- Strengthening leadership and infrastructure dedicated to student and learning supports
- Prioritizing prevention and early intervention
- Expanding collaboration between schools and communities
- Developing accountability measures directly related to student supports as well as academics
