Michelle E. Alvarez

Research documenting the contributions of school social workers to students' educational outcomes is limited. This article reviews the existing literature on school social work outcomes. Analysis of variance results indicated that number of school social workers was a significant predictor of the number of students who completed high school in the 100 largest school districts in the United States in the 2008–2009 school year. To assess whether number of school social workers remained a significant predictor while controlling for district size and poverty rate, a multiple regression was computed. Number of students, poverty rate, and number of school social workers were significant predictors of high school completion. This article shows that the number of school social workers in a school district positively influences the number of high school completers. School districts with school social workers had more students completing high school, indicating that the knowledge and skills that school social workers bring to the school districts can lead to better educational outcomes. This article underscores the need for additional research relating school social worker efforts to educational outcomes. This study could be replicated in states where data sets, which include the number of school social workers per district, already exist.

On January 16, 2013, the White House released the president's plan Now Is the Time. The aim of the plan is to safeguard U.S. children from the increasing rate of violence taking place in U.S. schools and communities. Although the catalyst of the report was the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the issue's prominence has been underscored by the occurrence of four school-related shootings since Newtown. Although school shootings are rare, tragic, and arguably preventable, schools are rapidly facing an array of other issues eroding the health of school culture and climate.

In a previous editorial, we (Frey, Sabatino, & Alvarez, 2013) proposed consultation as an important vehicle to keep the role of school social workers relevant within educational reform effort known as response to intervention (RtI). Specifically, we highlighted our belief that school social workers could make a substantial contribution to the academic mission of the schools by helping staff identify and adopt evidence-based practices (EBPs); coordinating the provision of interventions across the now very familiar three-tiers of support; and providing training and ongoing consultation support to encourage and sustain high-quality implementation. Consultation viewed in this way is particularly relevant given the research demonstrating that overall, implementation of EBPs in education is often of very low quality and frequently overlooked (Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Freidman, & Wallace, 2005; Sanetti Hagermoser & Kratochwill, 2009).

The educational reform that had been mounting for decades but propelled into education practice at a blistering pace since the scaling up of the response to intervention (RtI) framework has resulted in most schools across the country organizing their academic and behavioral support services differently. As these changes take hold, many school social workers and other specialized instructional support personnel are jockeying to stay relevant by locating their work within this framework. To do this, Frey, Lingo, and Nelson (2010) suggested that these personnel place more emphasis on primary prevention efforts and an indirect service delivery model such that a primary role involves helping administrators and staff identify and adopt evidence-based practices (EBPs); coordinate the provision of services across primary, secondary, and tertiary levels of support; and provide technical assistance to support the implementation of EBPs. This editorial elaborates on supporting the implementation...

As part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5), the U.S. Department of Education (2012a) has awarded more than $4.35 billion for Race to the Top (RTT) grants to states that were willing to implement school reform. The grant proposals were required to address educational reform in the areas of improving student outcomes, standards and assessment for students, and teacher and principal evaluations that incorporate student outcome data (U.S. Department of Education, 2012b). In 2010, 11 states (Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, Tennessee) and the District of Columbia were awarded RTT funds, and in 2011, seven states (Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) received funding (U.S. Department of Education, 2012b). This editorial addresses the evaluation mandate component of RTT and its implications for school social...

A common theme in this issue is school engagement, which is particularly timely given the recent emphasis on this construct in the educational literature. School engagement has become an appealing mechanism to address steep declines in academic motivation and achievement across grade levels (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004; Fredricks & Eccles, 2002). Fredricks et al. (2004) stated that school engagement is highly malleable and “the study of engagement … as an interaction between the individual and the environment promises to help us to better understand the complexity of children's experiences in school and to design more specifically targeted and nuanced interventions” (p. 61). Fredricks et al. suggested school engagement is a multifaceted construct that includes the subcategories of behavioral engagement, emotional engagement, and cognitive engagement. Behavioral engagement includes participation in academic and social or extracurricular activities and is correlated with...

While school-based mental health professionals obviously must provide mental health services to students directly, the literature is increasingly identifying an empowerment role for these professionals, whereby they support teachers as primary service providers. The purpose of this study was to identify subtypes of school social workers within the context of collaborative practice, and to identify individual and contextual factors associated with these classifications as well as overall levels of collaboration. Latent class analysis, conducted using data collected as part of the National School Social Work Survey 2008 (N = 1639), was employed to examine underlying subtypes of school social work practitioners in relation to collaborative practices and to examine predictors of collaborative practice. Four broad categories of school social workers were identified, including (1) noncollaborators, (2) system-level specialists, (3) consultants, and (4) well-balanced collaborators. These classes were associated with the number of schools served, grade level, education, and clinical licensure status; level of administrative responsibility was not associated with class membership. While school social workers varied in collaborative practices, opportunities exist to enhance their role in educating and supporting teachers to serve as primary providers to students with social, mental health, and behavioral needs. The implications for school-based mental health providers, teachers, administrators, policymakers, and researchers are discussed.

School social workers frequently serve as the primary mental health providers to youths with mental health problems. Although school social workers play a primary role in care, many students also receive outside counseling services. Previous research has not examined whether practice approaches differ when considering mental health practice with students for whom school social workers are the primary providers versus those who receive outside counseling. This article uses respondents from the 2008 National School Social Work Survey who worked primarily with students with either emotional or behavioral problems to examine whether practice approaches differed between groups of school social workers for whom all or most of their students received outside counseling and those for whom few of their students received these services. Results demonstrate that the groups were different with respect to practice choices, as school social workers who worked with students receiving outside counseling reported greater engagement at all levels of the ecological system except for the school domain and the practice approach of group counseling. Both groups cited work with teachers as the least used aspect of school social work practice. Implications for the future of school social work research, practice, and policy are discussed.