In Arkansas, a $7 million program approved last year aims to support students’ mental health by restricting their cellphone use and using telehealth to connect more students to mental health providers.
In Texas, a multiyear effort to study student mental and behavioral health yielded a host of recommendations, including putting Medicaid funds toward school-based mental health supports and better tracking of interventions.
And in West Virginia, state education leaders and partnership organizations have amassed a trove of resource documents and built out training to help schools address student mental health challenges.
All three states are working to proactively to respond to the student mental health crisis that worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
All three states are also considering or expected to pass laws allowing schools to implement tougher discipline policies.
Likewise, many states are tweaking their discipline policies at the same time they are putting more resources toward supporting students’ mental well-being.
Although school discipline and mental health supports are mostly addressed at the local level, state leadership is critical for setting expectations for accountability and requiring transparency in disciplinary actions, said Richard Welsh, founding director of the School Discipline Lab, a research center that shares information about school discipline.
And states are using a variety of measures from proactively providing mental health supports to loosening restrictions for exclusionary discipline, said Welsh, who is also an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt University.
Post pandemic, “we did have an uptick in student misbehavior,” Welsh said. “But I think what also gets missing in that was we also had an uptick in student and teacher needs.”
The COVID factor
Post-COVID, schools have reported a rise in unruly behaviors, including among young students. Some of the behaviors have been violent and have even injured teachers, leading them to turn away from the profession.
Research published by the American Psychological Association last year found an increase in violence against K-12 educators over the past decade. After COVID restrictions ended in 2022, a survey of 11,814 school staff, including teachers and administrators, found that 2% to 56% of respondents reported physical violence at least once during the year, with rates varying by school staff role and aggressor.
Data also shows that student verbal abuse occurring at least once a week on average, doubled from 4.8% in the 2009-10 school year to 9.8% in 2019-20, according to APA.
Students’ mental health needs increased during and after the pandemic, according to studies. Additional research showed that teachers, administrators and other school staff lacked resources to properly address students’ needs.
Some educators, parents and advocates worry that harsher student discipline policies will undermine evidenced-based practices for decreasing challenging behaviors and keeping students in school. They are also concerned that after several years of expanding positive behavior supports and restorative practices, a focus on stricter discipline policies will disproportionately affect students of color and those with disabilities.
The legislative activity at the state level is occurring at the same time President Donald Trump is calling for “reinstating common sense” to school discipline policies. An April executive order calls for the U.S. Department of Education to issue guidance to districts and states regarding their obligations under Title VI to protect students against racial discrimination in relation to the discipline of students. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in federally funded programs.
The Trump administration has called for the federal government to enact policies that are “colorblind,” not favoring one race over others.
The order also directs the Education Department to submit a report by late August on the “status of discriminatory-equity-ideology-based school discipline and behavior modification techniques in American public education.”
Welsh predicts that the executive order will lead to more state activity addressing student behavior and a specific focus on the guidelines for administering punitive discipline.