A new article published by the Washington, D.C., think tank Brookings, highlights the dynamic market for “student support” services that’s emerging as public funding increases to help schools address students’ social service and mental health needs, many of which were aggravated by the pandemic.
“School districts are now inundated with ‘student support’ service providers but have little guidance on how to select or manage them,” Joan Wassser Gish and Haibin Jiang write in the article, “Amid rush of school support vendors, policymakers must monitor quality.”
Wasser Gish is the Director of Systemic Impact, at the Mary E. Walsh Center for Thriving Children, the home of City Connects, and Jiang is one of the center’s Research Associates.
“With the field’s increasing understanding of what effective student support strategies look like, policymakers should establish quality benchmarks to help districts ensure a minimum, evidence-based standard of care for students,” Wasser Gish and Jiang explain.
“Just as the Food and Drug Administration strives to ensure that the health benefits of a new treatment outweigh potential harms, policymakers in education can use evidence to minimize potential risks and maximize the benefits of student support interventions.”
Among the risks that local, state, and federal policymakers can minimize are:
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