


With Suicide Rates on the Rise, Schools Need Better Data to Keep Students Healthy and Safe
Sound emotional and mental health is essential for student achievement, but many students are struggling. Read the full report San Francisco – The number of students struggling with anxiety, suicidal ideation, and mental health issues is on the rise. A report released today by YouthTruth underscores that programs and services, as well as strong relationships…

‘60 Percent Think Discipline Isn’t Fair’: New Report Reveals Student, Family, and Staff Experiences with Discipline
Jimmy Simpson Jr. is partnerships lead and equity coach for YouthTruth, a national nonprofit that helps schools measure nonacademic indicators related to school climate and academic achievement. Recent federal, state, and local data reveals there’s still a lot of work to do when it comes to ensuring discipline policies and practices are fair and equitable…

School Safety Is a $2.7 Billion Market. How Do Schools Know if They’re Spending Effectively?
When I was a high school junior, a series of anonymous bomb threats were made at my school. I didn’t take them very seriously—usually, they meant a welcome early dismissal. Looking back, I wish my peers and I had been more appreciative. After all, we only saw threats. Since the massacre at Columbine High School…

Why the 20th Anniversary of Columbine Should Be About Listening to Students
By Sonya Heisters, the director of partnerships for YouthTruth It was April 20,1999, and I was a high school junior. Though generally a compliant student, on this day, I convinced a cute boy from drama class to cut school with me. It felt risky and fun. It felt dangerous. That evening, my 16-year-old definition of…

How’s Discipline at Your School? Don’t Just Look at Referral and Suspension Data, Get Perception Data
By Sonya Heisters, the director of partnerships for YouthTruth As a student-teacher, and like most early-career educators, I struggled with classroom management and discipline. The beautifully articulated theories of positive behavior intervention and support that I was learning through my credentialing program seemed at odds with the realities of time and resource constraints in the…

New Report Compares Student, Family, and Staff Experiences with Discipline Finds Student Perception Matters
When designed and implemented well, discipline policies and practices can help a school run smoothly, support teachers, and set up equitable conditions of learning. When managed poorly, however, school discipline policies and practices can have serious long and short term effects on students’ lives both inside and outside the classroom, including contributing to the school…

Leveraging Student Voice & Engaging Every Learner
We know that a positive school climate (California State Priority 6) is an essential component of a high-performing school. But we need to transform “school climate” from being just another state-mandated performance metric to becoming a strategic lever for improvement. How do we identify student groups that have less positive experiences in school, whether it’s…

‘Something was Wrong’: New Report Shows Bullying on the Rise the Past Three Years
Sonya Heisters, YouthTruth’s director of partnerships and outreach, first observed the rise in bullying in Quincy, Washington. When the team at Quincy Junior High got their student feedback back in the winter of 2018, they saw a surprising increase in the rate of bullying at their school between the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years. Heisters…
Learning from Student Voice: School Culture
Today, YouthTruth launched the fourth report in our Learning from Student Voice series . . .