#82. How Schools Can Improve Kids’ Mental Health and Their Academic Performance

The reform we need is the opposite of Common Core; we need to create healthy school climates.

USCD/Jacobs School…/CC

Dear friends,

In previous letters I’ve documented the disastrous effects of the Common Core State Standards on U.S. children and teens. The primary aims of Common Core were to improve test scores in mathematics and the literary arts and reduce the achievement gap, in these subjects, between students from economically poor and economically wealthier homes. Yet, as explained in Letter #78, Common Core had the opposite of its intended effects. Ever since the beginning of Common Core, scores on standard tests in these subjects have declined and the gap between the rich and poor has increased. Even worse, as I explained in Letters D5, D8, #39, #50, and #51, Common Core has caused a huge decline in mental health among school-aged children and teens. Similar effects have been documented as results of school “reforms” comparable to Common Core in other countries, as I described in Letter #69 for England and #70 for Sweden.

The premise behind Common Core and similar school “reforms” was that academic achievement could be improved through a more focused and standardized curriculum, combined with standardized testing pertaining to that curriculum and evaluation of teachers and whole schools based on students’ test scores. The effects have been a narrowing of the curriculum to focus more on the subjects being tested; devotion of more class time to test drill at the expense of more engaging pursuits; reduction of teachers’ freedom to alter their teaching to meet the real needs and varied interests of their students; and, as a consequence, increased pressure and reduced pleasure of schooling for students and teachers alike.

A concept ignored by the architects of Common Core is school climate. Already before Common Core was adopted (in 2010 or shortly thereafter in most states), many research studies had shown that the schools where students are mentally healthiest and perform best academically are those that focus on creating and maintaining a positive student climate. School climate refers to the attitudes and personal relationships that permeate a school’s culture. A positive school climate is one where all parties—students, teachers, and non-teaching staff—feel physically and emotionally safe, have warm feelings toward one another, respect and care for one another, support one another toward mutually defined goals, and feel good about being members of the school.

One way to understand the negative effects of Common Core on students’ mental health and learning is to understand its negative effects on school climate. By reducing teachers’ and students’ experiences of autonomy (through greater top-down control), by reducing the opportunities for school members to interact with one another in friendly, community-building ways, and by augmenting evaluation anxiety in teachers and students alike, Common Core worsened school climates.

In what follows I will review some of the research documenting benefits of a positive school climate in standard public schools. But first, here’s a story about an experimental school that tacked in a direction opposite to Common Core.

Regents Academy: An Exercise in Creating a Positive School Climate

Fifteen years ago (beginning in the fall of 2010), David Sloan Wilson—an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University—conducted, along with colleagues, a remarkable educational experiment. They started a new public high school, in Binghamton, NY, that would enroll only the lowest-performing students in the city (Wilson et al., 2011; Kauffman & Wilson, 2016). Only those students entering 9^th or 10^th grade who had failed three or more courses during the previous school year were eligible. Of the 117 students who qualified, 56 were randomly assigned to the experimental school, called Regents Academy, and the remainder, comprising the control group, remained at Binghamton’s single public high school. Nearly all of these 117 students were from low-income families, low enough to qualify for the state’s free lunch program.

Wilson, whom I have known for many years and sometimes collaborated with, is famous for his research and theory pertaining to the evolution of human cooperation and the conditions that promote or interfere with cooperation. Regents Academy was, in essence, a test of the hypothesis that a school would function best if designed in a way to maximize the tendency of its members to identify with one another, see themselves as part of a cooperative group, and, as a result, help one another achieve a common goal. In this case the common goal was to achieve success, as a group and as individuals, in meeting the academic requirements of the Binghamton school system.

For our purposes here, the design can be understood as a concerted attempt to create a positive school climate. The innovations included group identity-building activities; regular assembly and council meetings involving students and staff together; a school constitution signed by all students and staff; an attempt by the principal and every teacher to interact individually and positively with every student every day; opportunities for artistic activities (which included a student-painted mural in the hall); and inquiry-based teaching, which empowered students to play a role in setting the learning agenda within classrooms.

Students ate both breakfast and lunch together at two large tables in the school cafeteria, and teachers and the school principal joined them there for lunch. Students and staff also held joint school meetings, where students could air any grievances they might have and influence school policy. At one early meeting, students suggested that Fridays be devoted to students’ own chosen, independent pursuits rather than typical classes. As a compromise, the meeting decided to devote half of each Friday to such pursuits, and that period became known as “Fun Club” or “Fun Friday.” One room in the school, the lounge, was available to all students and staff whenever they were not occupied elsewhere. School members used the lounge to socialize, play games, and discuss whatever might be on their minds. Students often arrived early to school, to enjoy one another’s company in the lounge.

Seven months into the school year, all high-school students in Binghamton filled out questionnaires aimed at assessing, among other things, their attitude toward school and their overall level of mental wellbeing, which were scored on a scale of 0 to 100. For school attitude, the mean ratings were 73 for Regents Academy students, 46 for the control group, and 61 for Binghamton students generally. For mental health, the mean ratings were 78 for Regents Academy students, 52 for the control group, and 76 for Binghamton students generally. So, seven months at Regents Academy increased students’ attitudes toward school and mental health to levels far greater than those of the control group and equivalent to or higher than (in the case of school attitude) those of the average for Binghamton 9^th and 10^th graders.

The most remarkable effect, however, concerns the students’ performance on the mandated New York state achievement tests at the end of the year, on which the Regents Academy students performed far better than the control group and on a par with the average for all 9^th and 10^th grade Binghamton students. For example, on the English test, 81% of Regents Academy students scored above what the state designates as a “passing” grade, compared to just 38% of those in the control group and 75% for Binghamton as a whole. On the algebra test, these percentages were 65% for Regents Academy, 15% for the control group, and 60% for all Binghamton 9^th and 10^th graders. (Note: These percentages may not be exact, as I determined them from bar graphs available in Wilson et al, 2011.)

These gains were made not by devoting more time to academic instruction, but by devoting more time to developing a positive, take-charge, cooperative spirit among the students and teachers. Fun Friday and the various other spirit-building activities took time away from academic instruction, but made that instruction far more effective, at least for this group of students, than it would have been otherwise. According to Wilson and his colleagues, the per student cost of Regents Academy was only slightly greater than that for the regular Binghamton High School. Yet, apparently for bureaucratic reasons having to do with teacher turnover and failure of new staff to embrace the original concept, the program was soon discontinued. [Sadly, this doesn’t surprise me. The history of public education is filled with innovations that were scrapped or faded away when they proved to be successful. Regression toward the usual is a sad fact of our education system.]

Research Relating School Climate to Students’ Mental Wellbeing and Academic Performance in Typical Schools

Dozens of research studies have revealed positive correlations between school climate, as assessed by students or teachers or both, and the mental health or academic performance (or both) of students. One review identified 48 studies of correlations between indices of a positive school climate and indices of students’ mental wellbeing, 46 of which revealed statistically significant positive correlations (Aldridge & McChesney, 2018). Another review identified 78 studies correlating indices of school climate with students’ academic achievement, all but one of which revealed statistically significant positive correlations (Berkowitz et al., 2017).

Such correlations have been found both within and across schools. In other words, within any given school, students who report a more positive school climate score higher on measures of academic achievement and mental health than students who report a less positive social climate, and students at schools ranked higher in school climate score higher on measures of academic achievement and mental health, on average, than do students at schools ranked lower in school climate. These correlations hold true even when demographic variables, such as the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students, are controlled for statistically, and longitudinal studies suggest that the correlation reflects, at least in part, a causal relationship between school climate and students’ mental health.

The most thorough longitudinal study relating school climate to mental health I have been able to find was conducted by researchers in Australia, who assessed students in grades 7-10 in 18 schools over a three-year period (Sahib et al, 2025). They found that students who experienced a more positive school climate in the first year of the study showed significantly greater gains in psychological resilience (self-reported ability to deal with and bounce back from adversity) and mental health over the next two years than did those who had reported a more negative school climate. The statistical analysis supported the researchers’ hypothesis of a causal chain, in which a positive school climate endows students with the confidence and agency required to deal with adverse experiences (resilience), which in turn leads to reduced anxiety and depression (better mental health).

A Positive School Climate Reduces the Achievement Gap

Some of the studies relating school climate to academic achievement have found that a positive school climate improves the performance of students who were previously performing poorly even more than it does for other students, thereby reducing the achievement gap between students from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Berkowitz et al., 2017).

The most compelling such study I have found was conducted by Ruth Berkowitz, who analyzed questionnaire data collected from a nationally representative sample of over 53,000 fifth- and eighth-grade students in Isreal. The data included self-reported indices of school climate, socioeconomic status of their families, and scores on academic tests of literacy. The results provide compelling evidence that the beneficial effect of a positive school climate on literacy was higher for those from economically poorer families than for those from wealthier families. Of course, such findings are consistent with the results of the Binghamton Regents Academy study, where improved school climate greatly improved the academic performance of students who had previously been the worst-performing students in the city.

One way to understand why improved school climate especially benefits kids from economically poorer families is this: Students from such families may experience a greater disconnect between school and the environment in which they are growing up than do students from wealthier families. The vocabulary, cultural customs, and expectations of a typical school may be less like those of home for kids from poorer families than for kids from wealthier families. This disconnect may be overcome when schools make a concerted effort to show that all students are welcome, all are respected and liked, irrespective of where they are from and how they are performing academically.

Concluding Thoughts

One characteristic of Regents Academy that likely facilitated the development of a positive school climate was its small size. It is easier to develop a whole-school spirit in a small school than a large one. When I was a kid, my family moved often, and therefore I had the experience of adapting to large city schools and small village schools. Always, I felt most comfortable and believe I developed my potential best in the small schools. My favorite school was a tiny public school in a rural area of Vermont, where I was a student in my last two years of high school. There were just 52 kids in the high school during my senior year and 12 in my graduating class. Everyone who wanted to in that school could take part in any of the school’s activities, such as writing for the school paper, being in school plays, singing in the chorus (though I was politely told to sing softly), and being on the varsity athletic teams (which competed against other small schools). Everyone at that school seemed to feel they were an integral part of a cohesive, caring community.

Sadly, a major trend over decades has been for schools to consolidate, creating ever larger schools, to which students must be bussed. There is no good reason, even in big cities, why schools must be so large. Regents Academy was housed in a single floor of an existing building, and other small alternative schools occupied other parts of the building. Any large school today could be broken down into multiple smaller schools, each with its own name, faculty, and cultural customs, for no additional expense. Some facilities—such as the gymnasium and school library—could be shared, but otherwise each school would be its own unit. If I had the power to create national laws affecting schools, the first and maybe the only law I would create would be to limit the size of schools, to perhaps no more than a hundred students. Smaller size itself, where everyone is known as a real person, not a test score, promotes a more cohesive and positive school climate.

And now, what do you think? What have been your experiences, or your kids’ experiences, with school climate? If you could make one change in how schools operate, what would it be? This substack is, among other things, a forum for discussion. Your thoughts and questions add to the value of these letters for me and other readers.

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With respect and best wishes,

Peter

References

Aldridge, J.M. & McChesney, K. (2018). The relationships between school climate and adolescent mental health and wellbeing: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Educational Research 88 (2018) 121–145

Berkowitz, R. (2021). School climate and the socioeconomic literacy achievement gap: Multilevel analysis of compensation, mediation, and moderation models. Children and Youth Services Review 130. (2021) 106238

Berkowitz, R., Moore, H., Astor, R.A., & Benbenishty, R. (2017). A research synthesis of the associations between socioeconomic background, inequality, school climate, and academic achievement. Review of Educational Research, 87, 425-469.

Kauffman, R.A. & Wilson, D.S. (2016). Beyond academic performance: The effects of an evolution-informed school environment on student performance and well-being. pp 306-347 in D.G. Geary & D.B. Berch (eds.), Evolutionary perspectives on child development. Switzerland: Springer International.

Sahib, A., Chen, J., Reynolds, K.J., & Cárdenas, D. (2025). The Curative Effect of Schools: A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of School Climate, School Identification, and Resilience on Adolescent Mental Health. School Psychology, 40, No. 1, 13–23

Wilson, D.S., Kauffman, R.A., & Purdy, M.S. (2011). A program for at-risk high school students informed by evolutionary science. PLoS ONE, Nov., 2011, Vol 6, issue 11.