Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Illinois funded the rapid scale-up of a whole-school trauma approach, Resilience Education to Advance Community Healing (REACH). Schools that took part in REACH formed a team, participated in training, completed the Trauma Responsive Schools Implementation Assessment (TRS-IA) and then developed an action plan based on the results of that assessment. The independent, quasi-experimental outcome evaluation of REACH capitalized on natural contrasts between the 950 schools that enrolled in REACH and the 3,035 schools that did not, and REACH schools that attained more versus fewer implementation milestones. Analyses showed that 132 REACH schools with pre/post data significantly improved their scores on all eight dimensions of the TRS-IA. Controlling for school characteristics and baseline levels of outcome variables, we saw that REACH schools were more likely to retain their teachers than were schools that had not enrolled in REACH. REACH schools that were “engaged” had fewer students who were chronically absent than REACH schools that were not engaged. REACH schools that were “very engaged” had fewer out-of- school suspensions than schools that were not engaged. There was no relationship between REACH and school climate. Overall, REACH is a promising whole-school trauma-responsive intervention.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
