Schools have emerged as the great hope for diverse sectors of our society (e.g., legislators, policymakers, the business community, families, advocates, the general public, and so on) as providing solutions to the many social ills that plague our daily lives and threaten our future. From drug and sex education to citizenship training, many continue to view schools as performing surrogate parenthood roles that should produce youth who are well socialized, motivated to achieve, and who abide by accepted standards of rule governed behavior. These value-added outcomes are in addition to the development of literacy, which remains as the school system's primary mission. It seems clear, even to the casual observer of public schooling, that achievement of these lofty expectations is still well beyond the reach of most public schools.
The pressures on school leaders and staff to better respond to the demands and expectations of these various stakeholder groups have been enormous. The school reform movement and the No Child Left Behind legislation reflect broad dissatisfaction and severe criticism of public schooling in this regard. Further, the U.S. mental health constituency has been vocal in documenting
- the continuing unmet needs of students with mental health needs who are not served or are underserved by schools, and
- educators' failure to access and use evidence-based intervention approaches for those students who are served. There has been considerable speculation as to why this is the case-most of which fails to take into account key features of the school culture, setting, and process as explanatory factors.
Hoagwood and her associates have written extensively about this issue (Burns & Hoagwood, 2002; Hoagwood, 2001; Rones & Hoagwood, 2002) and they cite the following facts and developments to buttress their case:
fully 1/5th of today's students meet the necessary diagnostic criteria for a recognized........
