From leadership research to district action: Interconnecting District and Community Partners to Improve School-Level Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Health

AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.

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Evidence and transfer

Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.

Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:

School districts face growing demands to address the academic, social, emotional, and behavioral health needs of all students, including meeting state mandates such as bullying prevention, suicide prevention, trauma response, and behavioral threat assessment. These needs have intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic, often resulting in fragmented and inefficient planning. The Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) offers a structure for uniting district and community efforts into a single, integrated system of support. While research has expanded on the effectiveness of the ISF and resources have defined installation steps, the process is often arduous and challenging to notice progress and maintain momentum in action planning. This study examines the use of the ISF District–Community Leadership Team (DCLT) Installation Progress Monitoring Tool as a means to provide district and community leaders with concrete data to monitor progress and inform evaluation and action plans. Findings highlight the tool’s potential to strengthen installation processes, promote data-informed decision-making, and improve alignment of resources to impact student and school outcomes.

Study methods

This study used a field-based, mixed-methods pilot design to examine the feasibility and utility of the ISF District–Community Leadership Team (DCLT) Installation Progress Monitoring Tool, which provided both data and a practical resource during the installation stage of ISF implementation. The pilot served as an initial step in evaluating the tool’s functionality in real-world districts, to inform tool refinement and readiness for broader implementation. The tool was tested across three projects involving school districts in Illinois, Kentucky, and New York. Three projects were included in the pilot study, which encompassed a total of 19 districts varying in size, demographics, and location. These 19 districts, spanning the three projects, represent a range of perspectives across the Midwest and eastern coasts of the US. Nearly half of all districts have household income below their state average (48% of districts) and/or the national average (57% of districts), with 62% of districts categorized as rural or town locale. All districts have a majority White student population, with two districts also serving nearly 25% of Black students in their area.

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, it did not assess the consistency and accuracy with which different users applied the tool’s criteria or interpreted the results. While TA providers were fluent in ISF district installation steps, a standardized schedule for tool administration and specific training on scoring and data use was not implemented across all sites. This may have affected inter-rater reliability and the consistency of how the tool informed action planning. Additionally, the absence of structured norming processes may have contributed to differences in interpretation and post-assessment use. The diversity of districts in this study were limited and only included districts from the United States. Finally, qualitative data from district participants was minimal. Future studies should incorporate training protocols and inter-rater reliability checks to enhance consistency in the application and scoring of the tool, include additional large, urban districts and international educational settings, and collect additional qualitative data from district participants.

A 90-day district inquiry

Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one school improvement question with teachers. Protect a short shared planning cycle, agree an instructional change and use a common rubric for examining student work. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
Days 61–90 · Decide. Review implementation fidelity, teacher time and independently scored student work against a recorded baseline. Examine access differences and competing explanations before attributing changes to leadership. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.

Board decision brief

Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.

Attribution and reuse

Kathryn B. Pohlman; Kayla Jones; Juan R. Lira; Jennifer Norton; Kelly Perales. Interconnecting District and Community Partners to Improve School-Level Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Health. Behavioral Sciences (2025-09-09). https://doi.org/10.3390/bs15091225

Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.