Chapter 9: Student Adversity and Leader Stress: A Critical Race Contextualization and Analysis of New York State Social Emotional Learning Policy

Global capitalism, the rise of the technological society, the pace of change, the demise of traditional community support systems, and the widening gulf between rich and poor have contributed to high levels of psychological damage in society.

—Harris (2008)

Each year, across K–12 education, new problems are discovered and initiatives added, while existent challenges and tasks remain. Research details how neoliberal educational policy outside of the United States (Lemke & Zhu, 2018) and within urban American contexts (Brathwaite, 2017) buttresses rigid accountability standards, shrinks public dollars, and reproduces educational inequality. Practitioner outlets document issues that range from the financial inability to fix leaky roofs and replace old textbooks to legislation that diverts funds from already under-resourced schools to private entities (Flannery, 2010). Within a fiscally challenged environment, there is a renewed push to address adverse childhood experiences (ACE), often referred to as student trauma and/or adversity, and to institute school-based practices to reduce student stress, facilitate coping, and augment resiliency overall (Chafouleas et al., 2016). Viewed as a wider public health concern, research documents the harmful effects of contextually specific trauma on childhood and adolescent social, emotional, mental, and physical health (Lee et al., 2017; Turner et al., 2012). Research finds trauma not only impairs these aspects of the self, but also causes diminished health capacity in childhood and adolescence, with lasting negative effects in adulthood (Copeland et al., 2018; Felitti et al., 1998).