There is an urgent need to aid in what will be an ongoing educational recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. One avenue for supporting students with and at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (e.g., internalizing and externalizing behaviors) is implementation of tiered systems, which emphasize evidence-based practices to prevent and respond to academic, behavioral, and social and emotional well-being needs. We conducted this study to quantify cross-sectional differences between the academic years before (prepandemic: 2018–2019 and 2019–2020) and immediately following the pandemic onset (after-pandemic onset: 2021–2022) in students’ levels of internalizing and externalizing behaviors and referrals for special education eligibility determination. We analyzed data from the Student Risk Screening Scale for Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE) and district-provided special education data from 22 elementary schools collected as part of regular practices. Schools were from two midwestern districts implementing an integrated tiered system of support—the Comprehensive, Integrated, Three-tiered (Ci3T) model of prevention—district-wide. Results indicated some statistically significant but very small-magnitude differences in internalizing and externalizing behaviors relative to the pandemic with few exceptions (e.g., fall externalizing scores slightly lower in fall after the pandemic onset). Effect sizes suggested students with disabilities and students of color were very similar and did not indicate differential pandemic impact. We discussed limitations, which centered primarily on issues of generalizability, and encouraged other researchers to examine shifts in student performance in other locales, in schools not yet implementing tiered systems, and in subsequent years following the pandemic onset.

中文翻译：

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检查 COVID-19 大流行对实施分层系统的学校小学生内化和外化行为的影响

在 COVID-19 大流行之后，迫切需要为持续的教育恢复提供援助。支持患有情绪和行为障碍（例如，内化和外化行为）的学生和有风险的学生的一种途径是实施分层系统，该系统强调基于证据的实践，以预防和应对学业、行为、社会和情绪健康问题。被需要。我们进行这项研究的目的是量化学生内化和外化水平之前学年（疫情前：2018-2019年和2019-2020年）和疫情爆发后学年（疫情爆发后：2021-2022年）之间的横截面差异特殊教育资格确定的行为和转介。我们分析了学生内部化和外部化风险筛查量表 (SRSS-IE) 的数据以及学区提供的 22 所小学特殊教育数据，这些数据是作为常规做法的一部分收集的。中西部两个学区的学校在全学区实施综合分层支持系统——综合、综合、三级 (Ci3T) 预防模式。结果表明，与大流行相比，内化和外化行为存在一些统计上显着但幅度非常小的差异，几乎没有例外（例如，大流行爆发后秋季外化得分略低）。效应大小表明残疾学生和有色人种学生非常相似，并不表明流行病的影响存在差异。我们讨论了主要集中在普遍性问题上的局限性，并鼓励其他研究人员研究其他地区、尚未实施分层系统的学校以及大流行爆发后的随后几年学生表现的变化。