18. Understanding the Complex Association Between School-Based Mental Health Services and K-2 Early Reading Achievement in 2021-2024 using Longitudinal Data

School closures in 2020-2021 negatively impacted learning trajectories for young children. To facilitate academic recovery, one large, urban school district allocated additional resources in the post-closure years for direct school-based mental health services. We describe an evaluation of the impact of receiving such services on a student's early literacy trajectory. This presentation will also emphasize the common challenges faced in causal inference and the process for selecting a rigorous statistical analysis plan. Analytical challenges arise since the probability of receiving the intervention is substantially higher among students with lower literacy and slower trajectories with limited information for balancing. The selected method leverages a student's own pre-intervention trajectory to address the counterfactual question of whether the initiation and accumulation of services translated to better gains in literacy. Administrative data included 691,742 early literacy assessments completed by students in grades K-2 in three consecutive years. A linear mixed effects model was fit including student grade, an indicator of whether an initial service already occurred, cumulative services to date, and assessment time. Detailed trajectories were estimated using interactions and random effects accounted for nesting and repeated measures. Growth from beginning to middle and end of year was slower among students receiving services. Higher total number of prior services also translated to lower beginning of year scores. However, as services accumulated within a given year, the number of services received was positively correlated with the rate of increase in literacy. This study builds a flexible model to disentangle the impact of mental health service accumulation from the increased propensity for receiving services among students with lower reading achievement. The results display a promising pattern of recovery through the use of school-based mental health services.

Causal inference

Observational studies

Longitudinal data analysis

Administrative data

Time-varying exposure

Bias 

Mid-Level

Knowledge

Women in Statistics and Data Science 2025