Secondary students at every grade level maintain depression, stress, and anxiety is the most common barrier to learning. And fewer than half of them, regardless of gender, sexual and racial identity, have an adult they feel comfortable talking to when stressed or upset, according to a new YouthTruth. 

The report also reveals drastic mental health disparities, with white students students  at least 7% more likely to access a school psychologist, counselor or therapist than their Black, Latino and Asian peers. LGBTQ youth experienced suicidal ideation more than double the rate of their peers.

“The increase in the mental health load that students experienced during the pandemic has not gone away,  is still very present, even increased and it’s not going away anytime soon,” said Jen Wilka,  executive director of YouthTruth. “For now, we need to adjust to that as the new normal and and think about how we support students.” 

The survey found that last academic year, less than a quarter of students spoke to school counselors, therapists or psychologists about what they were facing. 

“I think that the conversation about learning loss and the academic side of learning is so loud, that we can sometimes lose sight …  of the interconnectedness between emotional and mental health and students’ ability to learn academically,” Wilka added. “It’s really impossible to do one without the other.”

Less than half of the 222,837 students surveyed this fall across 20 states are satisfied with their school’s mental health offerings. “I wish the school did more to train and educate its students on how to identify … warning signs of deteriorating mental health, abuse, self-harm, and violence within their peers – and respond appropriately and compassionately,” one Asian-American high school senior boy wrote.

Gender disparities 

YouthTruth’s findings, disaggregated for the first time by gender identity, also reveal starkly different emotional realities and gaps in access to meaningful care for LGBTQ students.

An overwhelming majority, 83-85%, of trans and non-binary students say depression, stress and anxiety block their ability to learn, rates at least 33% above the average for all students. LGBTQ middle and high school students report twice as much as their peers that bullying also impacts their learning.

Only about a third of LGBTQ students report their school’s mental health support is satisfactory.

“That says that we still have work to do to meet those students where they’re at and be tailoring that support,” Wilka said. 

LGBTQ students want to feel “seen and recognized” in , which would contribute to a positive sense of self. Recent efforts to censor content at school have plagued students’ mental health, write-in responses reveal. 

Curriculum bans launch a domino effect, stifling classroom talks about gender and sexuality. The culture makes it difficult for students to process when they may not freely be able to at home, and to feel a sense of belonging. 

Distinctive Schools, a charter network in Chicago and Detroit and YouthTruth partner, is currently ramping up support for LGBTQ students — encouraging active Gay-Straight Alliances on each campus and making their dress code language more gender inclusive — and expanding their mental healthcare teams to combat mental health stigma.

“I’m giving trainings to teachers that historically you would only get as a clinician…and we can still be doing better, they still need more, and we still can’t keep up with the demand,” Distinctive School’s Director of Clinical Services, Michele Lansing, told the 74. Their suicide or risk assessments are up, the result of peers sharing their concern for one another more frequently. 

“Our students are more educated and getting better at putting words to what was already there, ”Lansing said. 

“They know that their friends deserve help and support.”

Boys were the least likely subgroup to speak with school staff about their mental health or the problems they experience, at about 15%. One young student, in a workshop analyzing his school’s results, hypothesized that a “culture of masculinity” impacts the numbers — there’s an expectation that boys shouldn’t express their feelings. 

“Even though in this data, we might look at it and say ‘oh, boys and young men are doing fine, it’s girls, transgender, and non-binary students that we need to be worrying about.’ We know from other data that boys and young men are not fine,” Wilka said.

“Do better:” Involve students, families 

The overwhelming ask from students’ write-in responses is now “do better.” The plea is a stark shift from past surveys, where students wanted schools to do something, anything, to address the mental suffering they experience and witness.  

“That refrain, ‘talk to us first’ is just exploding in the qualitative data right now,” Wilka said, adding that the message suggests schools can do more to bring students into the process of planning or adjusting offerings. Distinctive Schools, for example, meets each family individually at the start of the year.

“We’re young, but we deserve respect,” one white high school senior wrote in their survey response, criticizing what they felt were inadequate attempts to address needs by adding mental health days. 

“Don’t just hear us, listen to us,” another wrote, “ …You have to work alongside us, or it just doesn’t work. Do something … Do better.”

The new normal is not at all surprising to Makayla, a Black high school junior at one of Distinctive School’s Chicago high schools. She asked her last name not be used to maintain privacy. 

“I have experienced all three — the depression, stress and anxiety, and it definitely did affect my work … I was torn apart, and so many days, I just wasn’t okay,” she told The 74.  

Typically a high-achieving student, Makayla found it harder and harder to stay emotionally stable last spring, often sitting in the counselor’s office collecting herself for most of the school day. Her grades plummeted. Yet she was among the minority of secondary school students comfortable enough with her teachers to be honest when they took notice. 

“On the days that I would come to school while I was mentally not okay, my English teacher, she was like, ‘do you need to take a breather? Do you want to just sit here and catch up on work later?’ ”  Makayla said. “…They understand that if you need a moment, then I’ll give you a moment, or however long it takes.”

After two years of a pandemic, Gelman is proud that her students have learned to speak up for themselves. For example, they asked for a room in the school to gather when they’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed. But as seniors prepare to graduate, she said it’s “been like pulling teeth” to keep them focused on academics.

“They wanted teachers to stop giving them homework,” she said. “Their priority is their mental health, not college.”

The pandemic’s impact on this year’s graduates is captured in new survey data showing that one in four seniors has changed their future plans because of COVID, and some have less desire to continue their education. Published Wednesday by YouthTruth, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, the data shows English learners, LGBTQ youth and students of color were more likely to reconsider their next steps. The results are based on responses from over 28,000 high school seniors from both 2019 and this year, allowing for comparison to the last senior class to graduate before the pandemic. 

Black and Hispanic students and boys, for example, are less likely to say they want to go to college than those who graduated in 2019. Eighteen percent of this year’s graduates said they considered dropping out. But that rate was much higher among LGBTQ students (26%) and transgender students (37%). And Hispanic students are more likely than white students to say they’re unsure about their next steps — 14% compared with 9%.

Less access to college and career counseling could be one reason for the shift in attitudes.

In 2019, 40% of graduates reported receiving guidance from their schools about career pathways, according to the YouthTruth results. Among students in this year’s class, 33% said they received such guidance. And the percentage of students saying there’s an adult they could ask to write a college recommendation letter declined for males, students in rural schools and Hispanic students.

‘I felt like I was all alone’

Seniors told The 74 they felt reluctant to seek help and that counselors sometimes didn’t offer guidance unless asked.

Yan Kyaw, a senior at Senn High School in Chicago, said his school partnered with OneGoal, a nonprofit focusing on preparing students for higher education. But he had a hard time taking advantage of the help while learning remotely.

“I did have a support system, but I didn’t use them because I felt like I was all alone,” said Kyaw, who will attend the University of Illinois Chicago and study business. In junior year, he didn’t ask for feedback on his college essays. He often found himself sitting on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He described his high school years as “a punch in the gut.”

Due to the pandemic, many seniors went without the kind of volunteer and internship experiences colleges often look for and had fewer in-person college fairs and opportunities to “set their feet on a college campus to do a tour,” said Geoff Heckman, head of the counseling department at Platte County High School, near Kansas City, Missouri. 

Students have “done their best to pick next steps based upon virtual tools and online information,” he said, “but without the genuine face-to-face conversation that is so helpful in making that determination about which direction they really want to pursue.”

Rajsi Rani, who’s graduating from Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California, said she missed informal communication the most. 

“Because everything was virtual, there was no knowledge passed by word of mouth, which I’ve found is very helpful for this kind of information,” she said. “I did my own research on career ideas. It was not provided by my school to the extent that I think it was pre-pandemic.”

For some students, the pandemic wasn’t necessarily a setback, but instead helped them identify their goals.

Monty Woods, who attends Milwaukie High, said he always planned to stay close to home and attend Clackamas Community College. He takes care of his mother, who is disabled, and said he used to think about becoming a teacher. But the pandemic changed his mind. 

“I saw how it just drained every single staff member,” he said. Now he plans to study business administration.

‘Taking a pause’ 

Some seniors also missed out on financial aid counseling. The survey shows that only a quarter of this year’s graduates said they received help on how to apply for assistance, compared with a third in 2019.

That decline shows up in . According to the National College Attainment Network, overall rates — including first-time filers — have dropped almost 9% compared to last year, continuing the downward trend that began in 2020. Every state saw a decline, ranging from less than 2% in Texas to almost 17% in Michigan.

The Network’s report notes that “high schools are having to triage supports to students, with learning loss and academics, mental wellness and basic needs often getting more attention and investment than postsecondary transitions.” The researchers suggested the “hot economy” could also be pushing some students to choose work over college, especially those who were on the fence. 

The pandemic’s strain on family budgets pushed many students to take jobs or increase the number of hours they were working. Shelly Reggiani, executive director of equity, community engagement and communications in the North Clackamas district, which includes Milwaukie High, heard from students working as many as 30 hours a week “to keep the lights on.”

“These young people were forced into taking on that adult role at such a young age,” she said. In the past, she added, the term, “gap year,” often referred to travel plans or putting off a year of college sports. Now, she said, “it almost seems to be synonymous with, ‘I’m taking a pause.’ ”

Milwaukie High senior JohnTasia Simmons, who goes by “Tae tae,” is just glad she pulled her grades up enough to get into Portland State University. She’s struggled with a learning disability her whole life, which she said was “not a good mix” with online learning. She fell behind in algebra and English, and almost failed history.

“My assignments were just stacking up. My grades were looking friggin’ terrible,” she said. “I thought I would have to start off in community college.”

The Indiana bill includes a provision that would require districts to get parents’ permission before students take any survey that “reveals or attempts to affect the student’s attitudes, habits, traits, opinions, beliefs or feelings.” Parents say such surveys violate student’s privacy and could encourage students to question their mental health or sexual identity.

The legislation stems from a “parents’ rights” movement in Republican-led states across the country that has featured efforts to get and dealing with race and sexuality. Arizona was among the first states to require parent permission for surveys six years ago, but concerns from parents about prying questions have recently spread to districts in Colorado, North Carolina and elsewhere.

“Parents are saying ‘What is this intended to do? What are you doing with the data, and how do we opt out of it?’” said Dawn Lang, who has a fourth grader in the Hamilton Southeastern Schools, north of Indianapolis.

Schools use such surveys to get a read on what students think about their teachers, relationships with peers, access to weapons and, increasingly, issues related to race and diversity. Educators, researchers and others providing services to schools say it’s important to get “student voice” about topics such as substance use, mental health and student engagement. Under pressure to spend billions in federal dollars to address precisely those issues, many are relying on surveys to inform how they spend the money.

Indiana districts, and many across the country, offer parents an opportunity to opt their child out of taking surveys — referred to in the field as passive, or implied, consent. Requiring all students to get permission in advance, or opting in, would reduce participation and leave schools less informed about what students think, experts say.

“Schools often use climate surveys to get a sense of what I call conditions for learning,” said Sandra Washburn, a researcher with the Center on Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Indiana. “Do students have input into decisions, someone at school they trust? That’s really good data. When we have 50 percent of the student population saying they’re bored on a daily basis, we take note of that.”

If the bill passes, she worries it could limit the number of districts that participate in the , which has been running for more than 30 years and asks students questions about topics ranging from drug and alcohol use to whether their schoolwork is meaningful.

With U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently issuing about increases in youth suicide attempts and substance use, Washburn said, “We need local data that tells us how our kids are doing.”

Requiring written parental consent in advance “has the potential for compromising the validity of the sample of participating students,” said Mikyoung Jun, a survey statistician at Prevention Insights, the Indiana University center that runs the Indiana Youth Survey. 

She pointed to that compared survey samples using both active and passive consent. The active consent group was less likely to include older students, as well as those with behavior problems, single parents or academic struggles. Basing decisions on such results could lead to “mistargeted” policies and programs, the authors wrote.

‘Good faith, important questions’

Lang and parent groups in other states have especially raised concerns over from Boston-based Panorama Education, which now has 1,500 client districts, including Hamilton Southeastern Schools. 

Among questions on the survey given to third-through-fifth graders are: “How often did you get your work done right away, instead of waiting until the last minute?,” “How well did you get along with other students who are different from you?” and “How often do you worry about violence at your school?” 

Surveys for middle and high school students include additional diversity, inclusion and cultural awareness questions, such as, “At your school, how often are you encouraged to think more deeply about race-related topics with other students?”

Survey questions about race and diversity are among those that Brooke Lawson, coordinator of mental health and school counseling for the district, said parents call about the most. 

The district posts opt-out information in multiple ways: the , the superintendent’s weekly video message, a district email to families and principals’ newsletters. She stressed that parents can request to see their child’s responses to the survey report.

Lang, a parent in the district, said she missed the notice about the survey last fall. “It was maybe bundled in with a newsletter at the end of the week,” she said.

Some parents are uncomfortable staff members analyzing students’ thoughts on personal matters.

“They are picking these programs because they’re being told the kids are depressed,” said Kelli Moore, who pulled her eighth grade son out of the Catawba County Schools in North Carolina. She is among those who protested the district’s contract with Panorama, which the district in December. 

Moore added that the demographic questions might plant seeds of “gender confusion” in students’ minds.

“They might make a child think, ‘Maybe I am gay or maybe I’m supposed to be a girl, or maybe I’m supposed to be a boy,’” she said.

Districts using Panorama surveys can choose to offer just male or female as options, or add a third choice for a student to “self-describe,” explained Brendan Ryan, a spokesman for the company.

But he added that districts can “modify the language or options however they deem appropriate for their students.” Districts, he added, own the data, not Panorama. District officials decide who has access to it and whether to give teachers access to an individual student’s responses. 

“There are very fair, good faith, important questions that we think parents should be asking,” he said, “and we’re trying to separate that out from the folks who think we shouldn’t be talking about Rosa Parks because it makes white kids feel bad.”

‘Falling through the cracks’

Brandan Keaveny, a data ethics consultant and former chief accountability officer in the Syracuse Public Schools in New York, said federal relief funds for pandemic recovery have likely prompted more districts to conduct surveys without first gauging parental support

“It’s like, ‘This is what we’ve decided. What do you think?’” he said, adding that districts need to ensure they communicate the purpose of the surveys, the opt-out process and how parents can request their child’s data — and do it in multiple languages. 

“Schools need to be communicating to parents all the places where data is shared on their child,” he said. “I always said to principals, ‘You really need to get people actively involved.’”

But he added that moving to an opt-in process, which he compared to voter suppression, “creates obstacles that keep families” from participating, especially if they don’t speak English or have other reasons for missing messages from their children’s schools. 

Beth Lehr, an assistant principal in the Sahuarita Unified School District in Arizona, south of Tucson, said her school has a hard time getting student perception data because of , passed in 2016, that like the Indiana proposal, requires active consent for student surveys.

Her district received this school year to implement training programs for teachers and pay stipends to those leading afterschool programs for students with additional social and emotional needs “But we can’t do the data gathering to figure out who really needs that intervention because we are required to get active consent,” she said.

Of the 1,063 students in her school, only 160 returned permission forms, she said, adding that even if parents don’t object to the surveys, many don’t read their emails or get the forms from their children in the first place. 

Parents who sign the forms “are probably already doing as much as they can to help their kids,” she said. “We’re missing the kids who are falling through the cracks, because they’re falling through the cracks for a reason.”

Panorama isn’t the only organization facing pushback for its surveys. A parent in a said she was “blindsided” by her child taking a survey created by San Francisco-based non-profit YouthTruth.

Even so, more than half of the 2,100 schools using the survey requested an optional set of questions related to diversity, equity and inclusion the organization introduced for the first time this year, said Sonya Heisters, deputy director of YouthTruth.

Parents, she added, aren’t limiting their concerns about surveys to school board meetings. 

“We’re hearing from parents who are even contacting us directly,” she said. “That didn’t used to happen.”

In the third and final survey of young people during the pandemic by the national nonprofit YouthTruth, 49 percent of students talked about the detrimental effects of growing mental and emotional issues while just 39 percent said they had an adult at school to whom they could turn for support. The gap in access to social and emotional help has widened even from fall 2020 survey data, at the start of students’ first full pandemic school year.

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YouthTruth Executive Director Jen Wilka said adult connection was actually at its highest at the start of emergency distance learning in spring 2020. Those interactions and energy, which students say is key to learning, are not as strong now a year and a half later, evidenced by the declining number of young people who say they have a supportive adult in their school orbit.

“Students really felt that increase in their teachers making an effort to sort of reach outside and beyond those virtual walls and understand what it is like,” Wilka said. “That has now waned, and is closer to normal, maybe a little bit higher than normal. We saw that really peak in spring 2020.”

One aspect of student-adult relationships in school that has improved over time is respect. Some 70 percent of students said they think adults treat youth with respect — up significantly from the 57 percent who believed that pre-pandemic.

A narrative animation compiles student write-in responses on stress, anxiety, and depression and how it affected their learning in 2020-21. (YouthTruth)

YouthTruth, which solicits student, family, and educator feedback, analyzed data from 206,950 third- through 12th-grade students across 19 states and 585 urban, suburban and rural schools. Open-ended and choice responses were solicited via anonymous 15-minute surveys from January through May 2021.

Previous pandemic-era surveys were conducted in 2020 by YouthTruth from (20,000 students) and (85,170 students). Mental health concerns have consistently been a barrier to learning, and high school seniors’ plans post-graduation continue to be affected by the pandemic. Students have been vocal about the importance of building relationships with their teachers, and their sense of belonging within their school community peaked in fall 2020.

Twenty-one percent of those most recently surveyed attend high-poverty schools, similar to the national average of 25 percent, and students’ racial identities mirror national averages.

For students of all gender identities, depression, stress, and anxiety has become more prevalent as a barrier to learning since fall 2020. For female- and non-binary identifying students, the rates are much higher, 60 and 83 percent, respectively.

Youth cite overwhelming workloads with assignments that lack relevance to their daily life and futures, according to write-in responses and qualitative analysis.

“School restricts me from being content with who I am,” one high school upperclassman shared. “We need to radically change the education system, it’s way overdue for that and it needs to right now. I cannot get out of bed anymore. I hate school more than how I used to. I’m mentally strained because of distance learning […] However, an English assignment and 11 other assignments are due by 11:59pm tonight because grades are so important – more important than surviving and finding new healthy coping mechanisms after all.”

Education leaders across the country are seeking ways to ameliorate growing concerns for students’ emotional and social well-being; a number of states plan to utilize American Rescue Plan funds to bolster mental health access.

In the North Clackamas School District, serving the greater Portland, Oregon area, social and mental health services were established pre-COVID yet leaders saw emotional needs grow during the pandemic. In response to the changing ways students needed access to adults and sought connection, the district partnered with providers and nonprofits to offer telehealth services, devices, and hotspots to youth and their families districtwide.

Through the pandemic, the district sought to make “sure that we had established pathways that were normalized, made very typical and open for families to access a mental health therapist,” Dr. Shelly Reggiani, the district’s director of equity and instruction, told The 74 during a YouthTruth press call last week.

In sharing other ways to remove learning barriers and improve engagement, youth said they’d like to see more real-world topics, like applying for higher education, financial aid, and jobs and learning personal finance.

Survey results show that fewer seniors surveyed this spring will head to four-year institutions this fall, a trend also reflected by declining enrollment rates, which saw the worst single-year decline since 2011. And though more will enroll in two-year colleges than in fall 2020 — about 20 percent of those surveyed — the proportion hasn’t yet rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

Qualitative survey data revealed some of the barriers that persist for high schoolers looking to access higher education. Students recognized “the need for social capital (like from a teacher or sibling) as part of college access,” the confusing nature of the application process, which is typically formally taught during the school day, and felt that finding information and choosing to apply came “too late,” YouthTruth researchers told The 74.

“The school is pushing students to go to a four-year college and for most students they don’t want to go to a four-year college because they don’t want to go into debt,” one student said.

“Give us Pathways for the Future,” one of four video animations depicting trends from 480,000 open-ended responses and reflections on the 2020-21 academic year. (YouthTruth)

“They’re really searching for meaning in learning, and that’s an opportunity for us as educators to connect learning, and real life, and relevance to help address students’ needs here,” Sonya Heisters, YouthTruth’s deputy director, said.

Other notable findings

• Secondary school students’ perceptions of learning and belonging returned to pre-pandemic levels
• Many Spanish-speaking students detailed how language barriers became an additional obstacle to their learning during virtual and hybrid environments, and 21 percent of Hispanic/Latino students cited lack of teacher support as an obstacle to learning compared to just 14 percent of other students.
• Providing inclusive curricula, adopting anti-racist policies, and treating students fairly are common recommendations found among data from 5,000 Black / African-American students.
• Many students enjoyed paper-free learning, and hope to maintain access to online materials with the return to in-person school
• Black/African-American and Hispanic/Latino students report feeling unsafe in school at higher rates than their peers, at 11 and 16 percent respectively vs. 9 percent for non-Black, non-Hispanic students.
• 65 percent of students report that their teachers give extra help when needed, but this is more common among students who receive high academic grades

Disclosure: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provides financial support to YouthTruth and The 74.