Examining the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Elementary Students’ Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors in Schools Implementing Tiered Systems

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.