Prevention Science in School Settings

Abstract

Over time, schools became positioned as the panacea for multiple social ills, for example, poverty, inadequately prepared workers, racial inequality, and global eco- nomic shortcomings. Currently, the ideal of the common school has been replaced with the vision of market-based, business models of schools and schooling (Ravitch 2013). Given these historical policy shifts, do the diverse institutional narratives diverge from students’ lives or converge with them to effect positive changes in their personal and school-based narratives, particularly with regard to their social, emotional, mental, and physical development?