Population Research Discovery Seminars
School-Based Support for Children’s Mental Health: Evidence from North Carolina
Sarah Komisarow, Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Parrington Hall Room 360
To Join By Zoom: Register HERE
Follow this link to sign up for a 1:1 meeting with Dr. Komisarow during their visit on January 23rd
01/23/2026
12:30-1:30 PM PT
360 Parrington Hall
Co-Sponsor(s):
In this paper I estimate the impact of specialized instructional support personnel—school nurses and social workers—on student outcomes using quasi-experimental variation from North Carolina’s Child and Family Support Teams (CFST) program. The CFST program created two sources of natural variation: directly treated schools received substantial state-funded staffing increases in the form of highly trained two-person teams composed of a school nurse and a school social worker. At the same time, other schools in the same districts experienced more modest staffing increases indirectly through reallocations of existing personnel and district-led compensatory equalization. Using event-study and difference-in-differences designs, I show that expanded access to support personnel reduced student absences and chronic absenteeism. In directly treated schools, annual absences decreased by 0.4 days (6%) and chronic absenteeism declined by 0.9 percentage points (12%) among high-risk students. In indirectly treated schools, absences fell by 0.2 days annually (3%) among all students, though effects on chronic absenteeism were not statistically significant. Thus, while large, specialized staffing increases generated substantial improvements for the highest-risk students, smaller and less specialized increases produced modest but broader benefits across all students. These findings demonstrate that school support staff play a critical role in addressing barriers to student learning.
Sarah Komisarow is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Economics in the Sanford School of Public Policy, a Faculty Affiliate of the Center for Child & Family Policy, and a Faculty Scholar at the Duke University Population Research Institute. She is an applied microeconomist with research interests in the economics of education and K-12 education policy. She graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in Public Policy Studies in 2008 and from the University of Chicago with a M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics in 2012 and 2016, respectively. Her personal website can be accessed here: https://sites.google.com/site/sarahkomisarow/home