K-12 public school teachers spend, on average, about eight hours a week on student behavior and mental health supports, roughly 17 percent of total working hours. That figure comes from a RAND Corporation report released October 21, 2026, and it puts a number on something many principals already sense: a large share of the school's mental health support work is happening in classrooms, carried by teachers.
The report, Difficulty Supporting Student Mental Health Strains Teacher Well-Being, also finds that half of teachers say this work has become harder since fall 2024, and that those teachers report higher stress and burnout. For district and school leaders, it is a useful look at where student support time actually goes and what that costs the staff who provide it.
What RAND measured and how
The findings come from the 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey, fielded in January and February 2026 to 829 K-12 public school teachers drawn from RAND's American Educator Panels and weighted to be nationally representative. RAND compared some responses with a survey of 498 working adults with similar education and work hours. The survey was sponsored by the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers.
Teachers were asked how often they provided seven kinds of support during the 2025-26 school year: checking in on students' mental health and well-being, using strategies to build empathy, using strategies to build peer relationships, helping students with home or personal issues, collaborating with a counselor or social worker, addressing chronic absences, and referring students or families to social services.
RAND is clear about the limits. The data are self-reported, the survey could not cover every kind of support a teacher might provide, and the findings are associations, not evidence of cause and effect.
Where the hours go
Nearly all teachers provided at least one of the surveyed supports during the year. According to RAND, 71 percent frequently provided at least two, and about one in four frequently provided five or more. Most of the time spent fell within contract hours.
The hours scale with the load. Teachers who frequently provided none of the supports spent about five hours a week on student well-being, about 11 percent of their working time. Teachers who frequently provided five or more spent about 13 hours, about 28 percent. Fifty-nine percent of teachers said the time they spend on these supports has increased since fall 2024.
The emotional cost tracks the same pattern. Among teachers who frequently provided five or more supports, 62 percent reported high emotional costs, compared with 38 percent of teachers who frequently provided none. Across the full sample, 96 percent of teachers agreed that teaching is emotionally draining, compared with 51 percent of similar working adults.
Elementary and high school look different
For district planning, a practical finding is the gap between grade levels.
High school teachers described more challenges. Fifty-nine percent said their schools faced five or more moderate or serious student well-being challenges, compared with 42 percent of elementary teachers. Student apathy was rated a moderate or serious problem by 77 percent of high school teachers and 57 percent of elementary teachers. Class cutting showed an even wider gap, at 39 percent versus 9 percent.
Yet high school teachers were less likely to provide regular supports. Twenty-four percent of high school teachers did not frequently provide any of the surveyed supports, compared with 9 percent of elementary teachers. Frequent use of empathy-building strategies was reported by 73 percent of elementary teachers and 35 percent of high school teachers.
RAND's recommendation that mental and behavioral health curriculum developers create more adolescent-specific resources for secondary teachers reflects this gap. It matters for staffing plans. A secondary campus cannot assume that classroom-level support will absorb the need the way it may in an elementary building.
Why teachers say the work is getting harder
About half of teachers said supporting student well-being had become harder since fall 2024, 45 percent reported no change, and 5 percent said it had become easier. In open-ended responses, teachers cited shortages of counselors and social workers, large caseloads, and tighter school budgets. Others pointed to administrative steps, including documentation requirements, slower processes, and parental-notification rules, and to family economic hardship outside school.
Teachers who reported increased difficulty also reported worse well-being, even after RAND controlled for other factors. Frequent job-related stress was reported by 64 percent of those teachers, compared with 48 percent of teachers who reported no change. Burnout was 67 percent versus 41 percent.
One detail is easy to miss. Providing supports was not, by itself, significantly associated with poorer teacher well-being. The association was with finding the work harder to do. That points leaders toward the conditions around the work, such as referral pathways, access to specialized staff, and clear procedures, rather than toward asking teachers to do less for students.
What this means for district and school leaders
The report does not argue that teachers should stop checking in on students. It shows that classroom-level support is already a large and growing share of teacher time, and that teacher strain is associated with the work becoming harder, which teachers tie to counselor and social worker shortages and to slower processes. Several steps follow from that.
- Measure the time in your own buildings. A short staff survey asking how many hours a week teachers spend on student well-being, and on which activities, gives a baseline that can be compared against RAND's national figures. The numbers are more useful by grade band than as a district average.
- Map the handoff from Tier 1 to Tiers 2 and 3. Under a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, classroom check-ins and relationship-building are Tier 1 work. Teachers in the RAND survey named staff shortages and slower processes among the reasons support has become harder, so the referral route is a reasonable place to look. Write down who receives a concern, how fast, and what the teacher hears back.
- Plan secondary campuses separately. The grade-level gap suggests high schools need a different approach, with more structured adolescent-focused classroom strategies and more direct access to specialized staff.
- Assess staff well-being alongside student need. The National Center for School Mental Health's SHAPE platform includes the Organizational Well-Being Inventory for Schools (OWBI-S), an anonymous 52-item assessment across eight domains, and the School Mental Health Quality Assessment, which teams use to gauge how comprehensive their system is. Completing both gives a fuller picture than either alone.
- Use community partners where wraparound supports are not yet in place. RAND recommends that districts adopt community schools or similar integrated strategies that connect students and families with mental health care, food assistance, and housing support. Where full implementation is not feasible, RAND suggests partnering with community-based organizations on families' pressing needs.
- Review administrative steps for unnecessary friction. Some of the difficulty teachers named was procedural. Required consent and notification steps stay in place, but duplicate forms and unclear routing can often be simplified.
Looking ahead
RAND's data describe the 2025-26 school year, and the report's authors note that unmeasured factors, including access to counselors and community partners, may explain some of the patterns. The next round of the State of the American Teacher Survey will show whether the time burden keeps rising. In the meantime, district leaders have a national benchmark to compare against local data and a clear signal that campus-based mental health capacity is a question of teacher workload as well as student need. School-Based Healthcare Solutions Network, Inc. (SBHSN), a private grant-making organization focused on access to mental health care on school campuses, publishes this weekly review to help school leaders turn national and state developments into local decisions. Schools and districts weighing campus-based mental health capacity can review the grant solicitation and its published criteria at sbhsnetwork.com/grants. Application deadlines fall on the first Monday of July, September, November, and February; questions can be sent to grants@sbhsnetwork.com.
Sources
- Difficulty Supporting Student Mental Health Strains Teacher Well-Being: Findings from the 2026 State of the American Teacher Survey — RAND Corporation, accessed 2026-10-22
- Teachers Spend Eight Hours a Week Supporting Student Well-Being — RAND Corporation, accessed 2026-10-22
- SHAPE Assessments — National Center for School Mental Health, accessed 2026-10-22
Transitional Coach℠ and Coaching Model℠ are service marks of School-Based Healthcare Solutions Network, Inc. © 2026 School-Based Healthcare Solutions Network, Inc. All rights reserved. This article is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, or financial advice.