Diving into the Data—What I Have to Tell Parents and Teachers Based on Breaking Research
By Stuart Grauer

I read the new 57-page NAIS report on the health of independent school students. This report is particularly relevant to my work since it is not generalized to all US kids: it’s specifically about the kids at independent schools, many of them small. I read sort of secretly expecting to find more bad news.

There is some. Teens are still not sleeping much.  Surprise surprise. And they are carrying extraordinary academic pressure, much of it self-imposed. Phones and social media constantly grasp their attention. Alcohol is still an issue, and schools cannot afford to relax the focus on mental health. But that is not the whole story.

The report shows students at independent schools feeling healthier, happier, safer, and more connected than they did in those tough two years immediately following the pandemic. The report found students were more positive about their schools than in either 2023 or 2024. Eighty-six percent say they feel they belong at school. Ninety-seven percent say their teachers treat them with respect. Wow! Most describe strong relationships with their parents, and measures of depression, self-harm, and suicidal thinking are moving in the right direction.  (Rough comparison: in the public school sector, in 2025, 71% of all students gave their school an A or B, up from 64% in 2024.)

Bottom line: I don't think the message for parents and teachers is: push harder. The research is telling us just about the opposite.

Your students are already pushing themselves. Plenty hard. They don’t need help with that. And even if they weren’t, pressure from parents is not a great reason to be that way. What they seem to need from us now is more relationship, more sleep, more movement, more time outdoors, more freedom from their phones (they do know this!), and more adults who know them well enough to notice when something seems to be changing (if not erratic).

Possibly most of all, they need places where they feel they belong.

So, independent-school students are doing better than the post-pandemic narrative was taking us: high belonging at school, high respect from teacher, physical health is improving, and measures of happiness, depression, self-harm, and suicidal ideation have moved in a positive direction.

If you are a teacher or parent, here are 7 POINTS we have to tell you, and they look like something NAIS could have pulled right out of The Grauer School's handbook:

• Protect relationships above almost everything else. The strong thread running through the report is belonging and trusted adults. Students who feel known and supported do better academically and emotionally. Teachers: know the child, not merely the student's performance. Parents: keep showing interest in their lives without turning conversations into advice or achievement management. (Note: asking a million questions is not the same as showing interest in things you notice about your child’s choices and best inclinations.)
• Ease up on achievement pressure rather than adding to it. Our kids don't appear to need much pushing. 74% say high or extreme academic pressure comes from themselves, and 94% believe they must excel academically to succeed at their school. Yet their strongest motivations also include doing their best and experiencing their own sense of accomplishment. The adult job may increasingly be to help young people define enough, take intellectual risks. Taking the straight line to the A—the “excellent sheep” metaphor—is a great source of negative stress. They can recover from failure on their own and, what’s more, we believe they are up to it! Too many of us use each accomplishment mainly as a way to urge our kids toward the next accomplishment.
• Get them moving. Pretty much every day! NAIS and anyone who cares about kids recommends daily opportunities for physical activity. Try this: “Get outdoors! Now!” Exercise, play, walking, sports, expeditions, gardening, skiing—whatever gets adolescents out of chairs and screens and back into their bodies.
• Think of lack of sleep deprivation as a high-risk behavior. We tend to reserve that language for drinking, drugs, vaping, or reckless driving, but chronic sleep deprivation belongs in the conversation. Only about 44% reported getting more than seven hours the previous night, and 41% remained dissatisfied with their sleep. This isn't a minor lifestyle matter: the report (and every report on this) connects inadequate sleep with depression and other mental-health risks. Teachers can examine homework loads and schedules; parents can protect bedtime and establish screen-free time before sleep. That includes digital sleep disruption: phones, texts, games, videos, and social media that follow kids right into bed. Parents: It matters…Would you let them bring alcohol to bed? And it follows…
• Create real boundaries around phones and social media. This is probably the clearest immediate action. Sixty-six percent of our kids spend more than an hour on social media on a typical school day, and the report cites evidence that more than three hours daily is associated with double the risk of depression and anxiety symptoms. NAIS recommends school phone restrictions and parent-school cooperation on limits at home. When the Grauer faculty removed phones, there was tons of grousing and backsliding. We stayed the course and created a culture change. Parents, you can do this. You got this. (Interestingly, though not in this report, if your child is in a microschool or outdoor program, this guidance might not be necessary.)
• Don't let improving mental-health numbers make us complacent. The trajectory is good, but the report's recommendation isn't to back away from support. It is to normalize talking about mental health, maintain confidential counseling, and teach parents and teachers how to recognize distress. We can cultivate kindness, empathy and inclusion in deliberate, named ways and even state those deliberations as a part of our conversations.
• Talk openly about alcohol and vaping rather than relying on punishment and scare tactics. Alcohol remains the more common risk. The report recommends straightforward education—keep the conversations going. Listen (i.e., put down the device, give full and patient attention, listen to understand rather than respond, and reflect back what you really heard—not what you wanted to hear.)

If I had to reduce all 57 pages and all my notes and scribbling to a single message to parents and teachers, here it is:

Our kids don't seem to need us to push them harder these days. They need us to know them better. Protect their sleep. Get them moving and outdoors. Limits: Give them some relief from their phones (yes, they’ll squawk for a while). Make room for friendship and unmeasured experience—it’s an incredibly worthy trade off from the race. Make room for play: Many of the best sports are in a total absence of coaches, refs, lines, and parents. And finally: keep talking with them—not only when something is wrong. When we feel that urge coming on to dish out advice, let’s stop and just listen deeper. Express understanding, not advice. Here’s the skinny of the skinny: belonging may be one of the most powerful educational interventions we have. The push for achievement or performance or some college rank or GPA is no substitute for what our kids need and want to love life.

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