From school climate to brain development: What the ABCD study reveals about the educational context of adolescence

Children and adolescents spend much of their time in school, and educational environments are central to neurodevelopment and socioemotional health. However, educational constructs are often underrepresented in developmental cognitive neuroscience research. The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development^SM (ABCD) Study provides an unprecedented opportunity to examine schooling within a large, diverse, longitudinal cohort with rich neuroimaging and socioenvironmental data. This narrative review synthesizes education-related ABCD publications identified through a comprehensive search of the ABCD publication repository. Across 109 studies (representing approximately 7% of ABCD Study publications), educational environments emerged as multilevel systems that shape development through interconnected pathways. Supportive school environments were modestly associated with more favorable neurodevelopment, emotional and behavioral functioning, and daily health-related behaviors, often buffering the effects of prior child adversity. In contrast, adverse school experiences, including discipline, unfair treatment, and school lockdowns, functioned as meaningful sources of stress that contributed to mental health concerns, earlier substance use initiation, and physical health risk, particularly when occurring alongside stress in other settings. In several cases, these relationships were bidirectional, suggesting that youth behavior and school experiences may reinforce one another over time. Overall, ABCD findings indicate that school environments are not merely background contexts or proxies for socioeconomic conditions, but distinct and modifiable factors that can both exacerbate risk and promote resilience. Future research leveraging longitudinal, multilevel, and externally linked contextual data will be critical for identifying when and how educational environments can be targeted to improve adolescent outcomes.