November 2010

From the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER)

National Research and Development Center on Serious Behavior Disorders at the Secondary Level: Interview with Principal Investigators

Lee Kern

Tim Lewis

Steve Evans

IES research scientist Jacquelyn Buckley interviewed principal investigator Lee Kern (Lehigh University), co-PIs Steve Evans (Ohio University) and Tim Lewis (University of Missouri), about their work at the National Research and Development Center on Serious Behavior Disorders at the Secondary Level. Launched in 2008, this 5-year research and development center in special education is focused on reducing behavioral and academic challenges experienced by high school students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). The intervention package addresses a comprehensive set of intervention strategies across three core components—enhancing school and teacher capacity, building youth competence, and increasing family and community supports.

What are the goals of CARS? What are potential benefits for developing a cohesive and comprehensive model to address the needs of students with behavior disorders?

The primary goal of CARS is to develop and evaluate interventions for adolescents with social, emotional, and behavioral problems to identify those that are effective and can be feasibly implemented in high schools. A key benefit of this work is that the techniques that are being developed and tested are ones that are explicitly designed for educators and school-employed mental health professionals to implement. Successfully impacting the problems associated with students with EBD can substantially decrease the dropout rate, decrease parent and teacher stress, and improve the futures of students who have very poor long-term outcomes.

What are the challenges in developing and implementing this model?

Every day, schools are tasked with meeting the needs of a wide variety of students, and in many cases, they successfully meet this challenge. However, schools often struggle with meeting the needs of students with behavior disorders who present many academic and behavioral challenges that can quickly stress even the best education systems. A major obstacle is that professionals lack training in some of the foundation skills required to successfully intervene with this population. For example, high school teachers teaching in content areas (e.g., science) know their content area well, but typically have had very little training in strategies to effectively reduce severe behavior problems. In addition, special educators are sometimes not fully certified and/or have not had sufficient training to provide them with the expertise to intervene effectively to reduce social, emotional, and behavior problems with this population of students. Mental health professionals may have better training to address students' mental health needs, but often lack expertise in specific evidence-based practices that may be effective with this population.

Another obstacle is a lack of available resources or problems with the way that resources are allocated in high schools. For example, school counselors and social workers with master's degrees are frequently assigned tasks such as scheduling and other duties, which limits the time they have available to provide mental health and educational services to students. Also, given the nature of the problems experienced by this group of adolescents, it is sometimes difficult to change their behavior. Interventions may need to be intensive and provided consistently over significant periods of time to make a substantial positive impact, but the time available in schools to commit to this is limited.

What are the challenges in educating high school students with emotional and behavioral disorders?

High school students with EBD tend to experience serious problems developing and maintaining healthy relationships with their peers, teachers and parents. This can limit their motivation to attend school. In addition, they fail to learn the social skills needed to obtain and maintain employment after dropping out of school or post-graduation. High schools also often house hundreds or thousands of students, making it difficult for high-risk students to connect to faculty and staff. Traditional "discipline" systems at the high school level (e.g., removal from the learning environment) are in direct opposition to what research indicates is necessary and effective for students with EBD. While removal, or threat of removal, from the learning environment may be sufficient for the majority of typically developing students, students with EBD need direct instruction to teach them appropriate social skills and environmental supports to increase the likelihood they can remain successfully socially and academically engaged in the classroom.

A related challenge is one of maintaining progress in earning credits toward graduation. Due to behavior challenges, students with EBD are frequently removed from class. Not surprising, it becomes difficult for them to keep up with peers and earn passing grades within credit classes. Couple this with the fact that students with EBD often have related learning disabilities and it's easy to see why students with EBD have high dropout rates.

High school students with EBD tend to experience serious problems developing and maintaining healthy relationships with their peers, teachers and parents. High schools often house hundreds or thousands of students, making it difficult for high-risk students to connect to faculty and staff. Traditional "discipline" systems at the high school level (e.g., removal from the learning environment) are in direct opposition to what research indicates is necessary and effective for students with EBD. While removal, or threat of removal, from the learning environment may be sufficient for the majority of typically developing students, students with EBD need direct instruction to teach them appropriate social skills and environmental supports to increase the likelihood they can remain successfully socially and academically engaged in the classroom.

What has CARS completed so far?

The past 2 1/2 years of the project have been spent developing and refining an intervention package that will be used for our efficacy trial.

We also are working on supplemental studies, including developing assessments to evaluate student progress, examining the disproportional identification of minorities with EBD, and examining educational services for students with EBD.

For more information about the Center for Adolescent Research in Schools, go to http://www.ies-cars.org/.