Within the context of a multilayered prevention system, responsiveness to intervention (RTI) integrates increasingly intensive instruction and, at each layer, employs assessment to identify students who are inadequately responsive and who therefore require intervention at the next, more intensive layer in the system. Over the past decade, RTI has…

Describes examples of adolescent behavior which parents and school personnel find obnoxious. Explains why intelligent, reasonable, and well-adjusted teenagers periodically behave in this way, as something that is developmentally inevitable given the uneven development of competencies in several important areas. Adolescent incompetencies in four…

Corporal punishment and suspension are cruel and discriminatory. School social workers can help to implement more humane strategies such as the following: (1) in-school suspension; (2) timeout procedures; (3) assignment to alternative schools; (4) behavior contracting; (5) use of peers and parents; and (6) social and cognitive skills training. (VM)

Drash and Tudor's argument that autism is a contingency-shaped disorder of verbal behavior is logical and consistent with behavioral principles, but the argument's premises have no direct empirical support and some conflicting evidence. The quantity and quality of research needed to support such a theory is compared to that found in the area of…

Describes early childhood developmental deficits associated with long-term poverty as indicated by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Suggests substantial disadvantages in cognitive development among young children in chronically poor families. Deficits appear in a variety of indices of cognitive or socioemotional development,…