Students with or at-risk for emotional and behavioral disorders pose an immense challenge for educators, and typical practices to address them are punitive and exclusionary, leading to poor academic and social outcomes for students. To address the complex needs of students with intensive emotional and behavioral needs, evidence-based practices and…

The Individuals With Disabilities Education Act mandates the performance of functional assessment for students with severe behavior problems. A functional analysis can be one part of this process but its use has been minimal. This study evaluates whether a paraprofessional could (a) be trained to correctly perform 3 conditions of a functional…

A review of files of 45 elementary students revealed that the majority of the identified data used to make eligibility decisions were related to the behavioral and social aspects of the child, suggesting that appropriate and comprehensive assessment practices for identifying students with behavioral disorders are lacking within some public…

Discusses the challenges of functional behavioral assessments and the need to establish and support valid and effective methods for conducting functional behavioral assessments that are practical in school settings and that adequately address the multifarious relationships between problem behavior and its social/environmental contexts. (Author/CR)

A procedure assessed the effectiveness of three academic strategies based on the assessment results for three elementary boys with emotional and behavioral disorders and academic difficulties in mathematics. Following the implementation of the academic strategy identified in this procedure, all three students demonstrated an increase in their…

The position paper of the Council for Children with Behavioral Disorders critically reviews objections to special education service for children with conduct disorders and concludes with a series of recommendations for improving the assessment and identification of all children with behavioral disorders. (DB)

This article discusses the promise and practice of functional assessment, provides a critical review of the existing experimental literature in the area of emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD), and presents a research agenda that will lead to more informed decisions regarding the use of functional assessment in the schools. (Contains…

The Walker/Severson Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders measure was revised for use with preschool children. The revision consists of three hierarchical stages of increasingly time-consuming methodologies: (1) teacher rankings, (2) teacher ratings, and (3) direct behavioral observations. Testing with 121 children demonstrated significant…

Review of the research literature on functional assessment-based interventions for students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders identified key issues in the design of these studies. Issues included (1) an emphasis on descriptive analysis; (2) interventions employed and procedural integrity; (3) generalization and maintenance;…

A three-phase functional assessment was conducted to develop and test hypotheses about the relation between instructional accommodations in academic areas and behavior problems for three adolescents with severe behavioral disorders. Implementation of one or more of the instructional accommodations resulted in improved academic productivity and…

Addresses the use of functional assessment in making treatment decisions with students having emotional/behavioral disorders. Discussion covers indirect and direct measures of the relationship between the target behavior and variables maintaining the behavior. Strategies for selecting and verifying hypothesis-driven treatment decisions are…

This "White Paper" examines issues surrounding the assessment of culturally diverse learners for behavioral disorders, and argues for use of a more functional assessment approach. The paper also points out that many facets of the functional assessment perspective already exist in two recent educational movements--pre-referral…

The role of functional behavioral assessment is contrasted with a longitudinal risk-factors exposure model for understanding and predicting maladaptive behavioral outcomes in applied settings. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are discussed and the need for integration of the two approaches to gain a comprehensive understanding is…

Data are reported on the long-term (6-month) test-retest reliability of the Behavioral and Emotional Rating Scale (BERS), which is a strength-based assessment instrument. Participants included 95 typical elementary students and 26 children at risk of having or having emotional or behavioral disorders. Moderate to high test-retest correlations were…

A checklist was developed to assess congruence between needs identified by psychoeducational assessment and instructional goals of the Individualized Education Program. Use with records of 106 behaviorally disordered students (K-12) suggested lack of diagnostic-intervention congruence and dissimilarity between IEP goals and diagnostic/assessment…