A common consequence for students who engage in disruptive behaviors at school is their removal from the instructional environment. Depending on the frequency and/or intensity of the disruptive behavior, this removal occurs from classrooms (e.g., office discipline referrals), school buildings (e.g., suspensions), or districts (e.g., expulsions).…

Some of the worst long-term outcomes of children are associated with the presence of both externalizing behavior and low academic achievement. Additionally, trajectories of externalizing problem behavior have shown that when children enter kindergarten with problem behavior, it tends to persist and is often associated with low academic…

In response to patterns of educational inequity, many schools implement system-wide behavioral frameworks to reduce exclusionary discipline. School-wide positive behavior supports (SWPBS) is one such framework that supports socially appropriate behavior by enhancing the capacity of schools to implement research-validated practices. However, there…

Exclusionary discipline is a consequence of behavior for students who break the student code of conduct. Extensive research about the effects that exclusionary discipline can have on secondary students, as evidenced by reduced graduation rates, has been conducted; but, research studies investigating the potential impact that exclusionary…

This research describes the application of improvement science focusing on implementing restorative practices (RP) to decrease suspension and expulsion rates of Black students. Black students are suspended and expelled disproportionately compared to their White peers in South Carolina. Due to the high suspension and expulsion rates, school…

This study was conducted to determine if middle school female students were exhibiting violent behavior in a large mid-south urban school district. The subjects were all middle school female students within 30 middle schools in a large mid-south urban school district from 2012-2013 until 2016-2017. Information about middle school female students'…

Data was collected in 2014 and 2015 by principle investigator Dr. Lorraine Kubicek, Ph.D. as part of the Project to Learn about Youth--Mental Health (PLAY-MH). The study was funded by the Disability Research and Dissemination Center, University of South Carolina School of Medicine and the Center for Disease Control. Parents of 250 students…

Among the many children with mental health needs, few actually receive mental health services. The children who do receive services are often initially referred by teachers (Sciutto, Terjesen, & Frank, 2000). However, the potential influences of child characteristics, like symptoms, gender, ethnicity, and school professionals' attitudes on…

Mental health screeners need to demonstrate measurement equivalence across the populations of their intended use in order to improve the fairness in the identification of students in need of social, emotional, and behavioral supports. This study examined measurement invariance on three mental screeners across five racial and ethnic groups. The…

Many of the social and emotional needs that have historically been associated with gifted students have been questioned on the basis of recent empirical evidence. Research on the topic, however, is often limited by sample size, selection bias, or definition. This study addressed these limitations by applying linear regression methodology to data…

Developmental screening programs identify young children with delayed skill growth or challenging behaviors and refer them to community agencies for evaluation or other services. This research studied the predictive impact of developmental screening results and child and family characteristics on the completion of these referrals for evaluation. A…

This study focused on the perceived ethics of the decisions superintendents make in response to a situation with a teacher that was value-laden, potentially volatile, and potentially affected by the teachers' gender or ethnicity. Superintendents (N = 123) each read one of 12 versions of a vignette depicting a sexting incident between a…

Site level administrators make decisions during the course of a day that have ethical dimensions that challenge their personal values and ethics. This study examined the extent to which particular factors would affect principals' and vice principals' judgments of the ethicality of sanctions given a teacher who had been sending sexually…

This mixed-methods study was designed to determine how principals perceived the ethicality of sanctions for students engaged in sexting behavior relative to the race/ethnicity and gender of the student. Personality traits of the principals were surveyed to determine if Openness and/or Conscientiousness would predict principal response. Sexting is…

The purpose of this mixed method study is to explain the ecology Black males experience as they transition from elementary school to middle school in terms of behavior. The Black male graduation rate is well below 50% nationally (Orfield, Losen, Wald, & Swanson, 2004; Schott Foundation for Public Education, 2010). Graduating from high school…