Middle school is a cornerstone for success in high school. However, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement of adolescents often decline as they transition from elementary to middle school, resulting in lower school grades and more challenging behaviors, especially for adolescents with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders…

Classroom management is a common challenge in middle schools. Class-wide Function-Related Intervention Teams (CW-FIT) is a multi-tiered intervention designed to decrease problem behaviors at the classroom level (Wills et al., 2010). It is comprised of evidence-based practices such as teaching classroom expectations, increasing teacher praise, and…

Understanding excessive absenteeism is important to ameliorating the negative outcomes associated with the behavior. The present study examined behavioral reinforcement profiles of school refusal behavior: negative reinforcement (avoidance) and positive reinforcement (gaining parental attention or receiving tangible benefits from not attending…

This study determined the effectiveness of noncontingent escape access to self-reinforcement, as a student-directed intervention. Three students successfully used a break card to systematically decrease inappropriate behavior maintained by negative reinforcement while increasing task engagement. In addition, teachers completed an Intervention…