Introduction

This special issue of Education and Treatment of Children (ETC) is devoted to providing in-depth information on behavioral and academic interventions for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). This issue consists of seven peer reviewed articles, which were originally presented at the 33rd Annual Teacher Educators of Children with Behavioral Disorders (TECBD) Conference in Tempe, Arizona in October 2009. The articles were selected by the editors of this issue and expert reviewers from both ETC and Behavioral Disorders.

Collectively, these articles address issues related to school-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS), function-based interventions, reading interventions, gender differences in academic achievement, and teachers' job satisfaction in juvenile justice settings. Readers are exposed to illustrations and examples of school wide, class-wide, and individualized interventions for students with EBD.

The first two articles focus on a multi-tiered model of behavioral and academic supports known as SWPBIS. In Stakeholder Utility: Perspectives on School-wide Data for Measurement, Feedback and Evaluation, Upreti, Liaupsin, and Koonce make a powerful and cogent case for the role and interests of stakeholders and how they impact the usefulness of SWPBIS data. They introduce a construct called stakeholder utility, which is not only driven by stakeholders but also helps design and appraise measures for assessment, evaluation, and research. Stakeholder utility can provide students, parents, teachers, and researchers alike with a map as to stakeholder role and purpose in predicting which measures might be most useful to which parties, and for what purpose. In addition, reflections on the role stakeholder utility plays in PBIS evaluation may streamline the gap between practitioners and researchers.

In the next article, Decision-making in Secondary and Tertiary Interventions of School-Wide Systems of Positive Behavior Support, Scott, Alter, Rosenberg, and Borgmeier describe the key features of secondary and tertiary interventions. The authors also detail a four-step decision-making strategy for use at the secondary level and adaptations for the tertiary level. Finally, the authors present a range of strategies that better represent the variance of practices and procedures involved at these levels.

The development and implementation of function-based interventions continues to be a topic of researchers' interest for students of all ages. In the third article, Function-Based Planning for Young Children At Risk for Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Nahgahgwon, Umbreit, Liaupsin, and Turton examined the efficacy of function-based interventions for three young students who exhibited chronic disruptive behavior in the classroom. The first phase of the study consisted of a descriptive functional behavioral assessment for each student. In the second phase, a systematic process was used to construct and then test individualized interventions. In the third phase, the interventions were provided to each student during his most problematic classroom activity using a multiple baseline design. The authors conclude that classroom interventions substantially improved the on-task behavior of each student. Social validity ratings by teachers also show strong preference for the function-based intervention over the previously used classroom practices.

While the use of functional behavioral assessments has primarily focused on developing and testing the effectiveness of social and behavioral interventions, Kalberg, Lane, and Menzies in Using Systematic Screening Procedures to Identify Students Who are Nonresponsive to Primary Prevention Efforts: Integrating Academic and Behavioral Measures present a guide for researchers and practitioners on the use of multiple sources of data to support students with reading and behavioral challenges. Specifically, these authors provide an illustration of how one elementary school used an academic screener (Curriculum-Based Measurement; CBM) in combination with behavior screeners to identify students who were non-responsive to the primary prevention efforts. Then, they offer two illustrations of how the CBM and behavior screening data could be analyzed to identify students who may require targeted supports. The authors encourage other researchers and practitioners to explore additional effective, efficient approaches for school-site teams to analyze data from multiple sources.

In the next article, McDaniel, Duchaine, and Jolivette share the findings of their study entitled Struggling Readers with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders and Their Teachers: Perceptions of Corrective Reading. In this study, they examined the perceptions of teachers and...