The article addresses the demographic characteristics of students in school psychology programs nationwide with respect to providing a rationale for the importance of increasing the proportion of minority school psychologists who are underrepresented. Emphasis on training culturally competent psychologists is reviewed within a historical context.…

Students with externalizing disorders make up from three to five percent of the population in public school classrooms and are some of the most difficult students to manage in an educational setting. Behavioral excesses and deficits exhibited by these students are a major factor in poor retention rates for new teachers while the students…

The purpose of this article is to provide the reader with an orientation to the concepts and principles of autonomy and self-determination and the application of those concepts and principles to working with children and adolescents who have intellectual and developmental disabilities (ID/DD), including autism. Self-determination is essentially…

Due to impairments in social interactions and communication, children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a need for effective social skills training programs. However, many programs fail due to a lack of acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of target skills. The primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and…

Evidence-based classwide interventions have the potential to help a large number of students by preventing problem behaviors before they become a significant problem in the classroom. Results of a study examining the effectiveness of a classwide peer-modeling intervention package to improve students' on-task behavior in the classroom are…

Experimentation with substances is typical for many young people, but unfortunately some will go on to develop substance abuse problems that substantially affect their lives. Successfully intervening with students who use or abuse substances is a challenge for school mental health professionals across the nation. There is a need for evidence-based…

Evidence-based practice approaches to interventions has come of age and promises to provide a new standard of excellence for school psychologists. This article describes several definitions of evidence-based practice and the problems associated with traditional statistical analyses that rely on rejection of the null hypothesis for the…

Investigates the effectiveness of self-modeling as a treatment to increase on-task behavior. Results indicate immediate, substantial, and durable changes in students' on-task behavior that generalizes across academic settings. At 6- and 8-week follow-up, the students' percentages of on-task behavior were essentially indistinguishable from their…

Describes research that focused on the design of an effective, economical, and easily implemented treatment for disruptive classroom behavior in both general and special education students. Multi-component treatment options included mystery motivators, token economy with response cost, and antecedent strategies delivered within a group contingency…

This article describes specific components of a multifaceted approach to functional behavior assessment in the context of the widely accepted behavioral excess/deficit model for students with externalizing behavior disorders. Specific strategies to address academic skill and performance deficits as well as social skills deficiencies are also…