About Howie Knoff
A Quick Look: Dr. Howie Knoff
Nationally-Recognized Expert Witness: School Law and Child/Adolescent Psychology
Licensed Psychologist (FL) and Nationally Certified School Psychologist
Trained as a school psychologist, Dr. Howie Knoff has been an international consultant for over 40 years. When consulting with districts, schools, and other educational or psychological/mental health groups, he typically is guided by one or more components of his evidence-based and award-winning program, Project ACHIEVE.
Howie is a hands-on practitioner--guided by research and his years of experience in working with some of the most challenging communities, schools, and students across the country; as well as his ability to form positive, lasting relationships that reinforce and strengthen others' knowledge and skills. In the end, his primary focus is on facilitating collaboration and shared leadership, building capacity and independence, and guiding sustained and demonstrable student, staff, school, and system outcomes.
Howie is also one of the most experienced, successful, conscientious, creative, and retained K-12 and child/adolescent psychology Expert Witnesses in the country.
Covering a wide range and variety of federal and state litigations, civil and injury lawsuits, and special education and disability rights due process hearings, he serves both Plaintiffs and Defendants. Indeed, he has been involved in over 50 different cases (including work for two State Attorney Generals). . . involving research and consultation to writing Expert Reports to providing depositions to testifying in Federal and other courts.
Howie focuses on the details of each case, and his vast experience helps him connect strands of information that initially appear unrelated—finding missing nuances and links that most other experts miss.
To See Howie's Current Vita/Biography, CLICK THE LINK BELOW:
Knoff Short Vita and Biography 1 2026.pdf
Full Bio: Howard M. Knoff, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist (FL) and Nationally Certified School Psychologist
Howard M. Knoff, Ph.D. (Howie) is the creator and Director of Project ACHIEVE, and an internationally-known innovator and hands-on practitioner in the areas of:
- District/School Success, Continuous Improvement, and Turn-Around (ESEA/ESSA)
- Strategic Planning, Organizational Development, and Shared Leadership (Committees/PLCs)
- School Discipline, Classroom Management, and Student Self-Management (PBIS/SEL/PBSS)
- Special Education (IDEA) Planning and Implementation: Multi-Tiered (MTSS/RtI) Services and Supports for Academically Struggling and Behaviorally Challenging Students
- Curricular Alignment, Differentiated Instruction, and Academic Interventions for Struggling Students
- Social, Emotional, and Behavioral (Social Skills) Instruction, and Strategic/Intensive Interventions for Challenging Students
- Conference Keynotes and Professional Development/In-Service Workshops
- Due Process Hearings and Special Education Litigation (Expert Witness Testimony and Representation)
- Grant Writing and External Funding Support
Howie is the President of Project ACHIEVE Educational Solutions which has implemented his nationally-known school effectiveness/school improvement program—an evidence-based model prevention program [through the U.S. Department of Health & Human Service’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)]—in thousands of schools or districts over the past 40 years. An international expert on school safety and discipline, classroom management and school-wide SEL systems, student engagement and achievement, and interventions with behaviorally challenging students, Dr. Knoff was a university professor (22 years at the University of South Florida and SUNY-Albany), and Director of the federally-funded State Personnel Development/State Improvement Grant for the Arkansas Department of Education from 2003 to 2015.
As Director of the Arkansas State Improvement/Personnel Development Grant (SIG/SPDG), Dr. Knoff was directly responsible to the Director of Special Education for the state of Arkansas, and involved in many Departmental policy and procedure discussions and deliberations. In addition to administering the $12 million received from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs to implement these grants, he and his staff scaled-up critical Project ACHIEVE components across Arkansas focusing on:
- Statewide implementation of Positive Behavioral Support (PBIS) Systems;
- Literacy and mathematics interventions for at-risk, underachieving, and students with disabilities;
- Response-to-Instruction and Intervention (RtI2) and Multi-Tiered Systems (MTSS) of support to help close the achievement gap, reduce disproportionality, and speed essential academic and behavioral interventions to needy students; and
- Sustained and real school improvement for Priority, Focus, and other schools or districts
Significantly, Project ACHIEVE (through the SPDG grant) was written into Arkansas’ approved Elementary and Secondary Education (ESEA) Flexibility process as the school improvement model for all Focus schools in the state of Arkansas from 2010 to 2015.
Over the past decade especially, Dr. Knoff has partnered with school districts across the country helping them to write federal grants that also fund his on-site services. Between 2015 and 2024, he helped five different district collaboratives (two in Michigan, as well as in Oklahoma, New Jersey, and Kentucky) receive separate five-year muti-million dollar School Climate Transformation Grants from the U.S. Department of Education. These grants allowed Dr. Knoff to work with these districts for up to 40 days per year. These grants have also supported the development of on-line/on-demand courses in critical areas of school psychology, multi-tiered services and interventions, and student stress and trauma.
At the end of 2025, he helped the Midwest (OH) Regional Education Service Center (MRESC) receive a four-year multi-million dollar U.S. Department of Education School-Based Mental Health Grant to increase the number of trained and expert school psychologists in 11 school districts across four counties. Supported by training provided by Dr. Knoff over the four years, these school psychologists (and others) will provide direct early intervention and Tier 2 and 3 supports to students with significant mental health needs, while addressing the school psychology gaps in these districts.
Dr. Knoff received his Ph.D. degree from Syracuse University in 1980, and has worked as a practitioner, consultant, licensed private psychologist, and university professor since 1978. Dr. Knoff is widely respected for his research and writing on school reform and organizational change, consultation and intervention processes, social skills and behavior management training, Response-to-Intervention, and professional issues. He has authored or co-authored 25 books or monographs, published over 100 articles and book chapters, and delivered over 5,000 presentations, papers, or workshops internationally. His publications include the Stop & Think Social Skills Program (Preschool through Middle School editions) and the Stop & Think Parent Book: A Guide to Children’s Good Behavior both through Project ACHIEVE Press.
Dr. Knoff has a long history of working with schools, districts, and community and state agencies and organizations. For example, he has consulted with a number of state departments of education, the Department of Defense Dependents School District during Desert Storm, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. He has also served as an expert witness on ten federal court cases, in addition to working on many other state and local cases—largely for legal advocacy firms who are representing special education and other students in need. Specific to school safety issues, Dr. Knoff was on the writing team that helped produce Early Warning, Timely Response: A Guide to Safe Schools, the document commissioned by the President that was sent to every school in the country in the Fall of 1998; and he participated in a review capacity on the follow-up document, Safeguarding our Children: An Action Guide.
A recipient of the Lightner Witmer Award from the American Psychological Association's School Psychology Division for early career contributions in 1990, Dr. Knoff is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (School Psychology Division), a Nationally Certified School Psychologist, a Licensed Psychologist in Florida, and he has been trained in crisis intervention, mediation processes, and trauma-based interventions. He has received over $40 million in external grants during his career—most recently the School Climate Transformation Grants and School-Based Mental Health Grant—from the U.S. Department of Education—described above.
Dr. Knoff wrote a popular bimonthly Blog for over ten years (www.projectachieve.info/blog) addressing critical national school and schooling issues, and this Blog was accompanied by a podcast, Improving Education Today: The Deep Dive (https://iet.bepodcast.network/) on a dozen blog platforms for its last three years. Frequently interviewed in all areas of the media, Dr. Knoff has been on the NBC Nightly News, numerous television and radio talk shows, and he was highlighted on an ABC News' 20/20 program on "Being Teased, Taunted, and Bullied." Finally, Dr. Knoff was the 21st President of the National Association of School Psychologists which now represents more than 25,000 school psychologists nationwide.
Dr. Knoff is constantly sought after for his expertise in a wide variety of school, psychological, and other professional issues. He also has extensive experience as an Expert Witness having testified in many federal and state court cases across the United States since 1993. These cases have focused on IDEA and Special Education Procedures, School Psychology Assessment/Intervention Disputes, Psychological Misdiagnoses and Mental Health Services, 504 Accommodations and Disability Rights, Title IX Sexual Harassment Violations, Disproportionality and Racial Discrimination/Equity, Emotionally Disturbed and Autistic Students, Seclusion and Restraints, Educational Malpractice, School Safety and Violence, Social-Emotional Learning and Positive Behavioral Supports, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Bullying and Physical Aggression, Discipline and Corporal Punishment, IEP Disputes and Due Process Hearings, FAPE and LRE, Dispute Resolution and Mediation, Learning Disabilities and ADHD, Stress and Trauma.
