News: Functional Assessment

How the “System” Forces Schools into Decisions that Harm Struggling Students: The “Groundhog Day” Impact of Fear on Staff Mental Health and Job Retention

The movie Groundhog Day is metaphorically used to describe recurring experiences with MTSS Teams across the country who continue to use “mystifying” procedures, practices, and strategies—typically wit...

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Teaching Students Needed Academic and Social-Emotional Skills: We Need to Sweat the Small Stuff

Blog describes five vignettes that reinforce the importance that educators and related services professionals “sweat the small stuff.” We demonstrate that, to make big and meaningful academic and soci...

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Using Effective Practices to Screen and Validate Students’ Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Status (Part II)

New article (Part II of a two-part Series) discusses five primary ways to collect information within a school’s screening-to-services process when students have SEL challenges: Reviewing, Interviewing...

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The Current State of SEL in our Schools: The Frenzy, Flaws, and Fads (Part II)

Blog discusses the lack of knowledge and poor SEL implementation choices made by educators across the country even as students’ social-emotional (Pandemic-related) needs are at high levels. A recent n...

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Disproportionate School Discipline, and How Long-Term Suspensions Don’t Work and Don’t Improve Classroom Conditions When Students are Gone (An Unexpected Part III)

This Blog reviews a recent study analyzing the academic and behavioral impact of different lengths of school suspensions across 1.24 million disciplinary incidents over 10 years in the NYC schools. It...

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The Components Needed to Eliminate Disproportionate School Discipline Referrals and Suspensions for Students of Color Do Not Require Anti-Bias Training (Part II)

This Blog discusses the five evidence-based interdependent psycho-educational components and embedded practices that help schools eliminate disproportionate discipline referrals and administrative act...

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