Examining utility and impact of social, emotional, and behavioral screening to identify and address needs.

Along with increased attention to universal screening for identifying social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) concerns is the need to ensure the psychometric adequacy of tools available. Nearly all extant tests of universal SEB screening validity focus on traditional inferential forms with little to no study of the consequences of actions following those inferences, or consequential validity proposed under Messick's unified validity theory. This study examines one facet of consequential validity (i.e., utility) of results from one popular screening tool in six elementary schools in one large U.S. district. The schools identified students who were receiving SEB supports on a monthly form throughout one school year. Screening identified 991 students with SEB risk, of which 91 (9%) were receiving intervention prior to screening. After screening, schools provided intervention to an additional 66 students (7%). Unaddressed SEB risk remained after screening for 84% of screener-identified students. Latent profile analyses detected five patterns of risk with those students demonstrating the most risk and predominately externalizing concerns being most likely to receive intervention after screening. Study schools also provided intervention to students with elevated low risk after screening, but this profile was the largest group leaving 708 students with unaddressed SEB risk after screening. Results provide evidence of universal SEB screening interpretation to identify unaddressed SEB risk but insufficient use to provide intervention services at a rate that substantially reduced unaddressed SEB risk. Future research and practice directions for advancing the consequential validity of universal SEB screening are recommended and measurement limitations discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A brief report on the promise of system 2 cues for impacting teacher decision-making in school discipline practices for Black male youth.

Despite the evidence implicating implicit racial bias in teacher decision-making as one reason for the overrepresentation of Black male students in school discipline practices, there is minimal research regarding interventions that address implicit racial bias in the school setting. A System 2 cue refers to a behavioral cue that engages more deliberate and controlled cognitive processes in decision-making and mitigates the impact of unconscious racial bias in decision-making, in contrast to System 1 processing which employs more automatic cognitive processes. This pilot study evaluated the use of a System 2 cue in teacher decision-making and included 361 practicing teachers. All participants read a vignette describing a Black male student's behavior and were then assigned to a control condition or the System 2 cue condition. Differences in teacher perception of troublesome behavior were analyzed with independent samples t test and likelihood of completing an office discipline referral was compared with binary logistic regression. Results indicate that addition of a System 2 cue predicted ODR likelihood, but perception of troublesome behavior was more predictive and explained the relationship between System 2 cue and referral likelihood. Further, we found differences in two aspects of troublesome behavior perception (i.e., level of concern and belief that the behavior will occur again in the future) for teachers receiving a System 2 cue compared to those who did not, preliminarily suggesting that some perceptions of troublesome behavior may be alterable through System 2 cues. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Comparison of Reading Growth Among Students With Severe Reading Deficits Who Received Intervention to Typically Achieving Students and Students Receiving Special Education.

This study compared the reading growth of students with and without learning disabilities, and students with and without reading deficits in response to tier 2 reading interventions within a response-to-intervention framework. Participants were 499 second- and third-grade students in six urban schools. Students who scored at or below the 10th percentile on the fall reading screening assessment were identified as having a severe reading deficit and received a tier 2 reading intervention that was targeted to their needs. Results showed a significant effect between groups on reading growth. Students with severe reading deficits receiving targeted tier 2 intervention grew at a rate that equaled the rate of growth of students without reading deficits and was significantly higher than students who were receiving special education services for reading. Implications for practice, suggestions for future research, and study limitations are discussed.

Student, teacher, and classroom predictors of between-teacher variance of students' teacher-rated behavior.

The current study examined between-teacher variance in teacher ratings of student behavioral and emotional risk to identify student, teacher and classroom characteristics that predict such differences and can be considered in future research and practice. Data were taken from seven elementary schools in one school district implementing universal screening, including 1,241 students rated by 68 teachers. Students were mostly African America (68.5%) with equal gender (female 50.1%) and grade-level distributions. Teachers, mostly White (76.5%) and female (89.7%), completed both a background survey regarding their professional experiences and demographic characteristics and the Behavior Assessment System for Children (Second Edition) Behavioral and Emotional Screening System-Teacher Form for all students in their class, rating an average of 17.69 students each. Extant student data were provided by the district. Analyses followed multilevel linear model stepwise model-building procedures. We detected a significant amount of variance in teachers' ratings of students' behavioral and emotional risk at both student and teacher/classroom levels with student predictors explaining about 39% of student-level variance and teacher/classroom predictors explaining about 20% of between-teacher differences. The final model fit the data (Akaike information criterion = 8,687.709; pseudo-R2 = 0.544) significantly better than the null model (Akaike information criterion = 9,457.160). Significant predictors included student gender, race ethnicity, academic performance and disciplinary incidents, teacher gender, student-teacher gender interaction, teacher professional development in behavior screening, and classroom academic performance. Future research and practice should interpret teacher-rated universal screening of students' behavioral and emotional risk with consideration of the between-teacher variance unrelated to student behavior detected. (PsycINFO Database Record