1. education
2. school

Integrated Approaches to Preventing Antisocial
Behavior Patterns Among School-Age
Children and Youth
HILL M. WALKER, ROBERT H. HORNER, GEORGE SUGAI, MICHAEL BULLIS,
JEFFREY R, SPRAGUE, DIANE BRICKER, AND MARTIN J- KAUFMAN
L
EVELS OF BOTH LETHAL AND NON-
lethal forms of youth violence
continue to accelerate in our
society despite recent declines in other
forms of criminal behavior (Federal
Bureau of Investigation, 1996)- Four
years ago, the former surgeon general,
C. Everett Koop, and his associates in
the medical field declared interpersonal
violence to be the Number 1 public
health problem in this country (Koop
& Lundberg, 1992). Gunshot wounds
have now replaced automobile accidents
as the leading cause of paralysis among
young people (Centers for Disease Control, 1994). Evidence suggests that the
United States has evolved into the most
violent developed country in the world
(Council on Crime in America, 1996;
Zimring & Hawkins, 1995).
Our society seems to be caught up in
an epidemic of violence—a majority of
which is accounted for by youth under
the age of 19 who use handguns and
other weapons to settle disputes (Fagan,
1996). Most of these individuals are
young men, although young women
seem to be narrowing the gender gap in
the areas of juvenile crime and gang
activity (Hawkins, 1996). Recent demographic projections are far from encouraging. For example, it is expected
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This article provides a reconceptualization of the role of schools in preventing antisocial behavior
problems among children and youth. The U.S. Public Health Service's conceptual model of prevention,
involving primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention approaches, is used as an organizing framework
to illustrate how schools can deliver interventions more effectively and improve outcomes. Traditional
school approaches to coping with students who are at risk and antisocial are reviewed, and the
following major topics are addressed: (a) A case is made that schools can play a central, coordinating
role in collaboration with families and social service agencies in addressing the challenging problems
presented by antisocial students; (b) a generic intervention approach is suggested that involves
reducing risk factors for antisocial behavior and enhancing protective factors; (c) a three-level
approach to organizing specific interventions for achieving prevention goals and outcomes is described;
and (d) recommended interventions or approaches are suggested for each prevention level (i.e.,
primary, secondary, tertiary). The article concludes with a discussion of some factors associated with
a revised mission for schools in this domain and how these factors may impair or enhance the
necessary changes required to achieve this goal.
that the number of juveniles in our society will double by the year 2010 and
that the number of juvenile arrests will
double in the next decade (June 13,
1996, CNN).
In its seminal 1993 report on youth
violence, the American Psychological
Association (1993) identified four factors that act as accelerators for violence
and criminal behavior among youth:
1. Early involvement with drugs and
alcohol;
2. Easy access to weapons, particularly
handguns;
3. Association with antisocial groups;
and
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4. Pervasive exposure to violent acts
in the media.
Exposure to these risk factors seems
to be increasing for large sectors of atrisk children and youth and their peers
who are not at risk, and the effects are
further exacerbated by various forms of
abuse and neglect that produce young
people who are highly agitated and/or
in states of rage.
Although our society is engaged in
what can be called an "incarceration
frenzy," national experts in public
health, gangs, delinquency, and youth
violence who are attempting to control
this escalating phenomenon consistently
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argue that we cannot stem the tide of
youth violence through incarceration
applied after the fact (Fagan, 1996;
Stamper, 1996). Stamper noted that the
country's unprecedented rate of building prisons and treating youth as adult
offenders provide grim testimony to our
society's failure to cope with the massive problems that are now consuming
our children and youth.
To be effective in this domain, our
society must also address the front end
of this massive social problem. It is essential that we engage in a national
dialog that recognizes and eschews violence in all its forms, as well as the
attitudes and more subtle, related forms
of behavior that can lead to it (e.g.,
aggression; mean-spirited teasing and
bullying; sexual harassment; endorsement of antisocial beliefs such as "fight
back, ask questions later"). We must
(a) change the norms and expectations
around aggressive attitudes and behavior and how we relate to each other
interpersonally, and (b) directly address
the risk factors and precursors associated with future violent and delinquent
behavior by targeting and intervening
with at-risk children and youth early in
their lives—well before they become
invested in these unfortunate acts and
behavior patterns.
Schools often reflect societal trends,
and we now see the spillover of interpersonal violence and conflict into the
daily lives of students and staff in school
settings that were once relatively safe.
The following statistics and observations document how school safety and
the quality of life in school settings have
declined precipitously in the recent past.
For example:
• Over 100,000 students bring weapons
to school each day, and 40 are
killed or wounded with these weapons.
• Large numbers of students fear victimization on the way to and from
school.
• In our nation's schools, 22% of students
are afraid to use school bathrooms
because these relatively unsupervised
areas are often sites for assaults and
other forms of victimization.
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• More than 6,000 teachers are threatened
annually, and well over 200 are physically injured by students on school
grounds.
• Increasingly, students are intimidated
and threatened by mean-spirited teasing,
bullying, and sexual harassment occurring at school.
• Finally, schools are major sites for
recruitment and related activities by
organized gangs (Committee for Children, 1996; National School Safety
Center, 1996; Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, 1995;
Walker, Colvin, & Ramsey, 1995).
Violence and antisocial, destructive
forms of behavior increasingly characterize students who populate our public
school systems. Well-developed antisocial behavior patterns and high levels
of aggression evidenced early in a child's
life are among the best predictors of
delinquent and violent behavior years
later (Fagan, 1996; Hawkins & Catalano, 1992; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion,
1992). These behavior patterns become
elaborated and more destructive over
time; they poison the school environment and lower the quality of life for
students and staff alike. The National
School Safety Center reported that
school safety has emerged as an issue of
great national concern, and neither students nor staff feel completely safe in
our school settings (Stephens, 1995).
National organizations representing the
interests of schools (e.g., National Association of State Boards of Education,
Association of Chief State School Officers, National Education Association,
American Federation of Teachers) have
adopted school safety and violence-free
schools as major features of their advocacy efforts at federal and state levels.
The 26th annual Phi Delta Kappan
Gallup poll of the public's attitudes toward the public schools mirrors educators' concerns about the safety of schools
and the rates of student violence, aggression, and conflict occurring therein
(Elam, Rose, & Gallup, 1994).
By their very nature, schools are reactive organizations because of their
structure and the myriad and often conflicting pressures to which they must
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respond. To date, they have been relatively detached players in developing
proactive responses to the fundamental
social changes that have occurred in
our society and that are increasingly
reflected in students' school behavior
(Kulongoski, 1996). Yet, our schools
have a powerful and very crucial role to
play in: (a) targeting at-risk children
and youth early in their academic careers, and (b) intervening comprehensively with such students and key social
agents (i.e., parents, teachers, and peers)
in order to divert them from a path
that frequently leads to school failure
and dropout; rejection by teachers, peers,
and, ultimately, caregivers; investment
in delinquency and violent behavior;
gang membership; and prison (Patterson
et al., 1992; Reid, 1993; Walker &
Bullis, 1991,1996; Walker & Sylwester,
1991).
In this article we make the case that
schools have a key role to play in addressing the rising tide of at-risk students who bring antisocial, aggressive
behavior patterns with them to the
schooling experience due to the multiple, nonschool risk factors to which
they have been exposed early in their
lives (i.e., poverty, abuse and neglect,
family conflict, weak or incompetent
parenting, drug and alcohol involvement of primary caregivers, dysfunctional family situations that are chaotic
and highly unpredictable; see APA,
1993; Nelson, Rutherford, & Wolford,
1996; Patterson et al., 1992; Teens &
Violence, 1996; Walker, Colvin, &
Ramsey, 1995).
We further argue that schools have
the relatively unique ability to access
the vast majority of at-risk children early
in their school careers and also to
marshall the resources and expertise
necessary to address their problems in a
coordinated fashion. In so doing, they
can help reduce, eliminate, and/or buffer
many of the risk factors that, if left
unattended, propel young people along
a path leading to a host of unfortunate
outcomes, including violence and criminal behavior. Schools, however, can
only play this role effectively if they
are supported in doing so by our society
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munity agencies in consortia that implement community-wide initiatives to
address this problem.
Schools can appropriately serve as a
lead agency within an interagency approach to addressing the problems of
such children and youth—and, in many
cases, their families (Dryfoos, 1990).
Realizing such a different mission will
require dramatic changes in the ways
that school personnel have characteristically dealt with this student population, their attitudes toward them, and
the necessary identification and reallocation of resources. For example, we
recommend the following changes and
practices in this regard:
1. All students should be screened
proactively at the point of school
entry to identify those who show the
early signs of antisocial, aggressive
behavior patterns that put them at
risk;
2. Coordinated primary, secondary, and
tertiary prevention efforts are
mounted as appropriate to divert as
many children as possible from this
path and to keep them out of the
juvenile justice system;
3. The practice of relying upon exclusion, suspension, and expulsion as a
primary means of coping with this
problem should be discontinued; and
4. School systems should develop and,
in many cases, reestablish a continuum of alternative school placements for this population, many of
which have been eliminated in the
wake of school reform and full inclusion (MacMillan, Gresham, &
Forness, 1996).
Keeping these students engaged with
schooling for as long as possible is one
of the best things we can do for them.
By so doing we can further develop their
skills, influence them in positive directions, and prevent their becoming involved with disruptive peer groups
during school hours.
To date, the effective role of schools
in developing solutions to the problems
of antisocial behavior, interpersonal
conflict, and violence has been largely
unrealized. Like the larger society, edu196
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cators have tended to respond to these
problems reactively and after the fact
with punishing alternatives. The increasing rates of school suspensions and
expulsions have the dual effect of making schools relatively safer, and society
unsafer, as these suspended/excluded
youth are turned loose on communities
where their investment in offending
behavior accelerates markedly (Bostic,
1994). As a social policy, this practice
is akin to the displacement of water in
its ultimate effects.
The solutions that have been developed by and offered to schools in this
area are often incomplete and not sufficiently comprehensive to adequately
address the problem. School responses,
much like the marketing strategies of
the Silicon Valley as detailed by
Geoffrey Moore (1995) in his recent
book, Inside the Tornado, are not complete and do not provide full solutions
that actually have a chance to work.
The investments made are often minimal and well below the threshold necessary to achieve critical effects. In a
recent review of the epidemiology of
violence, Gladwell (1996) referred to
the "tipping point" in epidemics,
wherein the epidemic reaches a critical
point beyond which it escalates out of
control. There are also tipping points
in the investments required to have an
impact on problems such as violence,
school dropout, or bullying. However,
because schools are often forced to operate off a reactive and minimalist response posture to emerging problems,
the investments they make fall short
and are frequently inadequate to have
a substantive impact or solve the problem.
The purpose of this article is to describe a conceptualization of fully integrated, comprehensive approaches to
preventing antisocial behavior in the
context of schooling. These are approaches that provide full or complete
solutions that may have a better chance
of working than traditional approaches.
In this article, a school-based approach
to the prevention of antisocial, aggressive behavior patterns is described that:
(a) targets the entire school site as well
as individual students for assessment and
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intervention, (b) matches the intensity
and nature of interventions with the
severity and intractability of students'
adjustment problems, and (c) emphasizes the fostering of prosocial and safe
learning environments for all students.
The remainder of this article is divided into four sections. The first section
describes the characteristic responses of
school systems to these problems and
illustrates how many educational practices used with this student population
are insufficient and poorly matched to
the problems they are designed to redress. Section 2 describes the multiple
risk factors, across different contexts,
that are producing unprecedented numbers of children and youth who are likely
to become school failures and adolescent offenders. This section makes the
case for school investment in a risk/
protective factors approach that the
juvenile corrections field and the U.S.
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention have recommended.
Section 3 presents a conceptual model
that integrates different primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention approaches for (a) preventing violence,
(b) making schools safe, and (c) teaching students social competence and effective forms of coping behavior. Section
4 briefly reviews some model intervention approaches and procedures that are
appropriate for each of these prevention levels. The article concludes with
a discussion of future directions and the
need for societal reinvestment and support of schools in their attempts to address a problem that increasingly poses
risks for our society and way of life.
TRADITIONAL SCHOOL
APPROACHES
Students who enter the schoolhouse
door frequently bring life-coursepersistent patterns of antisocial behavior with them (Moffitt, 1994); that is,
they are socialized to a particular behavior pattern by family and home conditions that establish it as a permanent,
enduring feature of their lifestyle. Many
of these destructive behavior patterns
are taught to students inadvertently by
caregivers within the context of highly
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stressed home conditions (e.g., poverty,
divorce, abuse, neglect, unemployment,
and substance abuse). Unfortunately,
children who behave in this fashion
alienate their peers, teachers, and, ultimately, their primary caregivers. More
important, these students have not had
opportunities to learn appropriate ways
of behaving with peers and adults, nor
have they been encouraged to substitute adaptive responses for maladaptive
ones. Such students need to be directly
taught an adaptive, positive pattern of
behavior for home, school, and other
settings, be given opportunities to display what they have learned, and receive feedback regarding the effectiveness of their efforts. In addition,
these students need to be taught how
to correctly discriminate the forms of
behavior to use and not use in a variety
of social and educational contexts. In
many situations, the problem is not
"knowing how to do it," but "doing it
when it is required." Often incentives
are needed to motivate antisocial students to change their long-established
behavior patterns.
Simple and General Solutions
School personnel have a long history
of applying simple and general solutions
to complex student behavior problems
and of expressing understandable disappointment when these attempts do
not work as expected. Usually the approach used, or other factors (e.g., the
child's home life, poor motivation for
change, lack of parent support), are
blamed for unsatisfactory outcomes. In
most cases, the failure to achieve meaningful outcomes is due to a poor match
between presenting problems and the
selected intervention, a less than adequate implementation of the intervention, lack of the necessary resources, or
a failure to treat the problem(s) comprehensively throughout the implementation process. Rarely do school personnel invest the resources, time, and
expertise necessary to effectively solve
such problems. Frequently these intervention practices are sustained by unrealistic expectations about what is
actually required to produce enduring
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changes in student behavior or by a
natural tendency to quickly eliminate
the immediate presenting problem
rather than focus on the source.
In other cases, indirect intervention
approaches (e.g., counseling, insightbased therapies, social skills training,
improving self-esteem) are used to solve
intractable student behavior problems
that require more powerful, direct forms
of intervention (Eysenck, 1994; Mayer,
1995; Shamise, 1981). Referral of the
problem student for counseling consistently ranks as the most popular intervention option among teachers primarily
because responsibility for change is
placed upon the student and a solution
to the problem is pursued in a context
external to the classroom. Such indirect approaches are rarely adequate or
sufficient because the student tends to
be unmotivated to engage in these therapies and because "ownership" of the
problem is often shared by the student
and other social agents (e.g., peers,
adults; see Dryfoos, 1990).
Unfortunately, when such indirect
intervention approaches fail, punishments and exclusion from the school
setting often become the interventions
of choice to eliminate the problem.
Exclusion, suspension, expulsion, verbal
reprimands, and detention are common
reactive responses. Although punishment consequences provide an immediate, short-term reprieve from the
problem, positive long-term change in
behavior is not achieved. In fact, researchers have shown that punishmentbased interventions for students with
serious antisocial and violent behavior
usually result in an increase in the problem behavior (Mayer & Sulzer-Azaroff,
1990).
In order to produce consistent, socially acceptable behavior changes, we
must intervene directly and comprehensively within and across all school settings in which problem behaviors are
observed. Such an approach must be
fully integrated and must incorporate
primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention goals and correlated interventions.
This approach also is based upon the
following assumptions and observations
about school interventions:
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1. Students who are at risk for developing antisocial patterns of behavior
and their correlated negative outcomes,
particularly minority students, are more
likely to be punished, excluded, and
controlled than to have their problems
addressed in a therapeutic manner.
2. Schools typically have maintained
a reactive, punishment-oriented posture
in relation to at-risk students that fails
to recognize the need to: (a) identify
students early on who show the signs of
these problems, and (b) mount comprehensive, sustained interventions that
can divert children from this path early
in their school careers.
3. The intractability and severity of
student adjustment problems are rarely
appropriately matched to available interventions that can remediate or ameliorate them. Too often, simple interventions are applied in this regard in an
attempt to solve complex student problems and vice versa.
4. School interventions for at-risk
minority students are rarely contextualized in relation to the nuances of
their cultural backgrounds; in addition,
teacher interactions with minority atrisk students tend to be based upon lowperformance expectations, critical rather
than constructive, short in duration, and
punishment oriented.
5. To achieve maximum efficacy,
school interventions need to incorporate universal, schoolwide features that
address the needs of all students as well
as specific features that address the individual needs of those students who do
not respond to the universal, schoolwide
intervention.
6. Intervention responses to students
with severe problem behaviors tend to
be developed and implemented by individual teachers rather than by a team
of committed staff members.
7. Efforts to improve interventions
for students with severe problem behaviors must be organized into a comprehensive and strategic building- or
district-level plan that ranks as one of
the top three school-improvement goals
for at least 2 years.
Prevention strategies and interventions appropriate for students who are
at risk of academic and social failure
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should address and systematically take
into account these findings and observations. In addition, these strategies
must be comprehensive and proactive
in nature and implemented as early
as possible in these students' school
careers—preferably at the beginning of
the schooling experience.
What Is the Answer?
There are no simple or easy solutions
to eliminating and reducing antisocial
behavior problems among children and
youth. Schools can take actions that
will merely address the problem or they
can invest in strategies that actually
have a chance of ameliorating it in an
acceptable and meaningful fashion. Preferred and promising practices exist;
however, they are implemented infrequently in school settings primarily because they are often considered too
intrusive and/or labor intensive and
because the time and effort involved in
their implementation is perceived as too
costly (Witt & Marsten, 1983; Witt &
Robbins, 1985). Thus, schools are increasingly unable to accommodate effectively those at-risk students who bring
challenging attitudes and behavioral
characteristics to the process of schooling.
In many cases, the choice boils down
to intervention effectiveness versus
teacher acceptance of approaches that
provide effective solutions. In other
words, approaches that are proven and
effective are often not acceptable to
many teachers and vice versa. As the
pressures these students produce continue to escalate in their intensity and
the pain levels increase for staff and
students alike, teachers and other school
personnel may tend to become more
pragmatic in this regard. Schools must
learn to judge the effectiveness and
acceptance of available interventions
within the context of the meaning of
immediate and long-term behavior
change, reasonable criteria for judging
change, a systematic and objective
analysis of the costs and benefits of their
efforts, and the chronicity and resistance to change of severe problem behavior among antisocial children.
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Solutions must start with a comprehensive look at the contexts in which
violence and antisocial behavior occur
(Biglan, 1995). The school, for example,
represents a complex organization of
people, environments, policies, routines,
and procedures that should function as
a coordinated whole. A school can be
viewed as a network of four interactive
systems that collectively enable students
to learn and teachers to teach (Sugai &
Horner, 1994). The schoolwide system is
designed to accommodate the vast majority of students by setting rules and
expectations, teaching desired academic
and social behaviors, and organizing and
standardizing the activities of all building staff members. This dimension of
schooling is geared toward accommodation of all students and establishes
the culture or ecology of a school building.
In contrast, the specific setting system
of a school building provides policies
and procedures for the common areas
of a school—cafeteria, hallways, bus
area, bathrooms, playgrounds, and so
forth. These areas are unique in that all
students, regardless of their homeroom
or grade level, must pass through them
daily. Although generally there are rules,
behavioral expectations, and explicit
codes of conduct for these areas, they
tend to be less structured than classroom settings and occasion frequent
peer-to-peer and student-to-adult interactions.
Classroom systems are developed by
teachers to support the larger schoolwide
policies and procedures and to manage
the academic performance and social
behavior of students within instructional
environments and arrangements. General schoolwide rules (e.g., be respectful) are adapted to the requirements of
individual teachers (e.g., wait your turn
when another person is talking).
Finally, the individual student system
provides established policies and procedures for responding to students who
present the most severe forms of problem behavior. Collectively, these four
systems provide a comprehensive matrix
in which behavioral supports, services,
and interventions can be established
that accommodate the behavioral chalBEHAVIORAL
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lenges and needs of students who display the most antisocial and destructive forms of behavior. In order to
accomplish this goal, however, it is
essential to have strong administrative
support and leadership; staff investment
in the approach and willingness to
implement it with integrity; and the
necessary resources, including time commitments, behavioral expertise, and
team-based working structures.
RISK AND PROTECTIVE
FACTORS IN ANTISOCIAL
BEHAVIOR PATTERNS
In its public information campaigns regarding such problems as coronary heart
disease, the U.S. Public Health Service
has been highly successful in advocating and demonstrating an approach to
risk and protective factors. This approach emphasizes the identification and
reduction of known risk factors (e.g.,
smoking, obesity) as well as the development of protective factors, such as
exercise and stress management regimens, that operate to buffer and offset
the effects of the risk factors. For maximum impact, it is necessary to reduce
and eliminate known risk factors and
to simultaneously develop protective
factors that can contribute to resiliency
and plasticity (i.e., adaptability).
The Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has
adopted this model as a recommended
approach for addressing the problems
of youth offenders (see OJJDP, 1995).
A list of risk and correlated protective
factors across the domains of community, family, school, and individual/peer
group is given in Figure 1. The literature in juvenile corrections suggests that
the more risk factors an individual is
exposed to over time, the greater the
likelihood that negative outcomes such
as school failure and delinquency will
occur. In the context of interventions,
addressing risk and protective factors
simultaneously will produce better positive outcomes than addressing either
one alone (Hawkins, 1996; Hawkins &
Catalano, 1992; OJJDP, 1995). The
effectiveness of the recommendations
in the first section of this article regardVOL.
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ing school interventions is predicated
on the assumption that: (a) they are
applied to risk and protective factors
that have an impact, either directly or
indirectly, on the individual's adjustment and performance, and (b) they
are also applied within the context of
reducing and/or eliminating risk factors
and also developing and/or enhancing
protective factors.
In our view, this approach is most
likely to be successful in developing
resilience among antisocial children and
youth who increasingly bring severe risk
profiles with them to the schooling process (Garmezy, 1991, 1993; Luthar,
1991; Luthar & Zigler, 1991; Rutter,
1990). Resilience literally refers to the
ability to recover and "to spring back"
(Garmezy, 1991); with the great majority of antisocial children and youth, the
primary task of school personnel and
other adults is to assist them in achieving this outcome because they will
already have been exposed to multiple
risk factors before entering school.
A number of the risk and protective
factors listed in Figure 1 are within the
ability of educators to address effectively.
Dropping out or being excluded from
schooling puts a youth's life at serious
risk for a host of crime-related outcomes.
For example, 90% of daytime burglaries in Los Angeles County are committed by truant, suspended, and excluded
youth (Bostic, 1994); this figure averages 80% nationally (Crowe, 1995).
Rejection by teachers and peers has been
identified by Patterson and his associates (Patterson et al., 1992; Reid, 1993)
as one of the key stages that at-risk,
antisocial students follow on their path
to school failure and delinquency. These
students are usually rejected because of
the extremely aversive nature of their
behavioral characteristics, of which the
most dominant are coercion, aggression,
and the humiliation of others.
The adaptive and maladaptive behavioral competencies associated with
the two primary social-behavioral adjustments that all students must negotiate
in the school setting (Walker, Colvin,
& Ramsey, 1995) are given in Figure 2.
Failure to satisfactorily negotiate these
critically important adjustments puts the
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FIGURE 1. Risk and protective factors related to antisocial behavior and youth offending.
student's school success at considerable
risk. The adaptive competencies listed
in Figure 2 under teacher and peerrelated adjustment can be considered
protective factors that offset effects of
the listed maladaptive behaviors, which
function as risk factors.
Nearly all students who display atrisk and antisocial forms of behavior
are deficient in many of the critically
important behavioral competencies associated with schooling. Students who
do not display these competencies at
acceptable levels are ultimately rejected
by teachers and peers. Further, they
often band together and form deviant
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and/or disruptive peer groups that wreak
havoc and often get involved with the
law (Patterson et al., 1992; Reid, 1993).
The work of Dodge and his colleagues
has provided important insights into the
developmental trajectories and peerrelations problems of antisocial children
and youth (Dodge, 1985; Dodge, Coie,
& Brakke, 1982).
Unfortunately, antisocial students are
often above the minimally acceptable
limits of their teachers in terms of these
maladaptive forms of behavior and well
below the teachers' expectations in relation to the adaptive competencies.
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FIGURE 2. Model of interpersonal social-behavioral competence within school settings.
volving risk and protective factors would
reduce or eliminate the student's likelihood of engaging in the unacceptable
maladaptive behaviors (risk factors) and
develop/increase the student's frequency
of displaying the adaptive competencies (protective factors). Implementing
this approach would vastly improve the
academic chances and school adjustment of many—perhaps most—antisocial students. It should be noted that
some school systems are responding
proactively to these student-generated
pressures by creating learning and opportunity centers, establishing schools
within a school, and investing in programs designed to keep at-risk students
in school. In our view, these practices
need to become the norm within school
systems.
yr\r\
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Unfortunately, most school approaches for coping with such students
focus on punishment, exclusion, containment, and rejection. As noted earlier, by pushing these students out of
the school system and thereby disengaging them from schooling, we are
merely turning them loose on communities and displacing the problem to
another sector of our society. In our
view, effective alternative programs and
options need to be developed for this
student population that: (a) keep them
engaged with the process of schooling
for as long as possible; (b) directly teach
coping strategies and develop functional
skills in social, academic, and behavioral domains; and (c) provide a respite
for both the at-risk student and the regular school placement setting (Garrison,
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1996; MacMillan et al., 1996; OJJDP,
1995).
A CONCEPTUAL MODEL FOR
SCHOOL-BASED PREVENTION
In any school, one can identify three
types of students: (a) typical students
not at risk for problems, (b) students
with an elevated risk status for developing antisocial behavior problems, and
(c) students who show signs of lifecourse-persistent antisocial behavior
patterns and involvement in delinquent
acts (Larson, 1994; Moffitt, 1994;
Walker, 1994). Life-course-persistent
antisocial behavior refers to at-risk students who are socialized to antisocial
behavior and delinquency within the
family context by exposure to such risk
VOL.
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factors as incompetent and inconsistent
parenting practices; poverty; unhealthy
beliefs and attitudes; physical, emotional, and sexual forms of abuse; drug
and alcohol involvement; and so forth
(Hawkins, 1996). As a rule, these children and youth require the most powerful services, supports, and interventions
available in order to have any impact
on their problems, sometimes even at
just minimal levels.
These three student types are ordered
along a severity-of-risk continuum that,
at one extreme, predicts a host of negative developmental outcomes, including delinquency and adult criminality.
Members of each student group arrayed
along this continuum are candidates for
differing levels or types of intervention
that represent correspondingly greater
specificity, complexity, comprehensiveness, expense, and intensity (Reid,
1993). T h e relationship between these
intervention levels/types and degree of
student risk status is clarified in Figure 3. This figure reflects application to
school-based problems of the public
health field's conceptual approach to
prevention and intervention (Larson,
1994). In this conceptualization, prevention and intervention are not viewed
as distinct or mutually exclusive dimensions; instead, different types of interventions and approaches are used to
achieve specific prevention goals. T h e
interventions appropriate for primary,
secondary, and tertiary forms of prevention, as illustrated in Figure 3, are
briefly described below.
ties. In addition, primary prevention
strategies focus on teaching all students
and staff the rules and expectations and
other disciplinary policies and procedures that are designed to enhance the
smooth operation of a school environment. Teaching skills for school success (e.g., being prepared, getting to class
on time, asking for help, completing
and turning in homework), designing
and presenting an effective and interesting academic curriculum, and maximizing opportunities for student academic and social success also represent
i m p o r t a n t primary p r e v e n t i o n approaches. These universal intervention
approaches have perhaps the greatest
potential for use by schools in establishing a positive school climate and
effective school procedures that divert
Target Student Type
Regular
(Typical or Not At-Risk)
4
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OF
Secondary P r e v e n t i o n Strategies
Secondary prevention involves interventions that provide behavioral or
academic support, mentoring, skill development, and assistance to more severely at-risk students. Students who
do not respond to universal interventions become candidates for intensive,
individually tailored interventions that
are more expensive. Interventions for
achieving secondary prevention goals
are often referred to as "selected." In
Intervention Approach
Primary Prevention (Universal Interventions):
• School wide discipline plans
• Instruction in conflict resolution/
anger management strategies
• Effective teaching and schooling procedures
1
Secondary Prevention (Individualized, 1-1 Interventions):
At-Risk for
Antisocial Behavior • Identification of at-risk clusters of children, youth and families;
Patterns
• Direct instruction in moral reasoning;
• Anger-management and self-control;
• Family support and parent management training;
• Consultant based 1 to 1 interventions
+
Primary P r e v e n t i o n Strategies
Primary prevention strategies focus upon
e n h a n c i n g p r o t e c t i v e factors o n a
schoolwide basis so that students do not
become at-risk. Interventions used to
achieve primary prevention goals are
universal—all students are exposed in
the same way at the same level. A n example of this kind of strategy is teaching conflict resolution, emotional literacy, and anger-management procedures
on a schoolwide (i.e., universal) basis.
Primary prevention is much like putting fluoride in a community's water
supply in order to prevent dental cavi-
mildly at-risk students from a path leading to negative developmental outcomes. In our view, these approaches
are greatly underutilized in the majority of today's schools, where their impact could be maximized.
Chronic
Tertiary Prevention (Wraparound, Comprehensive Interventions):
(Life Course
^
,,.,:.
,
. ,
Persistent)
* Connection of children, youth and caregivers to community-based
social service agencies;
• Development of individually-tailored, wraparound interventions;
• Significant family involvement in planning and treatment activities;
• Coordination with social service agencies, law enforcement,
courts, and corrections;
• Drug-alcohol counseling;
• Alternative placements such as day-treatment centers, specialized
schools, residential environments;
FIGURE 3. Correspondence between target student type and universal-selected intervention approaches.
EMOTIONAL
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201
other words, such students select them'
selves out for more intensive interventions by demonstrating their nonresponsiveness to the universal or schoolwide
interventions and their corresponding
need for more powerful, individualized
intervention supports and services.
Secondary prevention is much like
increasing one's scheduled visits to the
dentist because of an increased susceptibility (e.g., soft or thin enamel) for
dental cavities or initiating an orthodontic intervention because of teeth
crowding. Examples of such strategies
might include small-group social skills
lessons; behavioral contracting; specialized tutoring; and the provision of
such services as remedial reading programs, at-risk counseling, and Big
Brother/Sister.
Tertiary Prevention Strategies
Tertiary prevention is appropriate for
severely involved, intractable students
who display a life-course-persistent pattern of antisocial behavior that usually
involves delinquent activities and sometimes violence and social destructiveness (Moffitt, 1994). In our dental analogy, individuals at this level would be
candidates for significant cavity repairs,
root canals, bridges, and other expensive forms of dental care. Successful
intervention for this student population
must be (a) comprehensive, (b) initiated early, and (c) in evidence over the
long term, and must involve parents,
teachers, and peers. As a rule, wraparound, interagency approaches to intervention that are collaborative in nature
are required to help students who fit
this profile (Kukic, 1995).
Interventions are comprehensive in
that a team of individuals is involved,
including parents, community agency
personnel (e.g., juvenile corrections,
mental health, child and family welfare
services), educators (general and special), administrators, and support staff
(e.g., school psychologists, counselors).
More specifically* interventions are
based on comprehensive assessments of
the problem and the organization of
strategies that incorporate information
obtained from these assessments. The
result is a specially designed, highly
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EMOTIONAL
AND
individualized, comprehensive intervention that directly involves a cadre of
concerned individuals who are committed to a long-term system of care
(Cumblad, Epstein, Keeney, Marty, &
Soderlund, 1996; Epstein et al., 1993;
VanDerBerg & Grealish, 1996). Interventions at this level must involve, at a
minimum, the three social agents who
have the greatest impact on the lives of
children and youth (i.e., parents, teachers, and peers).
Fully Integrated Approaches
School-site intervention approaches
that encompass all three of these prevention levels or types are needed
(Dryfoos, 1990; Knitzer, Steinberg, &
Fleisch, 1990). Unfortunately, few
schools implement all forms of prevention in their buildings, and, if they do,
their efforts are rarely coordinated or
interfaced with others involved in a
student's schooling. To be maximally
effective, prevention approaches and the
interventions comprising them must be
directly linked to and coordinated with
each other within the context of a
school site and its four systems of behavior support (i.e., schoolwide, specific setting, classroom, and individual
student). Failure at one level of prevention provides an implicit assessment
that the student requires exposure to
more powerful, intensive interventions
at the next level of prevention (i.e.,
those students who do not respond to
the primary-level intervention components are then referred to the more intensive one-to-one strategies contained
in the secondary prevention level).
Similarly, those students who do not
respond at this level would move to the
third level and be exposed, along with
their families, teachers, and peers, to a
comprehensive, collaborative, and intensive wraparound intervention.
As a result, the failure of an at-risk
student to respond to a well-designed,
well-implemented intervention at any
of these three levels offers an assessment indicating that more powerful,
intensive, and/or comprehensive approaches are needed. For example, failure at the secondary prevention level
would probably indicate the need for
BEHAVIORAL
DISORDERS,
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1996
an alternative structured classroom or
community-based program, or some
other more intensive intervention.
However, it should be noted that the
failure of a student, or a group of students, to respond to a poorly implemented intervention provides little
assessment information regarding the
need for additional/alternative placements or interventions.
In a fully integrated approach of this
type, it is expected that the adjustment
problems of approximately 75% to 85%
of a school's students can be solved with
well-implemented, primary prevention
strategies of a universal nature (Reid,
1993). A majority of the remaining students should respond to individually
administered secondary prevention interventions of a more intensive nature.
The very small number of remaining
students who do not respond to this
next level of intervention (secondary
prevention) would be candidates for a
tertiary prevention strategy.
The implementation costs associated
with these three levels increase as one
moves along the continuum. Many universal interventions can be implemented
on a schoolwide basis for relatively small
investments (e.g., $10 to $15 per student annually), whereas tertiary interventions often cost $25,000 or more
per application. The ultimate goal of
this overall approach is to retain as many
students as possible at the primary and
secondary intervention levels and to
reduce the number who require tertiary
interventions. The economic and social
implications of this outcome are of critical importance to the health and viability of schools. Unless schools invest
more aggressively in early intervention
approaches at the point of school entry
and beyond, it is unlikely that the above
goal will be accomplished. In the next
section, the key features of interventions appropriate for these prevention
approaches are illustrated and selected
examples given (Zigler, Taussig, &
Black, 1992).
MODEL INTERVENTIONS
Descriptions of interventions appropriate for each of the three levels of prevention are provided in this section.
VOL.
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These interventions represent preferred
practices and have demonstrated efficacy when implemented with acceptable levels of treatment integrity.
Universal Interventions for
Primary Prevention Applications
As noted above, universal, schoolwide
interventions are used at the primary
prevention level. Examples of these
kinds of interventions are (a) development of a schoolwide discipline program, (b) presentation of a schoolwide
social skills training program, or (c) the
schoolwide teaching of anger management and conflict-resolution strategies.
Universal interventions can be divided into two types: (a) mandatory or
required, and (b) optional or based upon
need. With regard to required or mandatory interventions, every elementary
school should consider having two components in place at all times: (a) a wellthought-out and carefully implemented
schoolwide discipline plan, and (b) systematic application of what has been
learned over the past two decades about
effective schooling and teaching. If
implemented with treatment integrity,
these two interventions would likely
make significant contributions in establishing an effective, high-performance
school that produces desired outcomes
for a majority of students. We consider
them to be a mandatory part of any
school-based, primary prevention strategy designed to address antisocial behavior patterns among at-risk students.
Both of these universal interventions
are ideally suited for consideration, design, and implementation by school site
councils and schoolwide assistance
teams, with the participation of entire
school staffs. The knowledge bases for
effective teaching and schooling as well
as for the establishment of schoolwide
discipline systems are well developed.
There are many reference sources and
materials representing preferred practices that can be implemented effectively. The Association for Supervision
and Curriculum Development (ASCD),
for example, has developed a superb staff
inservice program for implementing the
knowledge base on effective schooling
JOURNAL
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EM
and teaching at a local school-building
level. The ASCD package contains
implementation and training manuals
as well as videotapes that demonstrate
effective schooling/teaching practices in
operation. This staff development package is derived from solid research and
builds an implementation process for
applying this knowledge in a practical,
feasible manner at the building and
classroom levels (see Note 1).
Similarly, Walker, Colvin, and
Ramsey (1995) provided detailed guidelines and examples that show how to
set up and monitor effective schoolwide
discipline programs. Sprick, Sprick, and
Garrison (1992) also presented extensive information and guidelines on how
to set up policies governing schoolwide
discipline procedures. Colvin, Kameenui, and Sugai (1993) and Colvin,
Sugai, and Kameenui (1994) offered a
reconceptualized curriculum for developing, implementing, and sustaining
schoolwide discipline systems that are
comprehensive, proactive, and instructional. In this curriculum, structures and
procedures for facilitating staff development, team-based decision making,
and sustained effort are emphasized.
At the optional level, additional
universal interventions can be considered, depending upon a schooPs selfassessment of need. These interventions address violence prevention and
bullying/mean-spirited teasing. Violence
prevention and school safety are emerging as major themes of concern in U.S.
school systems. Mean-spirited teasing
and bullying is an escalating problem
that many schools are experiencing.
Traditionally, schools have not done
very well in controlling this obnoxious,
and potentially damaging, form of
behavior. More ominously, it often
transforms into sexual harassment in
the upper elementary and middle school
grades as students mature. Parents of
school-age girls are becoming increasingly concerned about this phenomenon
(Garrity, Jens, Porter, Sager, & ShortCamilli, 1994).
The OJJDPs (1995) Guide for lmple*
meriting a Comprehensive Strategy for
Serious, Violent and Chronic Juvenile
Offenders provides an excellent review
of curricular intervention programs for
preventing violence, enhancing school
safety, and developing a positive school
climate. Two exemplary curricular programs of this type are briefly described
next.
Among the most widely accepted
curricular programs recently available
for violence prevention in schools is
the Second Step program as developed
and published by the Committee for
Children, a nonprofit agency based in
Seattle. Second Step is a kindergarten
through Grade 8 violence prevention
curriculum that teaches four essential
skills to all students: empathy, impulse
control, problem solving, and anger
management/conflict resolution. The
Second Step curriculum is designed to
be taught at each grade level and is
sequenced to take into account the
developing maturity and cognitive ability of students in the K-8 grade range.
This program contains both school and
parent involvement components and is
being widely adopted by school districts
nationally even though it is relatively
new. Because the program requires training, it contains curricular materials and
parent handbooks for each developmental level. The curriculum's content is
taught by classroom teachers using the
same instructional procedures as for
teaching academic content. Second Step
contains 30 skills that are taught for
approximately 30 minutes daily over an
extended implementation period (i.e.,
3 to 6 months). Symbolic modeling,
problem solving, role plays, discussion,
question and answer, and responding
to carefully structured and visually presented scenarios are used to teach content.
Evaluation studies reported by the
Committee for Children of the Second
Step curricular program (Committee for
Children, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992) indicate that: (a) perspective taking and
social problem-solving skills improved
significantly following participation in
the program, and (b) Second Step students showed superior skill levels over
matched control students in their responses to hypothetical social-conflict
situations. A 3-year longitudinal study
is currently underway to assess the
TIONAL
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program's long-term impact on student
attitudes and behavior. It is important
to note that this program and those
like it have not been shown, as yet, to
actually prevent violence, even though
they address directly some, of the precursors of violent behavior (see Note
2).
The Heartsprings Institute in Tucson, Arizona, has recently developed a
program called PeaceBuilders that is
designed to create a culture or ecology
of peace in a school. Peace as a concept
is systematically taught and is presented
as something that people have to work
at continuously for its development and
maintenance. PeaceBuilders is designed
for use with students and schools in the
kindergarten through Grade 5 range; it
is a brilliantly conceptualized universal
intervention that is based on a strong
research foundation, and it is user
friendly.
The impact of the program has been
rigorously evaluated using indicators
that reflect actual student behavior (e.g.,
visits to the school nurse's office for
injuries associated with fighting; Embry,
1996; Embry & Flannery, 1996; Embry,
Flannery, Vazsonyi, Powell, & Atha,
1996). The PeaceBuilders program contains a number of attractive games and
activities for use in building an atmosphere of peace, and students, school
staff, and parents within the intervention are involved in a coordinated, interactive fashion. PeaceBuilders is a highly
recommended preferred practice in
teaching prosocial forms of behavior
that reduce and prevent conflict (see
Note 3).
Selected Interventions for
Secondary and Tertiary
Prevention
As noted, those students who fail to
respond to universal interventions will
require exposure to secondary and/or
tertiary prevention approaches in order
to adequately address their problems.
At-risk students showing life-coursepersistent antisocial behavior patterns
very likely will not respond sufficiently
to universal interventions. Brief descriptions of three empirically based inter-
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ventions for antisocial children and
youth that address secondary and tertiary prevention goals are described next.
Fast Track is a comprehensive, longterm study of a child-family-school
intervention for diverting young children from a path leading to antisocial
behavior patterns (Coie, 1994). A
multisite study, it involves a broad array
of investigators who implement identical intervention and evaluation procedures that address children at risk for
developing antisocial behavior patterns.
Fast Track is designed to forge home
and school partnerships to address the
needs and problems of at-risk students
and their families prior to escalation
into crisis situations. This intervention
is one of the most comprehensive ever
developed for mounting effective prevention strategies of a secondary nature.
Dishion and his colleagues (Dishion
& Andrews, 1995; Dishion, Patterson,
& Grisler, 1994; Dishion, Patterson,
Stoolmiller, & Skinner, 1991) have
developed the Adolescent Transitions
Program for intervention with adolescents and their families having elevated
risk status for drug/alcohol involvement
and antisocial behavior patterns. This
intervention program contains separate
curricular and behavioral intervention
procedures targeted for parents and adolescents, respectively. Both program
components involve handbooks, group
and individual sessions, video scenarios
that teach problem-solving skills, and
social contingencies designed to support integration of the newly taught
skills into each person's behavioral repertoire. Systematic evaluations of the
Adolescent Transitions Program indicated that it produces a range of positive outcomes in comparison to control,
noninvolved antisocial students (see
Note 4).
Finally, the First Steps early intervention program for antisocial kindergartners is appropriate for use primarily
in secondary prevention approaches.
First Steps is a preferred practices intervention program designed to divert
at-risk kindergartners from a path leading to costly antisocial behavior patterns. It consists of three modules
designed to be used in concert with each
AND BEHAVIORAL
DISORDERS,
OCTOBER
other: (a) a universal, schoolwide
screening procedure to detect at-risk
students; (b) a school intervention involving the target student, peers, and
teachers that teaches an adaptive,
prosocial pattern of school behavior; and
(c) a home intervention component that
provides parent training in skills to help
the child succeed in school (i.e., cooperation, listening, accepting limits, communication, sharing, problem solving,
making friends, and developing confidence and self-esteem).
First Steps is a preferred intervention for use with students who show
the early signs of antisocial behavior at
the point of school entry. This program
has been rigorously evaluated using adult
ratings of student behavior and direct
behavioral observations of target students in classroom and playground settings (Walker, Kavanagh, et al., 1995;
see Note 5).
The Effective Behavioral
Support Program
The Effective Behavioral Support Program (EBS) has been researched extensively by Sugai and Horner (1994) and
is a whole-school approach to addressing the problems posed by antisocial
students and to coping with challenging forms of student behavior. EBS is a
model comprehensive, school-based
intervention and has the following key
features, as elaborated in Sugai and
Horner (1994):
1. Problem behaviors are defined clearly
for students and staff members;
2. The factors that trigger and maintain these problem behaviors are
identified;
3. Development of the intervention is
based on information about what
triggers and maintains problem behaviors;
4. More appropriate, alternative behaviors are defined for students and staff;
5. Students are taught these alternative behaviors directly and given assistance to acquire the necessary skills
to enable the desired behavior
change;
6. Effective incentives and motivational
systems are developed and imple-
1996, VOL. 4, N O . 4
merited to encourage students to
behave differently;
7. Staff are committed to staying with
the intervention over the long term
and to monitoring, supporting,
coaching, debriefing, and providing
"booster shots" as necessary to maintain the achieved gains;
8. Staff receive training and regular
feedback about effective implementation of the interventions; and,
9. Systems for measuring and monitoring the intervention's effectiveness
are established and implemented.
past decade. Research indicates that
multiple family, school, and community factors are involved as causal agents
in these trends (Hawkins, 1996;
Hawkins & Catalano, 1992; Patterson
et al., 1992). For example, the presence
of antisocial behavior is more likely
when children and youth experience
the following risk factors: (a) family
management strategies that are punitive, inconsistent, and lacking in careful monitoring and supervision of children's activities, whereabouts, and
affiliations; (b) neighborhoods and communities that provide antisocial netThese intervention features and char- works, endorse antisocial attitudes and
acteristics are an essential part of the behavior, and lack prosocial activity
EBS intervention approach, which is alternatives for young people; and
based upon lines of empirical inquiry (c) school environments that have puthat have led to the development of nitive disciplinary approaches, unclear
preferred practices. These practices are rules and expectations, high rates of
predictive of demonstrated efficacy in academic failure, and poor accommoenhancing schooling and socialization dation of individual differences. Lifeoutcomes for at-risk antisocial students, course-persistent patterns of antisocial
as reviewed by Mayer (1995). The EBS behavior are likely to be in evidence if
approach addresses all three types of proactive, early prevention strategies
prevention in a coordinated fashion and and comprehensive, risk-reduction/
provides appropriate intervention pro- protective-factor-enhancement intercedures for applications at schoolwide, vention approaches are not implespecific setting, classroom, and indi- mented to address these conditions.
vidual student levels.
On a larger level, a body of research
Schools, social service agencies, and and policy in the field of sociology promental health clinics are seeing increas- vides persuasive evidence that lack of
ing numbers of at-risk children and social support—as opposed to simple,
youth and their families who are in long-term exposure to the above risk
desperate need of selected interventions factors as well as to criminal behavior,
that address secondary and tertiary pre- activities, and cultures—plays a key role
vention goals. Effective collaborations in crime (Cullen, 1984; Sykes & Cullen,
among professionals within these agen- 1992). Social support refers to providcies and systems will be required to ing psychological or emotional nurturaddress the complex needs and the pre- ance and/or material goods and assistsenting challenges of this student popu- ance through relationships, support
lation. The just cited examples of networks, and institutions (House, 1981;
interventions for at-risk antisocial stu-. Vaux, 1988). Cullen (1994) argued that
dents are indicative of the escalating the United States has higher rates of
costs and comprehensiveness of ap- serious crime than other industrialized
proaches that are required to cope with nations because it is a less supportive
continuing increases in the scope and society and that our investment in social
magnitude of this problem.
support strategies at institutional, community, family, and peer/individual
levels would be an effective buffer in
CONCLUSION
the current struggles with youth crime
The increasing incidence and preva- and violence.
The observations of Stamper (1996)
lence of antisocial behavior patterns
among youth in our schools and com- regarding the escalation in building prismunities are undeniable trends of the ons and a continued reliance upon
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punishment-based coping strategies as
clear indicators of U.S. society's failure
to proactively address crime-related risk
factors have the ring of truth and fit
well into this social support paradigm.
As a society, we need to arrive at a
consensus that violence in all forms as
well as its attitudinal and behavioral
precursors are unacceptable. At the same
time, however, we need to develop a
more empathic and socially supportive
posture toward those at-risk children
and youth who, through no fault of their
own, are victimized by long-term exposure to crime-related risk factors they
cannot control.
Our society in general and our
schools in particular need to alter their
normative expectations and beliefs
toward implementing more positive,
socially supportive strategies for the
broad range of at-risk children and
youth. Changes in such norms will occur
only in conjunction with broad recognition of the value and cost benefits of
prevention initiatives. The OJJDP
(1995) has been a particularly effective
force in this regard within the field of
juvenile corrections. A coalition of organizations representing educators at all
levels needs to take the lead in forging
a national debate about the role of
schools and schooling in diverting atrisk children from a path leading to a
host of negative developmental outcomes that often include delinquency,
violence, and incarceration.
Fortunately, we have preferred and
promising prevention practices at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels that
enable us to target at-risk children and
youth very early in their school careers
and to intervene comprehensively with
such students and the key social agents
in their lives (i.e., families, teachers,
and peers). These practices have the
potential to reduce and/or eliminate risk
factors and to develop and enhance
protective factors that can redirect children and youth away from damaging
antisocial lifestyles and outcomes. Unfortunately, efforts to adopt, implement,
and sustain these programs have been
disjointed, reactive, and often unsystematic. Adoption of practices with
questionable effectiveness and cost effiOCTOBER
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ciency is also a not infrequent occurrence among many school districts.
Clearly, we need to establish policies,
standards, and processes that enable
practitioners to make informed decisions about the adoption of practices
that are trustworthy, accessible, and
usable. Equally important, we need to
implement behavioral support systems
that are proactive, instructional, sustained, and comprehensive.
As noted earlier, fully integrated
approaches are required that are sufficiently comprehensive and powerful to
provide full and complete solutions to
the problems that antisocial children
and youth are presenting to schools and
educators. Typically, we have underestimated or refused to accept the investments required to help these students.
To date, we have not come close to
reaching the necessary threshold, or
"tipping point," for successfully realizing or even approximating this goal.
Until society is willing to adequately
support schools in this effort, educators
will continue to be challenged by barriers that make a successful outcome less
likely. However, in the absence of this
development, schools can still do a great
deal to adopt and promote preferred
practices that detect at-risk children
early and put them in contact with essential and effective program services.
The data presented in Figure 4 provide a graphic example of how schools
do not generally respond proactively to
the early social-behavioral adjustment
problems of at-risk students. Figure 4
contains a record of the number of public school students identified and served
as severely emotionally disturbed, by age
level, for the eight western states composing Region 6 of the Office of Special Education Programs' service system.
These statistics were derived from child
count data contained in the Office's
annual report to the U.S. Congress, and
they represent the 1990-1991 school
year. Unlike referrals for academic performance and learning problems, which
peak between Grades 2 and 3 (Lloyd,
Kauffman, Landrum, & Roe, 1991),
these data indicate that school accommodation of students having serious
behavioral adjustment problems follows
a very different pattern.
206
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AND
The results suggest that many, perhaps most, behaviorally at-risk students
are referred to and access services well
after the point when their problems can
be successfully remediated (Kazdin,
1987). Ideally, this figure should show
a mirror image reversal, with the vast
majority of at-risk students identified
as early as possible in their school careers. There are enormous political,
bureaucratic, philosophical, and fiscal
barriers among school systems to adopting a policy that would make this outcome a reality. However, until schools
change their posture in this regard, effective accommodation of the growing atrisk student population will continue
to be problematic—and very expensive.
The prevention approaches highlighted in this article are ideally suited
for adoption and use by school sites,
particularly at the elementary level,
where their impact is likely to be greatest. However, these approaches are not
likely to produce acceptable benefits and
outcomes at any developmental level if
they are not implemented with accept-
able levels of treatment integrity or
implementation fidelity. In particular,
schools and school systems must make
the following commitments:
1. Address the problem and develop
solutions to antisocial violent behavior from a schoolwide perspective-,
2. Respond in a way that considers the
multiple systems that interact in a
schoolwide organization;
3. Establish a long-term plan that places
the school's sustained commitment
to developing solutions as one of the
top three school improvement goals for
the building;
4. Obtain a commitment from all staff
members to work toward a comprehensive and proactive solution to the
problem of antisocial and violent
behavior;
5. Emphasize a proactive and instructionbased approach across the three levels
of prevention (primary, secondary,
and tertiary);
6. Establish an active role for administrator participation and involvement in
45,000 -]
FIGURE 4. Number of students by age level served as seriously emotionally disturbed (SED)
in eight western U.S. states for the 1990-1991 school year.
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the design, i m p l e m e n t a t i o n , and
supervision/monitoring of a comprehensive plan to address antisocial
behavior in the context of schooling;
7. Strive toward continually increasing
the behavioral capacity and resources
of the building;
8. Establish a team-based approach for
the development, implementation,
management, and evaluation of a
schoolwide response to enhancing
the school climate and to decreasing
the amount and effects of antisocial
and violent behavior.
School systems and school building
sites are ideally positioned to take a
lead role in the prevention and remediation of destructive and potentially violent behavior patterns that usually lead
to a host of negative developmental
outcomes over the long term. They can
screen and identify at-risk students early
in their school careers and expose them
to the comprehensive interventions that
will make a difference in their school
careers and lives. In addition, schools
represent an important contributor in
wraparound efforts, which attempt to
integrate all the services needed to meet
the pervasive needs of children and
youth with antisocial and violent behavior. For many such children and youth
and their families, schools represent the
most predictable, consistent, normalized, and prosocial environment available on a daily basis. W e must take
advantage of the opportunities made
available by the schooling process.
T h e evidence regarding long-term
outcomes associated with such early
intervention indicates that it prevents
delinquency years later, reduces teen
pregnancy rates, contributes to school
success, and teaches students about the
relationship between choice and consequences (Behrman, 1995; Zigler et al.,
1992). In order to successfully address
the rising tide of violence and destructive behavior that is consuming our
schools, communities, and families, such
approaches must be carefully considered, planned, and supported via the
necessary community investments. Further, these investments must be early,
proactive, comprehensive, and sustained
JOURNAL
OF
over the long term. Early intervention
can be a highly cost-effective strategy
in reducing violent crime (Greenwood,
1995).
W e have excellent examples of promising and preferred practices, and we
can make accurate statements about
effective approaches and practices that
are likely to have a significant effect
and produce desirable outcomes. However, policies, structures, opportunities,
and contingencies must be in place that
ensure (a) a goodness-of-fit between
these preferred practices and the problem contexts that define the lives of
children and youth with antisocial
behavior and their families, and (b) a
sustained commitment toward implementation and evaluation over the long
term. Finally, we need to work toward
directing and redirecting our attention
in making prevention a high priority
for sustained funding, policy, and service delivery. Prevention works, and it
is well worth the investment.
About the Authors
HILL M. WALKER, PhD, is a co-director of
the Institute on Violence and Destructive
Behavior, director of the Center on Human
Development, and associate dean for Research and Outreach in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. He has
a long-standing interest in behavioral assessment and in the development of effective intervention procedures for use in school
settings with a range of behavior disorders.
His research interests include social skills
assessment, curriculum development and intervention, longitudinal studies of aggression and antisocial behavior, and the development of early screening procedures for
detecting students who are at-risk for socialbehavioral adjustment problems and/or later
school dropout. ROBERT H. HORNER, PhD,
is a professor of education at the University
of Oregon, director of the Specialized Training Program, and the Oregon UAP technical assistance coordinator. He has directed
numerous federal research, demonstration,
and personnel preparation projects. Many
of these projects involve activities and topic
areas related to research and development
work on residential support and employment for persons with severe disabilities,
instructional and behavioral support technology, and personnel training and staff
development. GEORGE SUGAI, PhD, is an
associate professor at the University of
EMOTIONAL
AND
BEHAVIORAL
DISORDERS,
Oregon in the College of Education. He
concentrates his research and personnel
preparation in the areas of behavior disorders; functional assessment; positive behavior support; general behavior management;
social skills instruction; and individual, classroom, and schoolwide discipline. MICHAEL
BULLIS, PhD, is an associate professor in
the Department of Special Education and
Community Resources at the University of
Oregon. His research interests include social
skills assessment and training, transition
programs for at-risk adolescents, and longitudinal research methods related to the transition process. JEFFREY R. SPRAGUE, PhD, is
an assistant professor and associate director
at the University of Oregon Institute on
Violence and Destructive Behavior. He has
directed federal projects related to statewide school, transition, and employment
systems change, self-advocacy, and severe
behavior disorders. DIANE BRICKER, PhD,
is a professor of special education at the
University of Oregon and the associate dean
of academic programs. She has directed a
number of national demonstration projects
and research efforts focused on examining
the efficacy of early intervention; the development of a linked assessment, intervention,
and evaluation system; and the study of a
comprehensive, parent-focused screening
tool. MARTIN J. KAUFMAN, PhD, is a professor and dean of the College of Education,
and co-administrator of the Oregon Center
for Leadership at the University of Oregon.
His research and training interests include
development of educational and community
leadership and system capacities needed to
create results-driven learning organizations
able to achieve successful outcomes for all.
Address: Hill M. Walker, Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior, University
of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1265.
Authors' Note
The development of this article was supported, in part, by the Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior (IVDB) in
the College of Education at the University
of Oregon. The IVDB is focused on the
prevention of violence and destructive
behavior at the point of school entry and
beyond.
Notes
1. The package is available by writing or calling the Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development, 1250 N. Pitt
St., Alexandria, VA 22314; 703/549-9110.
2. Information about the Second Step program can be obtained by writing to the
OCTOBER
1996,
VOL.
4,
NO.
4
Committee for Children. (1990). Second Dryfoos, J. (1990). Adolescents at risk. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Step, Grades 6-8, Pilot project 1989-90,
Summary report. Seattle: Author.
Elam, S., Rose, L , & Gallup, A. (1994).
Committee for Children. (1992). EvaluaThe 26th annual Phi Delta Kappan Gallup
tion of Second Step, Preschool-kindergarten, poll of the public's attitudes toward the
A violence-prevention curriculum kit. Se- public schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 26, 4 2 attle: Author.
56.
Committee for Children. (1996). Preven- Embry, D. E. (1996, March). Prevention of
youth violence: Pathways to resiliency durtion update. Newsletter of the Committee
ing elementary-school years with television
for Children, January. (Available from the
and school-based interventions. Paper preCommittee for Children, 2203 Airport
sented to the Society for Research on
Way S., Suite 500, Seattle, WA 98134Adolescence, Boston.
2027)
Council on Crime in America. (1996). The Embry, D. E., & Flannery, D. (1996). Two
sides of the coin: Prevention and interstate of violent crime in America. Washvention to reduce youth violent behavington, DC: Council on Crime in Amerior. In D. Flannery & R. Huff (Eds.), Youth
ica, The New Citizen Project.
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