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FROM MEETING, VISIONS OF HOPE FOR STUDENT PROGRAMS

September 16, 1999

WASHINGTON -- The Center for Effective Collaboration and Practice kicked off its three-day meeting Wednesday with a national satellite teleconference showcasing three behavioral intervention success stories in Rhode Island, Maryland, and Florida. "Promising Practices for Safe and Effective Schools," transmitted live to more than 1,000 downlink sites around the country, featured examples of programs that apply to both special education and general education students.

In Maryland, the East Baltimore Mental Health Partnership's service is written into the individualized education plans of students with disabilities who also have mental health problems, according to School-based Program Director Gayle Porter. The program addresses students with multiple problems by partnering with other local agencies to make sure all of a student's needs are addressed. Mental health and community services are offered on school grounds, to ensure all students have access to the program, Porter said. A school-based clinician coordinates the students' services and ensures individualized education plans are followed, while also educating the students' families on how they can help the students.

All service providers and student advocates involved in the program meet monthly to discuss overall issues the program faces and ensure the services remain effective and relevant for individual cases. The program also deliberately reaches out to families to ensure they are aware of the services their students are receiving and are participating in the students' development. Families, according to Families Involved Together Parent Coordinator Angela Vaughn Lee, should be considered the key players in collaborative student service programs. "If we want our children to be successful and to win, then we have to put families at the head of the table," she said.

Families rarely have to be coerced with mandatory parental or guardian participation, Vaughn Lee added. Most families want their children to get the help they need, but they do not know where to seek that help, she said.

Program administrators also ask teachers what help they need to be effective partners in the program, Porter said. Most often, teachers seek assistance developing classroom management techniques and identifying student problems the East Baltimore Mental Health Partnership can address. School counselors also play significant roles, as links between the program and students' families and as the triage component. Often the first staff members to see students with behavioral problems, Porter said, the school counselors and psychologists help identify at-risk students the program needs to make contact with.

Middle School Students Get an Anger Outlet

While the East Baltimore program provides intensive services for students with multiple or severe problems, a new program in Westerly, R.I., provides early intervention services for all types of students, with and without disabilities. The Westerly Integrated Social Services Program seeks to head off violent and other outbursts through peer counseling and other services in a dedicated program center based in the town's middle school. WISSP, staffed by a school psychologist, support staff and student volunteers, is a place students are sent when they need time out during class to deal with anger and other feelings or problems that could lead to violent or destructive behavior.

In addition to conducting peer conferences in the WISSP center, the student volunteers manage a student helpline troubled students can call to find out where to turn with their problems. Students can also get coursework help from peer and adult tutors and find out how to take advantage of other community services.

Getting the funds needed to staff such a center and carving out space for it in an already crowded school are significant challenges, WISSP Coordinater Sally Mitchell said. But she and other program developers argue the battle is worth the results, because an early intervention program saves the school and community the greater costs of adjudication and law enforcement a student without these services may later require. WISSP raises awareness and helps teachers identify at-risk students without having to take the more drastic steps of suspending or expelling the students, Mitchell said. The program also makes a specific effort to keep the teachers connected with the students' progress and treatment at the center, she said.

According to David Osher, of the American Institutes of Research, early intervention programs such as WISSP significantly reduce the need for special education placements by taking a closer look at the varied factors that contribute to a student's classroom misbehavior.

Prevention to Start

An elementary school in Tampa, Fla., tackles student behavioral problems at an even earlier point - before many of them begin. Project ACHIEVE teaches children to stop and think before acting on feelings of frustration and anger. Its reach goes beyond school to the community and students' homes, as employees of local businesses and families are taught to reinforce the same anger management methods teachers and school personnel teach at Tampa's Cleveland Elementary. The program also teaches the children basic manners and accountability for their words, actions and academic achievement.

The program relies heavily on parent participation, through their physical presence in the school, Director Cathy Valdes said. The biggest step toward persuading parents in Cleveland's low income neighborhood to participate was educating them about how the program works and its benefits, she said. School staff made home visits to spread the word, sent videos home with students to demonstrate the program and explained it during parent-teacher conferences. Once they understood the value, she said, parents were easy to entice to volunteer in the school and help reinforce the rules on a daily basis.

Project ACHIEVE organizers urge local businesses to display posters reinforcing the program's principles. The group also solicits donations of money, time and in-kind services from local businesses. Doing so not only eases pressure on the program's budget but also gives the local community a stake or sense of ownership of the program and the future of those students, Valdes said.

In all three programs, as with several others demonstrated during the three-day CECP conference, program organizers stressed the inherent benefits of involving multiple social service providers, families and communities in helping students deal with behavioral issues. As U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley said, the health of society is at stake. Noting the country is currently in the midst of one of its strongest economic years ever, Riley said, "If we don't educate our children, if we let violence take over in our communities, we won't have a [budget] surplus for long."8