overview of items from the Center

Engaging and Re-engaging Students and Families: Four Units for Continuing Education

This set of CE units is available to any and all. The units provides a perspective on motivation that goes beyond mainly reinforcing and enforcing behavior. The emphasis is on:

expanding understanding of engagement, re-engagement, and intrinsic motivation in the context of school improvement and school climate

highlighting strategic approaches to engaging and re-engaging students, with special attention to avoiding over-reliance on extrinsic reinforcers and minimizing practices that can produce reactance

engaging and re-engaging families by attending to differences among families and other primary care-takers with respect to resources, motivation and needs, and barriers to involvement with the school

stressing that teachers can’t and should not be expected to do it all alone. Rather, their work needs to be embedded into a unified and comprehensive system of learning supports and that system should be built with a view to engaging and re-engaging students, families, and all the professional who have a stake in improving schools.

Unit I: Motivation: Time to Move Beyond Behavior Modification –
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/engagei.pdf

Unit II: Strategic Approaches to Enhancing Student Engagement and Re engagement –
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/engageii.pdf

Unit III. Enhancing Family Engagement and Re-engagement – http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/engageiii.pdf

Unit IV: Embedding Engagement and Re-engagement into a Unified and Comprehensive System of
Student and Learning Supports – http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/engageiv.pdf

RTI and Classroom & Schoolwide Learning Supports: Four Units for Continuing Education

As formulated and practiced RTI often is too limited in how it frames what needs to go on to enable learning, engage students, and keep them engaged. In particular, it pays too little attention to the need to strengthen the classroom and schoolwide context in ways that enhance the effectiveness of the strategy. These four units of continuing education focus on:

Unit I: Response to Intervention: Improving Conditions for Learning in the Classroom

Unit II: Implementing Response to Intervention Sequentially & Effectively

Unit III. Response to Intervention: Beyond Personalization

Unit IV: Pursuing Response to Intervention as One Strategy in a Comprehensive System of Student and Learning Supports http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/dbsimple2.asp?primary=2311&number=9897

The emphasis is on how leadership changes can undermine efforts to sustain a unified and comprehensive system of learning supports. Strategies are outlined for minimizing such an impact.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/newleader.pdf

Rethinking District Budgets to Unify and Sustain a Critical Mass of Student and Learning Supports at Schools

Education cut-backs are likely to worsen in the short run. This makes it imperative for policy makers to reverse trends toward lopsided cutbacks that decimate efforts to address factors interfering with learning and teaching. Furthermore, it is essential to move forward in more cost-effective ways by unifying student and learning supports and braiding remaining categorical funding in ways that reduce redundancy and counterproductive competition for sparse resources. This brief highlights these matters.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/financebudget.pdf

This report briefly highlights seven fundamental matters that require much greater policy attention in all discussions about improving teacher performance, student outcomes, and reduced rates of teacher and student dropout. Discussed are (1) salaries, (2) recruitment, (3) preservice professional preparation, (4) induction into the profession, (5) personalized on-the-job (inservice) learning, (6) student and learning supports, and (7) a career ladder.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/newteach.pdf

Enhancing Home Involvement to Address Barriers to Learning: A Collaborative Process

For schools to significantly enhance home involvement will require (1) broadening the focus beyond thinking only in terms of parents and (2) enhancing the range of ways in which schools connect with primary caretakers. Particular attention must be given to outreaching to those who are reluctant to engage with the school, especially if they have a child who is not doing well. Also, to avoid marginalization and minimize fragmentation, it is essential to embed home involvement interventions into an overall approach for addressing factors interfering with school learning and performance and fully integrate the work into school improvement policy and practice.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/homeinv.pdf

“Not Another Team!” School Improvement Infrastructure Viewed through the Lens of Addressing Barriers to Learning and Teaching

This brief underscores the need to rethink the proliferation of school teams, work groups, and committees. While such mechanisms are essential to enhancing school improvement, they must be designed in a delimited way to carry out fundamental functions and must be fully integrated with each other. From a functional perspective, because of current marginalization and fragmentation, particular attention must be paid to mechanisms for developing a comprehensive system of student and learning supports.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/Team.pdf

This report focuses on the reality that the dropout situation is unlikely to improve as long as policy and practice fail to ensure students have a comprehensive system of student and learning supports. To highlight the intervention problem, the emphasis is on first comparing federal practice guidance recommendations for addressing the dropout problem with data about what schools are doing; then, we stress the need to embed dropout prevention into development of a unified and comprehensive component for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students at every school.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/drop.pdf

District Superintendents and the School Improvement Problem of
Addressing Barriers to Learning

This report begins with conclusions drawn from a wide range of research, reports, and other sources that convey what superintendents say is driving their work. The focus first is on what they identify as the challenges and frustrations of the job and what they say are factors interfering with student progress. Then, discussion turns to the insufficient way the majority of districts appear to address barriers to learning and teaching, and what some trailblazing superintendents are doing to be more productive in this arena. Finally, implications are outlined for a central office organization that can more effectively enhance equal opportunity for all students to succeed at school and beyond.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/supt.pdf

Addressing Bullying: State Guidance to Districts and Schools
is Both Helpful and a Missed Opportunity

Some places are only meeting the letter of the law; others are working hard to address bullying by integrating the work into school improvement policy and practice. Here are some ideas and concerns that warrant thinking about! This resource (a)highlights state guidance, (b) discusses the trend to approach bullying as just another discrete initiative, and (c) stresses the opportunity to broaden the focus by embedding bullying concerns into a Comprehensive System of Learning Supports.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/bullying.pdf

Everyone agrees that schools should ensure a positive school climate. Less agreement exists, however, about what this means and how to accomplish it. This is especially so when the call is for developing a safe and supportive environment that also is nurturing and caring and that provides all students with an equal opportunity to succeed. Equity concerns are heightened when schools are viewed using the lens of how they interface with students who are struggling academically, acting out, and experiencing conflictual relationships with school staff and peers. Findings suggest that general strategies designed to enhance school climate often are insufficient for changing the perceptions of such students. This report draws on recent literature to briefly (1) discuss the construct of school climate and (2) outline ways to approach improving school climate that account for the full range of students enrolled in a school.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/schoolclimate.pdf

The ongoing dilemma for those expected to improve schools is how to meet our society's basic aims for public education in ways that level the playing field. The dilemma is exacerbated by the need to do more with less. This brief approaches these matters in the context of three direct functions that are essential to school improvement: (1) facilitation of learning and development, (2) addressing barriers to learning and teaching, and (3) managing resources and school governance. The emphasis is on the short shrift given in school improvement planning to developing a unified and comprehensive system for addressing barriers to learning and teaching. In particular, the brief outlines what is involved in transforming current student and learning supports into such a system, highlights pioneering work underway across the country, and cites resources for moving forward.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/functions.pdf

What Do Principals Say about Their Work?
Implications for Addressing Barriers to Learning and School Improvement

This brief highlights what principals say about their work, especially about how the job has changed and what factors most affect job performance and satisfaction. The data have been culled from various surveys, reports, interviews, and so forth published since 2000. Specific attention is given to the degree to which concerns about addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students are and are not discussed. Implications for school improvement are outlined.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/principalssay.pdf

The federal Promise Neighborhoods program underscores the importance of all children and youth having "access to great schools and strong systems of family and community support that will prepare them to attain an excellent education and successfully transition to college and a career." From this perspective, this brief stresses the importance for grantees to use what has been learned.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/purpromneig.pdf

Establishing a Comprehensive System of Learning Supports at a School: Seven Steps for Principals and Their Staff

Schools, districts, and state departments across the country are moving in new directions to address barriers to learning and teaching and to re-engage disconnected students. They are doing this by designing and developing a comprehensive system of student and learning supports and fully integrating it into school improvement policy and practice.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/7steps.pdf

Increasing use of terms such as learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has resulted in inappropriately assigning these diagnoses to too many students with common learning and behavior problems. Schools are struggling to reduce misdiagnoses through processes such as Response to Intervention (RTI). As an essential facet of meeting the challenge, this information resource puts LD and ADHD into the broader perspective of common learning and behavior problems.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/ldmisdiagnoses.pdf

What Every Leader for School Improvement Needs to Know About Student and Learning Supports

Every school is confronted with many concerns about improving students' achievement and well-being and enhancing school climate. While the emphasis shifts, there is constant pressure to do more about learning problems; bullying, harassment, and other forms of violence and acting out behavior at school; substance abuse; disconnected students; nonattendance; dropouts; teen pregnancy; suicide prevention; and on and on. Clearly, schools and districts that have many students who manifest problems such as these are especially challenged when it comes to increasing achievement test score averages.

Prevailing efforts to address such problems are not well conceived in school improvement policy and practice. Based on previous Center policy and practice analyses, this brief report provides a synthesis of (1) some key challenges for school improvement related to addressing barriers to learning and teaching and (2) implications for improving how schools deal with such challenges. Also included are (a) references to the Center analyses from which this synthesis was derived and (b) guides for leadership development.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/whateveryleader.pdf

Embedding Bullying Interventions into a Comprehensive System of Student and Learning Supports

Everybody agrees that school bullying is a major problem, but considerable controversy exists over the best way to address the problem. The following discussion presents (a) a brief analysis and synthesis of the current state of the art, (b) underscores the need to avoid another piecemeal set of policy and practice initiatives, and (c) stresses that the growing emphasis on school bullying provides an opportunity to accelerate development of a comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive system of student and learning supports. Implications for policy are presented.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/embeddingbullying.pdf

Beginning Steps in Personnel Development Related to Establishing a Comprehensive System of Learning Supports

Because the idea of developing a comprehensive system of learning supports for every school is relatively new, a critical element of capacity building involves professional development. The following is a brief guide to beginning personnel development for school staff (teachers, support staff, administrators) using free online resources. These resources are intended to provide an introduction to the concepts and practices that form a comprehensive system of learning supports and how to get such system development going at a school.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/personneldevelopment.pdf

Introducing the Idea of Developing a Comprehensive System of Learning Supports to a New Superintendent or to One Who May Be Ready to Move Forward

Superintendents are key to establishing school improvement policy and practice. Various states and districts where learning supports have been making headway have experienced superintendent turnover. In addition, we are hearing from various places that superintendents are increasingly ready to think about new directions for student and learning supports.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/introtosups.pdf

Response to intervention is meant to be broad-based and preventative. However, as formulated and practiced the approach often is too limited in how it frames what needs to go on to enable learning, engage students, and keep them engaged. In particular, it pays too little attention to the need to strengthen the classroom and schoolwide context in ways that enhance the effectiveness of response to intervention. This brief highlights ways to transform the context for implementing response to intervention. The emphasis is on a sequential classroom approach that personalizes instruction, then, if necessary, pursues specialized interventions in a hierarchical manner. Moreover, classroom interventions are understood as embedded in a comprehensive and systemic schoolwide framework for addressing barriers to learning and teaching and re-engaging disconnected students.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/implementingrti.pdf

Given dwindling budgets, collaborations that can enhance effective and efficient use of resources increase in importance. This is particularly important with respect to efforts at schools to provide student and learning supports. Schools that formally connect to work together can be more effective, realize economies of scale, and enhance the way sparse resources are used for intervention and capacity building. This brief (1) discusses the concept of a family of schools and the type of operational infrastructure that enables schools to connect formally and on a regular basis, (2) highlights examples of how a family of schools can enhance student and learning supports, and (3) suggests key policy implications.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/connectingschools.pdf

About Short-term Outcome Indicators for School Use and the Need for an Expanded Policy Framework

This brief (1) defines indicators, (2) places the concept into the context of the various ways indicators can be used in education, (3) explores some specific considerations and concerns that arise in evaluating results, (4) offers a categorization and examples of short-term outcome indicators for school use, and (5) stresses the need for policy makers to expand the accountability framework for schools.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/outind.pdf

Understanding Community Schools as Collaboratives for System Building to Address Barriers and Promote Well-Being

This brief reviews different agenda for establishing school-community connections in general and community schools specifically. A Comprehensive Community School is discussed as an entity that emerges from system building by school-family-community collaboratives. Establishing effective collaboratives requires policy that supports shared governance, a well-designed operational infrastructure, and the weaving together of overlapping institutional missions and resources. Policy implications for facilitating the types of systemic changes involved are underscored.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/communitycollab.pdf

Moving Beyond the Three Tier Intervention Pyramid Toward a Comprehensive Framework for Student and Learning Supports

Introduction into federal policy of response to intervention (RTI) and positive behavior intervention and supports (PBIS) led to widespread adoption and adaptation of the three tier intervention pyramid. As originally presented, the pyramid highlights three different levels of intervention and suggests the percent of students at each level. While the focus on levels has made a positive contribution, the pyramid is a one dimensional intervention framework. Continuing overemphasis on the pyramid is limiting development of the type of comprehensive intervention framework that policy and practice analyses indicate are needed to guide schools in developing a comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive system of student and learning supports.

This brief underscores the limitations of the pyramid as an intervention framework and illustrates a mulitdimensional intervention framework and the type of expanded school improvement policy that can foster development and implementation of a comprehensive and coherent system.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/briefs/threetier.pdf

Every student absence jeopardizes the ability of students to succeed at school and schools to achieve their mission. School attendance is a constant concern in schools. Average daily attendance rates are a common determiner of school funding, so schools funded on the basis of average daily attendance have less resources to do the job. Students who are not at school cannot receive instruction. Academic achievement scores are correlated with school attendance. Excessive school absence is a precursor of school dropout. Some youngsters who are truant from school engage in behaviors that are illegal. And the negative correlates related to school attendance problems go on and on.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/schoolattend.pdf

Embedding Mental Health into a Learning Supports Component:
An Essential Step for the Field to Take Now

The time has come for ending the counterproductive competition that arises from efforts that push separate, narrow agenda for student and learning supports. No single program or service can address the range of factors interfering with equity of opportunity to succeed at school for the large number of students affected. And the competition for resources resulting from separate advocacy for such programs and services, such as those associated with mental health in schools, is contributing to the continuing marginalization and resultant fragmentation of such endeavors and the fact that they reach only a small proportion of the many students who should be beneficiaries.

The bottom line in terms of policy is that it is time to adopt a comprehensive concept such as learning supports as the umbrella under which those who push for expanding the focus on mental (and physical) health must learn to embed themselves. A health agenda (and especially a clinical health agenda) by itself is too narrow to fit into the broad mission of schools in our society and is inadequate for enabling equity of opportunity for all students to succeed at school. We can continue to build a few islands of excellence (demonstrations, pilots) and "Cadillac models," but with over 90,000 schools in the U.S.A., the scale of need demands moving quickly in fundamentally new directions
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/embeddingmh.pdf

Moving student and learning supports out of a marginalized and fragmented status in school improvement policy and practice always has required integrating and redeploying existing resources. Education funding cutbacks are making such efforts even more pressing. With this in mind, the Louisiana Department of Education has gone on to develop a manual and tools to assist local education agencies in understanding how to integrate multiple funding sources to accomplish efforts such as the development of the state's design for a Comprehensive Learning System. http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/fundingstream.pdf

School Policy Alert: Improving Outcomes for Students and Schools Requires a Comprehensive System of Learning Supports

Enhancing equity of opportunity by enabling students to succeed at school is fundamental to turning around, transforming, and continuously improving schools. http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/improvingoutcomes.pdf

Teachers and student support staff are faced with a complex continuum of learner motivation. Student engagement involves not only engaging and maintaining engagement, but also re-engaging those who have disconnected from classroom instruction. For school personnel to do all this effectively, they must broaden their understanding of motivation, especially intrinsic mitivation, and the complex relationship between extrinsics and intrinsics. Unfortunately, maintaining engagement is a widespread problem in schools. Clearly, a prominent focus of school improvement efforts should be on how to (a) motivate the many students who are hard to engage and (b) re-engage those who have totally disengaged from classroom learning.
http://smhp.psych.ucla.edu/pdfdocs/schooleng.pdf

Collaborative Product with the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)