What are students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders also known by the
anacronym EBD students? EBD students like many students fall within the special
needs category of students and EBD students along with other students with all
sorts of disabilities fall into Florida’s ESE or Exceptional Student Education category
in public schools. The purpose of ESE is to help each child with a disability
progress in school and prepare for life after school. However, even with
planning and providing everything special needs students need to learn in
school some students do not meet those goals easily and these unique frequently
troublesome EBD students are one such group.
EBD students are children with all sorts of mental, behavioral, and
developmental disorders like ADHD, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Bipolar
Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Anxiety Disorder and so on and their numbers are
growing. It is estimated that one in seven children between the ages of two and
eight has either a mental, behavioral, or developmental disorder (Who Cares
About Kelsey). In many cases these children have been abused in unimaginable
ways, suffered extreme neglect, and for one reason or another have been
shuffled from one foster care home to another numerous times before they even
reach school age, but the issues EBD students have can be either biological or
environmental or quite often a combination of both. In general education
settings EBD students go far beyond being disruptive in class and are routinely
either spending their days in ISS (in school suspension) or getting OSS (out of
school suspension) and sent home. EBD students often get angry over the littlest
slights by others, can get frustrated over the smallest of things, and will occasionally
just go into a full-blown tirade or fit. Students with Emotional/Behavioral
Disorders (EBD) have been known to throw chairs, flip tables, desks, tear up
classrooms, and on occasion hurt other students or those who work with and
around them. However, no matter how bad these students behave or what some
people might think we must try to educate them because first every child has a
right to an education under the law, and second our failure to at least try to
educate them and help them toward a better life is just sending them on down to
the next stop on the freeway to social failure the criminal justice system (Rutherford,
Mathur, & Nelson, 2000).
What many people fail to realize is that money spent on education is
never a waste even if some things attempted do not work as well as expected
because the hard truth is it costs far less to educate young people than it
does to incarcerate them and the social costs of doing nothing or not trying is
even greater than the economic ones. As a result, people all over the country
have tried to figure out the best way to educate these challenging EBD
students. Some feel EBD children should be educated in their own school or what
is called a self-contained school while others think they should be educated in
self-contained classrooms within public schools. Research has shown that
specialized Emotional/Behavioral Disorder units, self-contained classrooms, in
public schools improve students educational and social skills.
In one study that focused on the academic performance of EBD students
from elementary age through middle school in self-contained schools that only
provided services to EBD students showed that both elementary and secondary age
groups scored far below the 25th percentile in math, written
expression, and reading and the secondary age group of students were shown to
have even lower skills in all math (Lane, Barton-Arwood, Nelson, & Wehby,
2007). Unlike other studies that used only standardized achievement tests, this
study used both curriculum-based measures as well as standardized achievement
tests to garner their results (Lane, Barton-Arwood, Nelson, & Wehby, 2007).
This study was not without some limitations, but the results did confirm the
results of previous studies on self-contained schools that reported substandard
academic performance as well as finding them deficient in other areas, like
socialization (Lane, Barton-Arwood, Nelson, & Wehby, 2007).
In another study that compared self-contained schools with self-contained classrooms to see if there was any difference in them. The results showed that the students educated in self-contained classrooms scored much higher academically than those educated in self-contained schools and again both standardized and curriculum-based measures were used in garnering the results (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). The students educated in self-contained classrooms had far better skills in math, reading comprehension, oral language, written language, and fluency than students educated in self-contained schools (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). However, there seemed to be no difference in socialization skills between the two groups, but the results of these skills were derived from teacher assessments. Researchers strongly believe that there is a difference here that favors those in self-contained classrooms and those differences are going unrecognized simply because teachers are not connected well enough with student peer culture to detect the differences (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005).
The researchers from the previous study did a part two of that study
where they again compared self-contained classrooms with self-contained schools
to see if there was any difference in them, but this time they followed EBD students
that had been placed in both of those settings at the start of the study for a
year (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). The results were like the first
study with somethings showing more of a difference and less in others (Lane,
Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). One significant change was that EBD
students educated in self-contained classrooms in this study showed better
scores in relation to social and behavioral aspects, so unlike the previous
study the social skills of these EBD students improved (Lane, Wehby, Little,
& Cooley, 2005). On the other hand, the social skills of students educated
in self-contained schools decreased noticeably (Lane, Wehby, Little, &
Cooley, 2005). EBD students in self-contained schools also showed significant
decreases in writing scores when compared to students in self-contained
classrooms (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). Researchers feel that
because more severe problem behavior was reported in self-contained schools
that this score may be because less time was allocated to academics to make
more room for social instruction and anger management therapies (Lane, Wehby,
Little, & Cooley, 2005). However, self-contained classrooms are set up in
public schools and they have a steady stream of people coming into
self-contained classrooms to observe and to pick up students to work with individually
to improve their socialization and deal with their anger issues. Despite some
improvements the researchers of this study concluded that collectively over the
course of an academic year the EBD students in both the self-contained
classrooms and self-contained schools made very little progress in some areas (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005). Researchers
also state that their findings, more than anything else, indicate that more
support is needed in both settings to show more progress (Lane, Wehby, Little,
& Cooley, 2005). These researchers
also realized that there were glaring limitations in both their studies and that
more research must be done in this area and all future studies should have a
much larger sample (Lane, Wehby, Little, & Cooley, 2005).
Some are now thinking that
inclusion of EBD students back into general education classrooms with support
and more teacher education in dealing with EBD students is a better idea.
However, a study comparing developmental gains on preschool children with all
sorts disabilities, including EBD children, in inclusive settings or general
education classrooms, and self-contained classrooms showed mixed or no notable
differences in social outcomes between students in general education classrooms
and those in self-contained classrooms, so as far as socialization is concerned
there is little difference in the settings (Holahan & Costenbader, 2000).
The researchers go on to state that children with disabilities do not show
positive outcomes or benefit from a social skills standpoint just by being near
children without disabilities (Holahan & Costenbader, 2000). As far as
developmental growth or functioning is concerned these researchers found that
children who are already functioning at a higher level do better in inclusive
classrooms and children already functioning at a lower level in these things
made higher gains in self-contained classrooms (Holahan & Costenbader,
2000). Even though these researchers were not exclusively studying preschool
EBD students, their research seriously challenges the reoccurring notion that
one educational setting is better or will produce better results socially or
academically than another (Holahan & Costenbader, 2000).
Better socialization or
improving the social skills of EBD students is the whole reason behind the idea
for inclusion of EBD students into general education classrooms. One study that
focused on the social life of EBD children in self-contained classrooms did
detailed interviews of fourteen students educated in a self-contained classroom
and fourteen children that were closely matched for comparison educated in a general education classroom and found that
EBD children had little to no chance to engage in integrated school activities
and that their social networks in school were comprised of mostly those
children and adults who were connected to or a part of special needs education (Panacek
& Dunlap, 2003). The overall value of this study as far as reliable information
is in the least questionable because not only was the sample size very small,
but all the students interviewed for this study came from the same school
district and to add to that the students used in the study were all pulled from
the free lunch roster, so all those interviewed came from low income families (Panacek
& Dunlap, 2003). This and other limitations that the researchers themselves
recognized with this study makes this study hard to generalize across a whole
population (Panacek & Dunlap, 2003).
The truth, from a person who works with EBD students in a public school,
is that EBD children in self-contained classrooms in some public schools do
engage integrated activities. Public schools refer to things like gym, chorus,
and so on with other students as “specials,” and EBD students can be involved
in them, but they often lose those privileges quickly do to their behavior. EBD
students also encounter general education students on buses, playgrounds and in
line for breakfast and lunch each day, so the premise that EBD students are
completely cut off from general education students in public schools or that
they never encounter general education students as a group or individually in
public school is totally ludicrous. EBD student’s inability to socialize
normally with general education students and their frequent antisocial
behaviors better explains why their social networks are small, not the
self-contained classrooms they are educated in.
One article or study looked at the outcomes of a three-year project that
examined the consultation process and what would be needed to develop or ready staff
for the inclusion of EBD students back into general education classes (Shapiro,
Miller, Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). Apparently, it is believed by some that
inclusion in general education classes is better for EBD students, but they
realize that general education teachers and staff need to learn how to deal
with and handle EBD students and that consultation will be needed before and
after training or developing the staff to make inclusion of these students
successful. These researchers tried to ascertain how much consultation would be
needed and whether it needed to continue after training and developing staff and
how much staff development would be needed (Shapiro, Miller, Sawka, Gardill,
& Handler). The results of this study showed that consultation services are
critically important for continued staff development and thought it to be a
solid strategy to improve the chances that the inclusion of EBD students in
general education classes would be effective and successful (Shapiro, Miller,
Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). However, researchers found that even with an
intensive experience based in service programs to help teach and develop staff to
create and implement intervention strategies a large majority of the teams
assembled failed to implement the strategies they created and selected (Shapiro,
Miller, Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). People in many school districts were
uncertain of
how to proceed, their communication
broke down, and there was a lack of follow through with interventions (Shapiro,
Miller, Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). The researchers concluded that for
inclusion of EBD children in general education classes to succeed all school
personnel must be provided with intensive training, have a lot of or a
significant amount of consultation support, very specific interventions that
are accepted by a majority of those involved, and continued collaboration
efforts (Shapiro, Miller, Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). Some groups in the
study that utilized the training well and did all the things necessary to make
this successful and where the EBD students received effective intervention seventy
percent of the EBD students maintained or increased their time in general
education classes (Shapiro, Miller, Sawka, Gardill, & Handler). The study
did show that putting EBD students back into general education classes and
having it work out is possible, but for this transition to work, even a little,
would not be without a massive effort and cost.
Unfortunately, there are several things not considered or even mentioned
when inclusion is discussed by researchers in these studies. First, is the fact
that no one considers the good students in the general education classes with
these EBD students. How will it affect their education and safety? If a teacher
must focus on one EBD child that is frequently out of control and disrupting
the entire class, how will that affect the education of the majority students
in that class? Isn’t that teacher losing precious class time that could be more
productively spent on the students in the class that behave? If an EBD student
hits a student with chair or attacks one of the other students in a way that
requires outside medical help or hospitalization, what are you going to say to
the parents of that student? How are you going to explain to them that the
violence perpetrated on their child was caused by a student with emotional and
behavioral issues or better yet asks you why that violent of a student was in
their child’s class to begin with? Would having EBD students in general
education classes not increase the school’s overall liability? Second, EBD
students are often removed from the school they are in and bused to schools
that have EBD units or self-contained classrooms. If you were to completely end
self-contained classrooms and schools for EBD students and put all the EBD
students back in general education classes in the schools they were in and the
number of EBD students keeps increasing, schools in some areas will be
overburdened with EBD students while other schools would have few. Wouldn’t having
a huge number of students in any school that are consistently one or two grades
behind effect funding or the quality of the education provided in that school?
Third, the EBD students that are in self-contained schools and classrooms now were
once included and in general education classrooms and their actions or better
yet their inability to socialize and their antisocial behaviors is what
resulted in them being evaluated by someone in the school system with a
psychology degree and placed in a self-contained classroom in the first place. Since
they were evaluated and placed in a self-contained classroom, it is safe to say
that the EBD students in self-contained classrooms have the severest of
problems or issues and most likely could not be integrated back into general
education classes easily. If integration back into a general education setting
was attempted for all EBD students, it would not be without a lot of trouble
and great cost.
One reason why research done on EBD students in schools is limited and
what research has been done is all over the place and checkered with spotty or
inconclusive results is that there is little to no advocacy for EBD children. There
is no one out there with any real desire to try and figure out what is best for
these children educationally or otherwise because these unlucky children are
not disabled in a way that is acceptable to most of us. No these are the crazy
kids that have meltdowns over nonsense, wreck things for no reason, and are
constantly wanting to punch the living daylights out of anybody that angers or
irritates them even slightly. They are the children that many people think need
nothing more than a swift kick in the butt to correct their behavior and refuse
to accept that they may have a mental disorder because mental illness is
something we do not like to talk about. We do not fundraise for mental illness
or have a Special Olympics for crazy children, we lock it away and pretend it
does not exist. There is no one out there willing to speak up and say what
might be best for EBD children or say what type of education or educational
setting would be best for EBD students and be able to explain why.
The people that would make the strongest advocates for these children,
particularly in education, are the people that work with and around EBD students
in the schools every day. Special Education Teachers because they work so closely
with EBD students would be the most aware of the unique educational needs of
these students and their families and that awareness would make them great
advocates for all the services necessary to meet the needs of these students
and their families (Murry, 2005). Unfortunately, there are barriers that keep
or at least inhibit Special Education Teachers and other people that work with these
children in schools from advocating effectively on behalf of these children and
their families (Murry, 2005). Some of those barriers would be the school
bureaucracy itself, time constraints, the threat of losing standing or face
because someone is to blame, employment insecurity because many teachers in
school systems are on a three year probation, the need to step outside the
normal operating routines, opposing perspectives from others within the school
system, school wide need versus individual need scenarios, and the possible
threat of some type of litigation (Murry, 2005).
How do we educatestudents with
emotional/behavior disorders? Is a question that appears to be a difficult one to
answer because not only are the issues and problems surrounding EBD children
and their education complex, but there is a serious lacking in the depth of
knowledge regarding EBD children and their education. Research on this issue is
wrought with many limitations and clear external validity issues not only
illustrates that lack of knowledge, but clearly indicates that more research
must be done in this area. However, we do know that self-contained classrooms
are a far better choice for EBD students both academically and socially than
self-contained schools because all the research points in that direction. All
the data relating to self-contained schools indicates academic and
socialization problems and one study clearly showed a decline in these things
in EBD students educated in them. In contrast, EBD students educated in
self-contained classrooms showed clear academic increases or higher academic
scores than EBD students educated in self-contained schools in both the short
term and over a whole school year. Researchers did not find much of an increase
in socialization skills between the two settings, but self-contained classrooms
scores on this were still better than self-contained schools and some
researchers thought the scores on this should be higher for self-contained classrooms
and offered a reason as to why the scores of the two settings were closer than
they should have been. The findings of another study done on not just EBD
students, but all students with disabilities challenged the whole idea that one
educational setting would be better than the other for socialization. Unfortunately, the difference in scores
academically and socially between self-contained classrooms and self-contained
schools was not enough to keep some people from considering integrating EBD
students back into the general education classes they were taken out of because
of their antisocial behaviors to improve socialization. However, inclusion of
EBD students back into general education classes will be difficult, costly, and
present other problems not fully considered or overlooked.
In 2006 there were over two million young people in the United States
with emotional/behavioral disorders and that number has increased and continues
to grow (Who Cares About Kelsey). Students with emotional/behavioral disorders
are three times as likely to be arrested before leaving school and often in
middle school because the graduation rate for EBD students is far worse than
students with other disabilities (Who Cares About Kelsey). After getting out of
school EBD students are more than twice as likely as students with other
disabilities to wind up living in a correction facility, a half-way house, in a
drug rehab center, or on the street and females with emotional/behavioral
disorders will become teenage mothers at more than twice the rate of females
with other disabilities (Who Cares About Kelsey). The statistics on children
and young people with emotional/behavioral disorders are mind numbing now and
will certainly get worse if we do not try to educate more of these young people
enough to be at least somewhat productive citizens and the economic and social
cost will be much, much greater if we make no attempt to try to educate them.
It comes down to what people want the government to spend their taxes on. We
can spend more on the front end to try an educate these difficult children, or
we can spend it on the back end and build more prisons and juvenile detention
centers. In either event a good deal of money is going to be spent whether we
like it or not.
Yes, it is imperative more
research is done on trying to figure out the best way to educate students with
emotional/behaviors disorders or if educating them more than one way is not a
better approach to the problem and while doing this we must also consider the
impact our fixes or solutions to this problem will have on the education and
safety of other children. The research that has been done so far with all the
limitations and generalization issues recognized in it really doesn’t tell us a
lot other than self-contained classrooms are better than self-contained schools
and that there are problems with inclusion and that there are some problems
with inclusion researchers are not even considering. Future research on this
issue is going to require larger samples, fewer limitations, and better
external validity otherwise we will not have achieved anymore than we have and
that is not good enough. The clock is ticking, and we know the problem is not
going to get better because the number of children with emotional/behavioral
disorders is increasing, so the need for answers will become even more
important in the future.
One of the reasons why this early research is not more concise or
conclusive is because researchers are going in many directions and looking at
many angles on the issue because there are little or no advocates out there for
young people and students with emotional/ behavioral disorders, so there is
nothing to send researchers in one direction and no one to create a push to
find solutions to the problem quicker. The people best suited and most
knowledgeable that could advocate for students with emotional/ behavior
disorders are the people working closest with these students at schools, but
they are afraid to because there are barriers that make it hard to get
involved. Another reason is because we are talking about children with mental
health issues and mental health is something we do not like to talk about or in
some cases even acknowledge it exists. There is such a stigma associated with
mental illness that we do not want to hear about mental illness period and God
forbid someone in your family has a mental illness and a few people know about
it the gossip whispers around you will be lower than dreaded cancer whispers.
If you have a child with a mental illness that is violent and has fits of rage,
an EBD child, that you cannot not handle, it is even worse because then you
must be bad parents for not being able to control your child. Your child doesn’t
have a mental illness all he or she needs is a swift kick in the butt that you
are not giving them. My point here is the stigma around mental illness and
public perceptions must change because along with everything else this stigma
effects is one big one called advocacy.
References
Holahan, A., & Costenbader, V.
(2000). A Comparison of Developmental Gains for Preschool Children with
Disabilities in Inclusive and Self-Contained Classrooms. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 20(4), 224-235.
doi:10.1177/027112140002000403
Lane, K. L., Barton-Arwood, S. M.,
Nelson, J. R., & Wehby, J. (2007). Academic Performance of Students with
Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Served in a Self-Contained Setting. Journal
of Behavioral Education, 17(1), 43-62. doi:10.1007/s10864-007-9050-1
Lane, K. L., Wehby, J. H., Little, M.
A., & Cooley, C. (2005). Academic, Social, and Behavioral Profiles of
Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Educated in Self-Contained
Classrooms and Self-Contained Schools: Part I—Are They More Alike than
Different? Behavioral Disorders, 30(4), 349-361. doi:10.1177/019874290503000407
Lane, K. L., Wehby, J. H., Little, M.
A., & Cooley, C. (2005). Students Educated in Self-Contained Classrooms and
Self-Contained Schools: Part II—How Do They Progress over Time? Behavioral
Disorders, 30(4), 363-374. doi:10.1177/019874290503000408
Murry, F. (2005). Effective Advocacy
for Students with Emotional/Behavioral Disorders: How High the Cost? EDUCATION
AND TREATMENT OF CHILDREN, 28(4)
Panacek, L. J., & Dunlap, G.
(2003). The Social Lives of Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders in
Self-Contained Classrooms: A Descriptive Analysis. Exceptional Children, 69(3),
333-348. doi:10.1177/001440290306900305
Shapiro, E. S., Miller, D. N., Sawka,
K., Gardill, M. C., & Handler, M. W. (1999). Facilitating the Inclusion of
Students with EBD into General Education Classrooms. Journal of Emotional and
Behavioral Disorders, 7(2), 83-93. doi:10.1177/106342669900700203
Rutherford, R. B., Mathur, S. R., &
Nelson, C. M. (2000). Severe Behavior Disorders of
Children and Youth. Education and
Treatment of Children and Educating Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities in the
21st century: Looking Through Windows, opening doors, 23(3), 203-218
Who Cares About Kelsey. (n.d.). Key
statistics. Retrieved from https://whocaresaboutkelsey.com/docs/educational-materials/key-statistics.pdf?sfvrsn=2
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