"First Step to Success" is an early intervention program designed to help children who are at risk for developing aggressive or antisocial behavioral patterns. The program uses a trained behavior coach who works with each student and his or her class peers, teacher, and parents for approximately 50 to 60 hours over a three-month period.…

Instruction and training in social and emotional learning (SEL) is an important component in addressing the emotional and behavioral needs of students. This study is the first to examine whether "Strong Kids", an SEL program, delivered school-wide in all classrooms, could result in decreased internalizing behaviors and increased…

The study reported in this paper examined the effects of "First Step to Success (First Step)," a school- and home-based program intended to improve outcomes for students with moderate to severe behavior problems who may be at risk for academic failure. The study took place in six locations across five states: San Jose, California; Tampa,…

Many school systems are adopting three-tiered models of prevention (e.g., Response to Intervention and Positive Behavior Support) to support an increasingly diverse student population (Sugai, Horner, & Gresham, 2002). A central feature of these models is that data are monitored to determine responsiveness. We offer this paper as a guide for…

First Step to Success (First Step; Walker et al., 1997, 1998) is a secondary-level intervention for students with behavior problems in early elementary school. The purposes of this study were to assess whether effects in student behavior and academics at posttest shown in a recent efficacy trial (Walker et al., 2009) were maintained at follow-up…

The authors compared the characteristics of early elementary age students educated in either rural or suburban schools who were identified as showing soft signs of emotional or behavioral disorders according to systematic screening procedures. The authors followed 134 kindergarten, first grade, and second grade students identified by these…

In this article, the authors examine the psychometric properties of the Student Risk Screening Scale (SRSS), including evaluating the concurrent validity of the SRSS to predict results from the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) when used to detect school children with externalizing or internalizing behavior concerns at three…

This study applied an early screening approach to determine the risk status of children in 5 urban schools and monitor their patterns of reading growth over 3 years. A majority of students were from culturally diverse and low-SES backgrounds. Two validated instruments were used for determining (a) academic risk (the Dynamic Indicators of Basic…