Persistent challenging behaviors in early childhood education has shown to be an increasing problem for rural ABC school district. Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory indicates that children learn behavior expectations by imitating others receiving positive consequences and through social norming. ABC school district is in a state that does not require preschool; therefore, many students enter kindergarten without having mastered the required social-emotional skills needed to be successful. This has led to many special education referrals in early childhood education students without systematic, tiered behavior intervention. This quantitative, non-experimental, ex post facto study used SPSS to conduct a two-way ANOVA to determine if office discipline referrals in early childhood education students were affected by the number of mastered social-emotional skills or special education eligibility for 120 students having an eligibility of Other Health Impaired or Developmental Delay. There was not a significant affect for eligibility; however, social-emotional skills had a significant affect indicating that special education and office discipline referrals are not contingent on eligibility and is more likely due to the lack of social-emotional skills mastered. This finding implies that many early childhood education students need more time to develop their social-emotional skills through modeling, social norming, and systematic, tiered behavior intervention rather than being referred for special education services. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]