¶ … Persons with Emotional Behavior Disorder Importance of assessment of emotional and behavioral disorders in schools

Identifying and assessing emotional and behavioral disorders in schools (EBD) helps identify and address a number of risky behaviors among youths in good time. Students suffering from EBD experience difficulties when learning, have challenging social relationships, experience depression and anxious moments as well as exhibit inappropriate behaviors. School, administrators usually know these students, as they need a lot of support and different resources to be able to survive in a school environment (Davis, Young, Hardman & Winters, 2011).

Early identification of these problem behaviors help school administrators provide the necessary support students need before the situation gets out of hand or becomes impossible to manage. Even though students at risk of EBD have less severe characteristics and frequency than those already diagnosed, early identification is crucial in improving educational outcomes (Davis, Young, Hardman & Winters, 2011).

Individuals with EBD tend to experience instability at work places or have mental health challenges after high school. The social alienation for most students are related to anxiety, conduct problems, as well as depression. Thus students suffering from EBD usually come across as sad, unlikable, having no social competence as well as being provoking. This could make them less likeable at school or home; hence making it hard to cope and integrate into the societal fabrics faster. Such traits can be minimized if not eliminated by certain interventions after identification (Davis, Young, Hardman & Winters, 2011).

EBD is identified in two categories namely internalizing and externalizing. Internalizing behaviors include internal problematic feelings such as over sensitivity, anxiety, sadness, and reticence among others. On the contrary, those suffering from externalizing behaviors show unruliness, forcefulness, aggression, and oppositional behaviors. In some rare cases students may exhibit both characteristics for example a student that feels both anxious and aggressive, at the same time; although most students are identified to have one primary trait of either internalizing or externalizing their behaviors (Davis, Young, Hardman & Winters, 2011).

It is important to screen students for both categories of EBD to avoid overlooking any student as students with internalizing problems are often ignored since they do not have discipline issues and register good grades although some of them may have attendance issues. Teachers notice students with problems such as being withdrawn, anxious, fearful, and unassertive thus help resolve these issues by reporting to the relevant authorities for intervention. The assessment and identification process needs to be effective, efficient, practical and evidence-based. Sadly though, few measures have been implemented to identify and reduce these risks in secondary students as far as externalizing and internalizing behaviors are concerned (Davis, Young, Hardman & Winters, 2011).

How Assessments should be done

Make sure you understand the assessment tools, rating scales, checklists, measuring behavioral and emotional aspect before carrying out any assessment procedures. There are different ways through which an assessment will provide viable results but the following steps need to be considered for success. Understanding the assessment tools will help you know all the valid outcomes of every test and what to avoid in order to uphold the integrity of the assessment.

Child records and information must be reviewed and examined properly

Interview parents and teachers to get a rich content

Make observations of the child across settings, it is important to have your own perspective over and above relying on others (Texas Guide, 2013)

The best assessment practices need to be such that teachers, parents and other stakeholders should be able to make a decision about the students' education. A comprehensive and valuable assessment is crucial to ensure that students access great education opportunities. The assessment needs to focus on:

1.

determining the students eligibility for special schools and related services

2.

Developing students individualized education program (IEP)

3.

Ongoing measurement and monitoring student performance

These decisions can only be made when appropriate assessments using different sources of information including observations and evaluations, rating scales and normative data are used. In addition, these techniques must be valid and reliable for use on the specific group (Connecticut state department of education, 2012).

Individualized education plan (IEP)

When developing an IEP for students with emotional disturbance exhibiting behaviors that evoke high anxiety levels, goals, objectives and program characteristics need to be developed before specific program and education setting are made. Assessment information collected or generated during eligibility-determination phase contributes to developing the plan that becomes the individuals' education program (Connecticut state department of education, 2012). The assessment carried out by the multi-disciplinary team must yield a student profile that shows current level of performance, needs, strength, and characteristics pattern in response to environmental and internal factors.

According to IEP, goals should be written based...

Intervention strategies supports are the next consideration in developing student's IEP. The interventions focus on redirecting students with difficulties in self-regulation, how much re-teaching is required as well as how to provide opportunities for students to practice social skills in natural environment (Connecticut state department of education, 2012).
Three formal assessments used in school district

Assessment instrument

Summary / procedure

1

System for behavior assessment

Children -- Second Edition (BASC-2; Reynolds & Kamphaus, 2004)

A tool that offers information about child emotions and behaviors. This includes use of scales and forms including parent and teacher rating scales, self-report and personality, student observation system as well as a structured development history. All these tools measure the child's behavior patterns. SRP assesses feelings and emotions of children while SDH helps in obtaining background information on the child (Texas Guide, 2013).

2

Strength and Difficulty Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman '1997)

This is a widely accepted tool for identifying both behavioral and emotional difficulties in children and young adults. Other than just focusing on emotional and behavior related problems, it will also look into what guardians think of as a problem to the child (Goodman, 2000)

3

Child Behavior Checklist

(CBCL; Achenbach & Edelbrock 1983)

This test is available in three forms. The first is the Teacher Report, the second is the Youth Report and the third is Self-Evaluation Reports. The test is interesting as it measures the child's social behavior as perceived by the parent. This could boil down to the child's involvement in sports, hobbies and a variety of social activities when at home or in school. This is followed by a section interested on capturing all the emotional and behavioral problems shown in the last couple of months graded on a 3-point scale. This revolves on aggression, bullying, conduct, defiance and other problems with authority (Texas Guide, 2013).

Recommendations to schools regarding the assessments

The BASC-2 is an elaborate assessment tool that will help schools identify multiple dimensions about their students. The information gathered will come in perspective of the parent, the teacher and the child; meaning that it is more diverse and comprehensive. This makes the test very useful and appropriate in the assignment of specific education classifications to different children in the school. Its capabilities put it into compliance with the emotional and behavioral disorder statues defined in The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

In addition to this, the BASC-2 will collect all the positive attributes of the child's behavior, things that will help the child go through a better and faster rehabilitation program. This has made the evaluation a useful tool in the exploration of

1.

Risk, onset and the progression of behavior related problems and other psychopath tendencies

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Predicting the validity of early treatment to such conditions

3.

Identifying teenagers who might benefit from residential treatment programs

4.

Making school violence prevention programs more useful

The BAC is also a useful tool in juvenile management and the handling of personal injury cases related to children. Despite this, the test and procedures have a number of disadvantages that limit it to a niche of applications. These include:

It measures only a limited number of personality and psychopathological factors.

Its structure makes the comparison between child's self-rating and the rate provided by the teacher or guardian harder iii.

It has limited success when used on preschoolers

A number of changes on this assessment tool are inevitable, if at all, it is to be more effective (BASC, n.d.)

Since this Child Behavior Checklist encompasses a wide list of behavior related problems, it could also be useful in a clinical treatment and research scenario. Some of the most common behavioral and emotional conditions that can be assessed using this approach include:

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Anxiety and depression

2.

Attention problems

3.

Aggressiveness

4.

Withdrawal symptoms

5.

Externalization and internalization

6.

Total problems (Texas Guide, 2013)

For long, this checklist has been the standard in assessing child behavior and problems. With the need to detect and solve childhood psychopathology as soon as they are detected, other questionnaires are being used to augment the CBCL. For instance, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire helps researchers improve on the respondent's response by giving short, simple and positively worded questionnaires. By increasing on the use of the SDQ, screening processes will increase on effectiveness and the quality of results attained (Stone, Otten, Engels, Vermulst & Janssens, 2010).

Conclusion

The SDQ is a relatively short and user friendly tool for screening psychological problems in children in comparison to other common questionnaires. The SDQ's 25 items make it shorter in comparison to other tools like the Child Behavior Checklist, which…