Your First-Quarter Data Has Something to Tell You
By early November, every district has a quarter of discipline, restraint, isolation, and placement data. Counts tell you whether the number went up or down — not who is being removed, from where, or why. Four questions that show you what the counts hide.
Classroom Corner: Say What You Saw
A two-minute habit for the hardest month of the year. “Good job” is easy to say and easy to ignore. When you see a behavior you want more of, name it — behavior-specific praise is one of the most consistently supported teacher practices in the literature.
De-escalation Starts on Monday
The stretch between Halloween and winter break is when restraint and isolation incidents climb. Most de-escalation training focuses on the moment a student is already escalated — but the incidents that never happen are the ones prevented days earlier. Four practices for your building team this month.
CSIP Development & Implementation
Every school in Washington must have an annual school improvement plan under WAC 180-16-220. The plan must be data driven, must promote a positive impact on student learning, and must include a continuous improvement process with ongoing monitoring, adjusting, and updating. That last clause is the one that might be challenging to honor. A Consolidated School […]
Strengthen Tier 1 Before You Refer: Evidence-Based Practice in MTSS
Here is a diagnostic worth applying to your own building. When a disproportionately large number of students appear to need individual behavior plans, that is usually a signal that the Tier 1 system needs strengthening — not that all those students need Tier 2 or Tier 3 support. Strong MTSS teams ask the systems question […]
Evidence-Based Practices in Special Education: What “Evidence-Based” Actually Requires
In state and federal school improvement work, “evidence-based” means something quite precise, and getting the definition right is the difference between a funded intervention and a returned grant application, District L-CAP, or School Improvement Plan (SIP). First, the definition Under ESEA section 8101(21), an evidence-based intervention must meet one of four tiers of evidence. For […]
A Little Brain Science Can Go a Long Way in Understanding Students, Staff and Ourselves
You don’t have to be a neuropsychologist to understand why kids (and adults) do the things they do but a little knowledge of brain science can help. There are three major parts of the brain that impact our learning and behavior: The Brain Stem The brain stem is responsible for basic life functions we dn’t […]