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Table 6

Critical Practices to Support Social, Emotional, and Behavioral (SEB) and Academic Growth for
Students With and At-Risk for Intensive Behavioral Needs

Critical Practices to
Support Students with Examples
Intensive Needs
SEB and Academic Growth
Connect Throughout the year, make one-on-one contact with families in person or
virtually to identify their students’ SEB and academic strengths and needs.
Update IEP including needed providers’ services (e.g., mental and behavioral
health).
Screen Employ diagnostic assessment to identify students’ strengths and needs for
intensive academic and SEB support.
Support Provide a safe learning environment that includes teaching expectations and
SEB skills acknowledged through a ratio of five occurrences of specific
positive feedback to every one occurrence of specific corrective feedback.
Teach Ensure students have access to high leverage Tier 1 instructional practices
and design data-based individualization interventions at Tiers 2 and 3 to
enhance academic and SEB skills.
Provide explicit and systematic instruction that is targeted and intensive in
reading, mathematics, SEB skills, and behavior expectations.
Promote active student engagement by providing intensive behavioral
support.
Monitor Monitor student’s response to intensive intervention to determine
interventions’ effectiveness:
-Positive Behavior Intervention and Support (PBIS) Tiered Fidelity Inventory
(TFI),
- office discipline referrals (ODRs),
-systematic direct observation for function-based behavior interventions,
- teacher self-monitoring of 5 praise:1 correction ratio and opportunities to
respond (OTR)

Note: Adapted from National Center on Intensive Intervention (2020, pp. 7-11).

Limitations
Although its results have important implications for practitioners, this study did
have limitations. The participant response rate of 50% is acceptable for adding to
the literature on COVID-19 and the delivery of special education services. However,
the data collected for this study were all self-reports by education professionals
enrolled in educational leadership and special education administration graduate
programs at one university. Fidelity and acceptability of findings may vary based on
students’ perceptions of leadership programs. Additional research would provide a
useful replication and determination of generalizability. The study was also limited
concerning the diversity of the participants, as the majority were females who worked
in very large public schools as either special education directors or special education
teachers. Data were not collected about the participants’ race or ethnicity. Therefore,

Changing Perspectives on Teaching and Learning 49