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Many economists believe that education is key to economic development. The first section of this essay highlights what is known about the role of education in three interrelated areas: income generation, health status, and fertility. It discusses reasons why measuring the impact of education is difficult, and presents the best current estimates for the effects of education in these important areas. In bringing education to people in the developing world, an understanding of which school inputs are most effective and at what levels of education is paramount. The second half of the essay discusses why little is known about which inputs are most effective, and contrasts different approaches to assessing the impact of school inputs. The essay concludes with a discussion of programs that promise to be more successful in helping governments and policy makers decide how best to invest in human capital.

This chapter considers the more painful and problematic notions of evidence-informed practice; that is, interventions that have the potential to harm school clients. Specifically, it shows how good intentions, “authority-based practice,” and poor understanding of what makes an intervention potentially harmful, have come together in several situations to create so-called “iatrogenic school-based interventions”.

A recent survey conducted by the authors shows that divorce and separation of parents rated highest among the family-based stressors that school social workers reported seeing in their practice. This chapter shows how to conduct an evidence-informed practice (EIP) process, grounded in the best available evidence, for group school-based interventions for children coping with divorce. It also pays close attention to how these interventions can be adapted and applied in a range of school contexts.

This chapter evaluates the effectiveness of early peer, school, and community interventions in preventing delinquency and later offending. The findings reveal that the community-based approach is usually not effective while little can be said about the effectiveness of peer-based programs to prevent delinquency. This chapter identifies four intervention modalities that were effective in preventing delinquency among youths in middle school and high school. These include school and discipline management, classroom or instructional management and the reorganization of grades or classes.

In a recent survey conducted by the authors, anxiety disorders stood out as one of the most significant mental health problems school social workers face in their practice. This chapter uses an evidence-informed process (EIP) to search for the best available evidence to help students with anxiety disorders in schools. It shows that school social workers, provided they have been trained in basic cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) concepts, have a wealth of empirically supported resources to draw on in designing interventions for their students.

Characterized by developmentally atypical levels of inattention, activity, and impulsivity, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a prevalent disorder affecting 5%-8% of the school-age population. This chapter reviews school-based, psychosocial, or academic interventions for children affected by ADHD. It shows that there are empirically supported strategies for school social workers to use for children affected with ADHD. Most of these strategies would be classified as falling into more intensive and indicated forms of intervention, and this may be appropriate given the nature of the disorder- and child-specific symptom patterning and impairments. There is a need for school social practitioner proficiency in functional behavior assessment, and for a variety of behavioral and contingency management methods.

This chapter focuses on strategies aimed at young people in school, family, and community settings. There has been an improvement in the evidence base over recent years and there is now convincing evidence for family-oriented and classroom management prevention efforts, although this is based on a relatively small number of studies from the USA.

Both national and cross-national estimates indicate that bullying and victimization are fairly prevalent among school-age children and adolescents, with prevalence estimates varying for 3% to 37% for bullies and from 9% to 32% for victimization. Moreover, recent estimates suggest that such rates may have increased since 1999 and subsequently stabilized, with an average estimate of about 10%. Both children who are bullies and children who are victims of bullying show elevated rates of various indicators of psychosocial distress. This chapter evaluates school-based strategies aimed at reducing bullying and bullying-related incidents of victimization.

Gang presence in public schools is a growing issue across the United States. The correlation between gang presence and crime on school grounds is significant. Research suggests that some intervention measures can be successful in working with gang members and decreasing gang-related crime and violence in schools. This chapter reviews several studies that clearly show the need for gang intervention in schools. It introduces an evidence-based program that can be used in schools with middle- and high-school students who are gang members or on the verge of becoming involved with gangs. The chapter presents a step-by-step guide to assessing the need for a gang intervention group, gaining support from school administration and staff, and creating a successful school-based gang intervention program.

This chapter reviews several examples of effective violence prevention programs as well as model school-safety programs. It shows that successful school-wide intervention programs have the following core underlying implementation characteristics: (i) they are comprehensive, intensive, ecological, and require “buy-in” from school and community; (ii) they raise the awareness and responsibility of students, teachers, and parents regarding the types of violence in their schools (e.g. sexual harassment, fighting, and weapons use); (iii) they create clear guidelines and rules for all members of the school community; (iv) they target the various social systems in the school and clearly communicate to the entire school community what procedures should be followed before, during, and after violent events; (v) they focus on getting the school staff, students, and parents involved in the program; (vi) they often fit easily into the normal flow and mission of the school setting; (vii) they use faculty, staff, and parents in the school setting to plan, implement, and sustain the program; (viii) they increase monitoring and supervision in non-classroom areas; and (ix) they include ongoing monitoring and mapping, which provide information that schools can use to tailor a program to their specific needs and increase its chance of success.

In Tier 1 of a prevention model, otherwise known as universal prevention, FBA is applied to all students in a school. The purpose is to develop interventions that can improve behavior school-wide. In order to identify problem behaviors and their antecedents and consequences, school teams review school-wide behavior data such as office discipline referrals (ODRs). ODRs are reviewed to determine “The Big Six” patterns, which are referrals per day per month, location of referrals, time of referrals, behaviors referred, students referred, and possible motivation for referred behavior. Based on the patterns from The Big Six, school teams develop logical school-wide interventions that should efficiently reduce problem behaviors in the school. School-wide interventions are then monitored formatively for effectiveness.

Many children and adolescents in educational settings today find it difficult to acquire the critical social and academic skills necessary for success in school. They are at risk of underachievement and academic failure. For these children and adolescents, the earlier they fall behind their peers, the harder it is to catch up. This chapter begins with a review of the literature on underachievement and academic failure. It then discusses the assessment of underachievement and academic failure risks for individual students and the use of cognitive-behavioral interventions in assisting individual children experiencing underachievement or academic failure.

This chapter addresses strategies for assessing and predicting the risk of school violence. The review is framed by a seven-step planning strategy: results-focused planning (RFP). Working with student, school, and community stakeholder groups in planning strategies to decrease school violence (the performance team), a status quo assessment is the first step in this planning strategy. Four critical status quo data collection tasks are discussed. A survey of students, the School Success Profile (SSP), is introduced as a tool that supports the status quo assessment for school social workers and other school-based professionals.

Substance use/abuse is usually perceived as a problem of the adult and adolescent population and seldom seriously examined with regard to elementary school children. According to the Parents' Resource Institute for Drug Education, however, it is not uncommon among elementary school children to experiment with various substances. This chapter presents an overview of selective prevention interventions, a risk and protective factor paradigm, and two examples of evidence-based programs, the Strengthening Families Program (SFP) and Positive Action (PA). The two programs illustrate how preventive intervention can address risk, enhance protective factors, and be effectively implemented at school settings. Practical guidelines are presented for school social workers and other school mental health professionals who envision substance use/abuse prevention targeting elementary school children.

This chapter provides an overview of evidence-based practice methods, for school social workers and other school counselors, in the assessment and treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Step-by-step procedures and guidelines for assessment and treatment interventions are discussed. Resources that will assist school social workers with specific intervention procedures and methods are cited. These resources contain in-depth information supported by evidence-based research and intervention methods that are cited in the reference list for this chapter. Some examples and one case scenario that will assist school social workers with the development of a framework for understanding how to develop an intervention plan for school children diagnosed with ADHD are provided.

This chapter discusses interventions for children and adolescents diagnosed with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). Within the school setting, a number of the evidence-based interventions are appropriate for implementation. Groups targeting social-skills training, problem-solving, assertiveness, and anger-management can be offered in the schools, and consultation regarding these issues can be provided to educators by school social workers and mental health workers. Individual relationship-building seems relevant in order to model prosocial behaviors as well as to build resiliency in the youth. Parent training is another possibility. From a systems perspective, a model of intervention for youth with ODD that targets multiple layers of the system is likely to offer the most chances for youth to gain the skills necessary for optimum functioning within the school environment.

This chapter discusses interventions for school-aged children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs). These include: applied behavior analysis, a discipline devoted to understanding the function behind human behavior and finding ways of altering or improving behaviors; discrete trial training, which involves breaking skills into the smallest steps, teaching each step of the skill until mastery, providing lots of repetition, prompting the correct response and fading the prompts as soon as possible, and using positive reinforcement procedures; pivotal response training, which aims to apply educational techniques in pivotal areas that affect target behaviors; and psychopharmacology.

This chapter begins with a discussion of how truancy is a significant early warning sign that students are headed for potential delinquent activity, social isolation, and educational failure. It then reviews existing research on low school-attendance. It is shown that although the individual student is at the center of concern about truancy, an effective response must involve the school, the family, and the community. Intervention strategies that involve the individual student, families, and school are identified.

Pregnant and parenting adolescents continue to be an at-risk population in schools. With a 60% dropout rate, they are far less likely than their peers to graduate from high school, and they and their children are more likely to live in poverty than parents who delay pregnancy beyond adolescence. Skills-based interventions that include problem-solving and coping skills have been found to be effective in school programs with other adolescent problems, such as drugs and alcohol, school dropout, and antisocial behavior. Such interventions are gaining support as being effective with teen parents. This chapter examines the foundations of a cognitive-behavioral skills-based approach, as well as the compatibility of using a task-centered group for skills-building interventions. It looks at the Taking Charge curriculum, a group intervention for helping adolescent mothers achieve coping and problem-solving skills toward graduating from high school, and becoming more competent parents and self-sufficient adults.

This chapter reviews the most well-researched, evidence-based antibullying interventions: involvement of all the stakeholders in a school, prevention through life skills curricula, problem-solving approaches, and those that focus on rules and consequences. Two factors emerge with clarity: (1) the exact components of the program do not matter as much as the quality and thoroughness with which the interventions are implemented; and (2) given the potentially severe consequences of bullying, it is a moral imperative to continue to implement such programs and to formulate and revise the programs based on solid evidence.