Violence Prevention and Students with Disabilities: Thinking Functionally and Providing Evidence Based Supports and Accommodations.

* In their seminal paper, Walker et al. (1 996) observed that far too many youth under the age of 19 were caught up in an epidemic of societal violence. Moreover, this violence was increasingly present in schools, disrupting learning and raising levels of fear among students and faculty. Recognizing that society could not incarcerate itself out of the epidemic, the authors noted that educators should be major players in reducing violence and that schools are the optimal environments for preventing and addressing aggressive behaviors. Specifically, schools are in the unique position to identify those at-risk for violent behaviors, address risk factors, enhance protective factors, lead comprehensive multidisciplinary efforts that simultaneously prevent violence, teach students appropriate ways for dealing with conflict, and inform adults of best practices in responding to violence.Subsequent to Walker et al .'s (1 996) call for action we have seen considerable progress in the reduction of violence in our schools. A major advance has been the development, refinement, and scaling-up of systematic tiered systems of behavior management (e.g., Dwyer & Osher, 2000; Rosenberg & Jackman, 2003; Scott, Alter, Rosenberg & Borgmeier, 2010), most notably school-wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS: Lewis & Sugai, 1 999). Tiered systems provide a framework for educators to address the behavioral needs of all students by addressing universal, inclusive management as well as using a continuum of individualized functionally determined set of interventions for those students who do not respond to a primary/universal prevention tier that includes evidence-based practices. Evaluations and clinical trials of tiered management systems (e.g., Bradshaw, Koth, Thornton, & Leaf, 2009; Horner et al., 2009) indicate that they are effective in improving commonly used measures of students behavior (e.g., reductions in office referrals and suspensions), most notably at the universal or primary tier.These are very important outcomes: Academic and behaviorally based innovations at the universal tier, as well as the administrative actions sustaining these efforts, have resulted in school and classroom climates that enhance learning. As a policy initiative, tiered SWPBIS has impacted thousands of schools nationwide and few would disagree that schools are better places when rules, procedures, and supports are provided in a positive and consistent fashion. Nonetheless, we have been far less successful in addressing the needs of those students who fail to respond to universal behavior systems. Large numbers of students, some of whom are identified with special education needs, present frequent and intensive patterns of challenging behaviors, and they do not receive the support they need to succeed both academically and behaviorally in inclusive school environments. This lack of support may be due in large part to a lack of know-how: There is a general consensus that we know far less about specialized interventions than procedures and techniques considered universal (e.g., Bradshaw, Pas, Goldweber, Rosenberg, & Leaf, in press; Mitchell, Stormont, & Gage, 2011).What we do know is that students with disabilities who engage in high rates of challenging behaviors require educators who employ function-based thinking and have a particular sensitivity to the wide range of factors that influence student behavior (e.g., Hershfeldt, Rosenberg, & Bradshaw, 2011; Scott et al., 2010). In essence, educators working with special needs students need to know what makes their instruction special; they must use strategies that are evidencebased and make use of supports, adaptations, and accommodations. With this in mind, we are indebted to the editors and authors of the papers in this special issue. Taken together, these papers provide us with innovative and research-based violence prevention efforts with a specific emphasis on the needs of students with disabilities. …