Report page 86

we examined how many interventions (out of the 16 total that we asked about) schools would use to address each scenario.

The typical, or median, number of interventions that schools said they would use to respond to a scenario is shown by a horizontal line.

The boxes show the number of interventions selected by most schools (i.e., those schools that fall in the middle of the distribution between the 25th and 75th percentile).

The vertical lines show the full range of the number of interventions chosen.

Schools selected between one and 16 interventions in response to the scenario, but most schools selected between four and nine, and the typical (median) school selected six.

we found that the vast majority of schools responded to all scenarios using multiple interventions, which is consistent with the practice of building an individualized intervention plan to respond to student behavior.

Furthermore, we noticed a general trend of schools responding with a higher number of intervention options as incidents become more severe.

the typical (median) school reported implementing four interventions in response to Scenario A (history of misbehavior) and five interventions in response in Scenario B (history of misbehavior, physical altercation).

At the other end of the spectrum, the typical school responded to Scenario H (history of misbehavior, physical altercation, explicit threat, history of violence, bullying, weapon), the most severe scenario, with seven interventions.

This pattern is not surprising, because we would expect schools to do more to intervene as student behavior becomes more concerning.

Figure 11.5 also shows that—with the exception of a small number of schools that responded to even low- or medium-level incidents with a large number of interventions—schools tend to respond to concerning situations with a handful of interventions (usually somewhere between three and eight, depending on the specific scenario).

The fact that principals did not report that their schools would respond to every incident with all 16 interventions provides further evidence that schools are tailoring their interventions to the specifics of indi-

Scenario B: A student regularly engages in disruptive behavior during class, but the student’s teachers do not consider the student’s behavior threatening.

Last school year, the family declined staff suggestions that the student might benefit from supports for neurodiverse learners.

This school year, the student’s behavior has escalated, and the student is involved in a physical altercation with another student that does not result in injuries.

Figure 11.5 shows the range of how many interventions schools selected to respond to each scenario.