School-wide screening can be used to effectively identify students within schools struggling with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders (EBD), so that school teams can implement instructional strategies and interventions to provide early and timely supports for all students. While research has explored many aspects of screening within schools, the extant research lacks studies reviewing screening data interpretation process. This research study was designed to investigate how school teams could use a discussion guide to facilitate using their screening data. This involved having school leadership teams answer a series of guiding questions about data from the Student Risk Screening Scale -- Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE). The SRSS-IE Discussion Guide was presented to teams to use as they reviewed their data and then explored the usefulness of the discussion guide in practical settings. This qualitative study sought to understand feedback from seven teams who used the Discussion Guide during their data interpretation meetings, inviting participants to share what they found helpful and what was not helpful as well as what they might add to the Discussion Guide. Content analysis was used to understand qualitative data gained through focus groups. The results yield a variety of praise for the Discussion Guide, valuing its ability to guide teams through the data analysis process and focusing team discussions. Data from the focus group participants included changing the Discussion Guide to include ideas for strategies and supports that matched student needs, encouraging several meetings to review data and use the discussion guide, and adding charts for further student information organization and exploration in regard to higher risk students.

In education, the field of implementation science is a discipline dedicated to supporting educators’ use of evidence-based practices (EPBs) to improve school and student outcomes. As highlighted in previous columns in this series, school teams must thoughtfully consider how EBPs align with the school/district core values and fit the local context (Kittelman et al., 2020), how school teaming can enhance implementation of EBPs (Kittelman et al., 2021), and what activities are needed to support implementation of EBPs at different stages (Ward et al., 2021). In this column, we describe how school teams and educators can use implementation drivers to implement EBPs with high implementation fidelity (as they are designed to be implemented; Caroll et al., 2007; Sanetti & Collier-Meek, 2019). We wish to draw attention to the important work of researchers and practitioners from the National Technical Assistance Center on the State Implementation and Scale-Up of Evidence-Based Practices (SISEP; https://sisep.fpg.unc.edu) within the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN; https://nirn.fpg.unc.edu) and the National Center for Systemic Improvement (NCSI; https://ncsi.wested.org).

As Cook and Cook (2012) point out, evidence-based practices “represent practices that meet a high bar of empirical validation, but they do not trump practical wisdom and common sense when making instructional decisions” (p. 78). As educators, we are tasked with making decisions based on a body of evidence and a sound data-based decision-making process (Rowe, 2020). Teachers analyze assessment data across students to determine common themes that can be addressed using classwide versus individualized instruction. Teachers examine data from assessments (e.g., curriculum-based measures, formal assessments, informal interviews with students’ general education teachers, writing samples, and other assessment data) and find many students struggle with essential skills not addressed in the general curriculum. In the absence of published curricula to teach specific skills, teachers are left to construct their own lesson plans. Oftentimes, teachers pull from multiple sources (e.g., worksheets, teacher-made materials, materials found on the Internet). A source teachers might not often consider is the research literature itself. A single research article can be the source of one lesson or multiple lessons. A well-written research article provides all the information needed to develop core components of a lesson plan (i.e., lesson objective, setting and materials, content taught, teaching procedures, evaluation) [...]