All public and private educational settings should provide nurturing environments that support student learning and development. Unfortunately, some students with emotional and behavioral challenges and disorders experience seclusion or restraint instead.

Children and youth need safe and supportive learning environments to succeed in school. These needs are particularly great for children who are vulnerable, such as those who face trauma, the adversities of poverty, and the challenge of disability.

The Cleveland Metropolitan School District implemented an evidence-based social and emotional learning program—Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS). AIR’s evaluation of the program indicates that student outcomes improved, despite the challenges faced by this complex urban school district, and even with imperfect implementation and uncertain fidelity.

AIR’s National Center on Safe Supportive Learning Environments has released a training toolkit on teenage dating abuse for instructional support personnel, such as guidance counselors, social workers, psychologists, nurses, and other professionals. Research shows that schools can make a difference in preventing interpersonal teen violence.

The Cleveland School District and AIR implemented a districtwide effort to improve safety, order, and conditions for learning, including social and emotional competence, connectedness to caring adults and peers, and the experience of emotional and physical safety.  Findings included improved conditions for learning, better attendance, decreased disruptive behavior, and fewer suspensions.

What makes a school a place where Alaskan students want to be and want to do well? Why do students stay in school or drop out? And what do Alaskan students believe that schools can do to help them succeed? Researchers at AIR present the answers, provided directly by students, to these questions.

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a team-based classroom behavior management strategy that helps young children master the role of student while developing the discipline needed to sit still, pay attention and complete their school work. AIR works with school districts and communities on all aspects of GBG implementation.

In 2005 AIR partnered with Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to identify the core indicators that schools must actively manage to support student success, and develop an instrument to assess these indicators.

The purpose of this report is to begin a program of research to allow us to better understand how Student Connection constructs related to other educational quality indicators, and how they can be used for school performance management.

This report covers topics such as victimization, fights, bullying, classroom disorder, weapons, student perceptions of school safety, teacher injury, and availability and student use of drugs and alcohol. Indicators of crime and safety are compared across different population subgroups and over time. Data on crimes that occur outside of school grounds are offered as a point of comparison where available.

School violence can lead to a disruptive and threatening environment, physical injury, and emotional stress, all of which can be obstacles to student achievement (Elliott, Hamburg, and Williams 1998). Educators have responded to the perceived threat of school violence by implementing programs designed to prevent, deter, and respond to the potential for violence in schools (Peterson, Larson, and Skiba 2001). In addition, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. 107-110) emphasizes the importance of safe learning environments by requiring schools to have a safety plan in place and to fund programs and practices intended to prevent and reduce violence in schools.  

This paper uses longitudinal self-report data from a nationally representative data set to explore the relationships between self-perceptions of peer relationships and problem behaviors measured at the end of the third and fifth grades and various socio-demographic characteristics and academic performance.

This report covers topics such as victimization, fights, bullying, disorder, weapons, student perceptions of school safety, teacher injury, and drugs and alcohol. Indicators of crime and safety are compared across different population subgroups and over time. Data on crimes that occur outside of school grounds are offered as a point of comparison where available.

Single-sex education refers most generally to education at the elementary, secondary, or postsecondary level in which males or females attend school exclusively with members of their own sex. This report is a systematic quantitative review of single-sex education at the elementary and secondary levels.

This report, written by members of the National Study Group for the Affirmative Development of Academic Ability, provides a set of practical recommendations for what policymakers, educators, parents, and the community can do to move all students—particularly minority and low-income students—to hi

The purpose of this Action Guide is to help schools develop and implement a comprehensive violence prevention plan grounded in the principles of the Early Warning Guide. This Action Guide is based on evidence-based practices. Effective action plans are strategic, coordinated, and comprehensive. They involve schoolwide prevention, early intervention, and intensive services for students with significant emotional or behavioral needs, including those with disruptive, destructive, or violent behaviors.

This article takes a public health perspective on early intervention for children with, or at risk for developing, emotional or behavioral disorders.