When students misbehave, responding with counseling and other support leads to more effective behavioral threat assessment and management as school leaders work to prevent violence, according to a new analysis.
“Support-focused interventions” give educators a better chance of zeroing in on “underlying causes of problematic student behavior and also lead a student toward a more favorable, positive path into the future,” according to a new report from the nonprofit RAND Corporation, which researches education and public policy.
“Tools may include restrictive measures or law enforcement involvement in the most serious cases, but other options can be more effective,” the report attests. “Those additional options include different types of mental health intervention, counseling and other supports. Teams with extensive tools available to them can better customize interventions, increasing the chance of positive outcomes for all involved.”
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RAND’s experts say district leaders can boost the success of their behavioral threat assessment teams by providing a broad set of tools matched to the:
- Specifics of a student’s problematic behaviors
- Unique school community and environment
- Needs and circumstances of the student or students involved
These teams can begin capturing this data by interviewing students involved in behavioral incidents and connecting with staff members who are familiar with these students. They should also review any available law enforcement data.
These teams should prioritize data “that can be changed” as some information that helps assess the danger posed by an individual is not as useful for designing interventions, the report notes.
To ensure equitable outcomes, school leaders should also be open to external oversight of their behavioral threat assessment and management programs.
“Including positive mileposts into threat management planning not only could help lay out a path to full completion of all intervention activities but could also help define goals more specifically for an at-risk student, motivating even more beneficial outcomes,” the report concludes.
Educators can read RAND’s full behavioral threat assessment and management report here.
