Positive behavior support (PBS) and functional behavioral assessment (FBA) are two significant concepts of the 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These two concepts are not new, but they are important for improving the quality of efforts to educate children and youth with disabilities. The purposes of this article are to describe (a) the context in which PBS and FBA are needed and (b) definitions and features of PBS and FBA. An important message is that positive behavioral interventions and supports involve the whole school, and successful implementation emphasizes the identification, adoption, and sustained use of effective policies, systems, data-based decision making, and practices. Systems-level challenges are also discussed.

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A B S T R A C T Dropping out of high school culminates a long-term process of disengagement from school and has profound social and economic consequences for students, their families, and their communities. Students who drop out of high school are more likely to be unemployed, to earn less than those who graduate, to be on public assistance, and to end up in prison. The present study examined dropout rates in Kentucky high schools ( N = 196), using both quantitative and qualitative procedures. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were computed to identify those school-level variables that showed strong relationships to dropout rates. A sample of 20 schools with the highest dropout rates was compared to a sample of 20 schools with the lowest dropout rates using a multivariate analysis of variance. Furthermore, 4 schools from each group were selected as case examples. Information gathered from administrator surveys, staff interviews, and on-site observations provided detailed descriptions of the characteristics of schools with high and low dropout rates. The findings of this study demonstrated that a number of school variables are differentially related to dropout rate. Implications of these findings for school reform are discussed.

This manuscript presents a review of the growing body of research concerning the influence of negative reinforcement on student and teacher behaviors. Negative reinforcement strengthens behaviors that result in escape from, or avoidance of, aversive stimuli. It is argued that negative reinforcement is a variable in the academic interactions of students with serious emotional disturbance and their teachers, Although both desired and undesired behaviors may be outcomes of negative reinforcement, because of the academic deficiencies of students with serious emotional disturbance and the instructional behaviors of their teachers, the escape and avoidance behaviors exhibited by these students more often may be undesired. The authors call for research to investigate sources of aversive stimuli within academic interactions between teachers and students with serious emotional disturbance as well as the potentially aversive stimuli present in academic activities. Implications for teaching practices also are presented.