Recently there has been national media attention focusing on the number of deaths and injuries associated with the use of physical restraint and seclusion procedures in schools. Research shows these procedures are most frequently applied to students with disabilities, and that lack of staff training in de-escalation procedures, as well as the use of these interventions, is commonly viewed as a contributing factor to student injuries and death. This study compares and contrasts crisis intervention training from 17 commercial training programs as a way to assist administrators in finding the crisis training program that best matches their program goals and policy guidelines. Choosing an appropriate training program can be a difficult administrative decision given the legal and financial obligations that can be associated with such trainings. This study compares course content, and provides descriptive information about specific features of each program to allow stakeholders to make adequate comparisons. Similarities in these training programs, as well as some of the relatively wide variations in the way the training content is emphasized, are also noted.

Behavior‐analytic academic intervention research has gained popularity among school psychologists because it offers a unique combination of robust principles of behavior and a degree of clarity and precision about functional relationships that is unparalleled in other learning paradigms. This article reviews the literature for a type of antecedent manipulation that is well established in the field of applied behavior analysis, but which has been sorely neglected in the area of academic interventions: motivating operations (MOs). The existing literature suggests two strategies in particular that can be easily combined with existing interventions—choice and indiscriminable contingencies. These strategies can increase the relative strength of reinforcing consequences for correct responses to academic tasks. This article reviews the empirical support for the variety of ways in which each strategy can be implemented and ties their effects to the functional properties of MOs. To date, attempts to bring together in a single publication the most effective strategies falling under the conceptual umbrella of MOs and articulate their implications for academic interventions are lacking. The current article explains the potential role of MOs (and the associated intervention strategies) in academic interventions and provides guidance for their use as components that can be added to academic interventions. The application of MO manipulations is illustrated in a comparison of the effects of indiscriminable contingencies with high‐preference consequences on the rate of math computation fluency for two elementary school children.

The relations of fear to anxiety sensitivity, control beliefs, and maternal overprotection were examined in 126 7- to 13-year-old clinically referred children with specific phobias. Results indicated that anxiety sensitivity and control beliefs were significant predictors of children’s fear levels, accounting for approximately 48% of the total variance. Unexpectedly, age, gender, and maternal overprotection did not emerge as significant predictors of fear in the overall sample. In subsequent analyses, anxiety sensitivity was found to be a consistent, significant predictor for both girls and boys, for both younger and older children, and for children with and without an additional anxiety disorder diagnosis. Control beliefs were only a significant predictor for girls, younger children, and children with an additional anxiety diagnosis. Maternal overprotection was not a significant predictor for any group. Children with an additional anxiety disorder diagnosis had higher levels of fear, anxiety sensitivity, and maternal overprotection, as well as lower levels of control beliefs than the non-additional anxiety disorder subgroup. Future directions and clinical implications are explored.

This descriptive analysis of policy content examined local school district policies on physical restraint and seclusion in one Midwestern state that did not have state legislation on these topics to determine whether districts had policies and, if so, whether their content included recommended principles from the U.S. Department of Education. No previous research has addressed district policies. A maximum variation sample of 90 districts was examined to determine whether policies were in place, whether recommended principles were included, and whether policies varied based on student enrollment. Although almost all districts had policies, many of the federally recommended principles were not addressed across the sample and less than 10% of the district policies indicated that these procedures should only be used in the case of imminent danger of serious injury to self or others. District enrollment size did not affect policy, but the substance of the policy was determined by the districts’ policy source from advising attorneys.

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