Secondary students with or at risk for emotional and/or behavioral disorders (EBD) can be characterized as having severe deficits in social competence. Moreover, as students transition into the secondary grades, social competence takes on increased complexity and importance. Social skills training (SST) represents a class of interventions routinely implemented with secondary-age students identified as EBD as a means of improving their social competence. What is unknown, however, is whether the evidence base supports the use of SST for this particular subset of students. The purpose of this research was to synthesize the meta-analytic literature evaluating the efficacy of SST for secondary students with EBD. Results from this analysis indicate that SST produces improvements in two thirds of secondary students with EBD, compared to only one third of controls. The results from this analysis are interpreted in light of opposing opinions regarding the efficacy of SST for secondary students with EBD.

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An increasing number of children in elementary schools have behavior issues that compromise their ability to meet the expectations of their teachers, such as self-regulation, academic focus, and positive interactions with peers and adults (Walker, Ramsey, & Gresham, 2004). These behavioral attributes, defined as academic enablers (DiPerna & Elliott, 2002), are fundamental to the development of social competence and effective learning and achievement (Gresham, Cook, Crews, & Kern, 2004). Children who begin their school careers with serious limitations in these competencies often fail to get off to a good start in school or to derive maximal benefits from their schooling. With these children in mind, the School Mental Health Alliance, a group of more than 50 experts in school mental health research and policy, released Working Together to Promote Academic Performance, Social and Emotional Learning, and Mental Health for All Children (Hunter et al., 2005). This position paper provides an action plan for addressing the mental health needs of behaviorally at-risk children in school and mental health settings. A major recommendation of this group is to emphasize wider implementation of promising cost-effective interventions at the point of school entry and to forge collaborative partnerships among educators, parents, mental health experts, and community agencies. One promising exemplar of this approach is First Step to Success (hereafter referred to as First Step), a school-home intervention that has a solid evidence base in achieving positive outcomes for behaviorally at-risk children in the primary grades (Walker et al., 1997, 1998). First Step is considered a secondary-level intervention (i.e., used when children do not respond to primary, schoolwide universal prevention strategies); it is appropriate for students who experience moderate to severe behavior problems early in their school careers and, thus, may be at risk for academic failure. First Step is a manualized program packaged for wide dissemination, and it is considered evidence-based, having been adopted and implemented with successful