Lori Stern

Like, how would you measure personal relationships or inappropriate feelings?

The bottom line is Walt spent all of elementary school in this segregated school with no interaction at all with students in regular classrooms.

Well, by seventh grade, the school team that worked with Walt decided he was ready for a less restrictive environment, a regular middle school.

No more locked rooms and holds.

The plan was, at his new middle school, he would be eased into regular classrooms.

But still, he'd start out in a classroom with other kids in EBD, and that's where his home base would be.

Not great.

His behavior was still a problem.

He got into a lot of fights, and he wasn't really able to handle regular classes.

But it could also be that the school didn't have the support he needed as he tried to adjust to a regular classroom.

That's what it meant.

Right.

You have put your finger on something I keep hearing from the education research world.

Putting kids with EBD in separate classes creates a vicious cycle that actually makes it harder for them to improve their behavior.

One of the experts I talked to was Chad Rose, an education professor at the University of South Carolina.

He's also the head of an international group of academics and educators who work on behavior and emotional health in schools.

And that's what happened to Walt.

He was surrounded all the time by other students labeled EBD.

So he didn't see how most Gen Ed students behaved and he wasn't expected to act like them.

or make the same academic progress.