Social maladjustment and students with behavioral and emotional disorders: Revisiting basic assumptions and assessment issues

Abstract

While much of the current focus in special education remains on reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Act of 1997, disparities in the identification of children with serious emotional disorders continue to plague special educators and school psychologists. Several years after the issue of social maladjustment and its relationship to serious emotional disturbance was discussed and debated, little appears to have changed. Children, adolescents, and families are subjected to widely varying philosophies, assessment procedures, and services based on questionable criteria used to determine whether a student "qualifies" for services under the Serious Emotional Disturbance (SED) designation. In this paper, we address how this issue has significantly affected access to services for students with serious emotional disturbances. Faulty assumptions regarding the relationship of social maladjustment to emotional disturbance in children/adolescents are identified and the implications of these assumptions for children are described. The lack of research supporting specific tools developed to assess social maladjustment in the context of a serious emotional disorder and the impact of this current practice on children is addressed from a practical and ethical standpoint. The role of the school psychologist as gatekeeper is contrasted to that of the more positive role as facilitator.

Eligibility, Assessment, and Educational Placement Issues for Students Classified with Emotional Disturbance: Federal and State-Level Analyses

“…This controversy in part relates to the ambiguity of the construct and concerns, as noted previously, about the validity of the claim that including students with social maladjustment within the special education ED classification would ''open the floodgates'' in identification and overwhelm the capacity of schools to provide appropriate educational placements for students, especially related to anticipated need for prohibitively expensive special education services for students classified with ED (see Merrell & Walker, 2004;Olympia et al, 2004;Skiba et al, 1994).…”

“…The exclusion of youth with social maladjustment, or a pattern of disruptive behavior that is somehow determined to be unrelated to an underlying emotional disturbance, has been particularly controversial. This is related to problems in arbitrary decision-making about causality of the disorder (i.e., internal or not), and the complexity of such decisionmaking given that co-occurring emotional/behavioral problems in youth are so common (Merrell & Walker, 2004;Olympia et al, 2004). In addition, concerns have been raised about the validity of the common belief that including students with social maladjustment in the ED classification group would ''open the floodgates'' into special education (see Skiba, Grizzle & Minke, 1994).…”

“…These include tools such as the Scale for Assessing Emotional Disturbance (SAED; Epstein & Cullinan, 1998), the Differential Test of Conduct and Emotional Problems (DT/ CEP; Kelly, 1990), and the Emotional and Behavior Problem Scale (EBPS; Wright, 1989). Serious questions remain about the discriminant validity of such assessment tools (Costenbader & Buntaine, 1999;Olympia et al, 2004). For example, the DT/CEP and EBPS have been used for their ability to differentiate between ED and social maladjustment, but Costenbader and Buntaine (1999) found that the DT/CEP failed to identify 79% of students who were previously classified with ED, and the EBPS incorrectly identified about 50% of students with social maladjustment who previously did not meet this exclusion criterion.…”

Addressing Public Stigma and Disparities Among Persons With Mental Illness: The Role of Federal Policy

“…When considering the EAHCA, researchers have noted that there is enormous variation in the interpretation of the severe emotional disturbance criteria across school districts and states. 31 Children may qualify for special education services if they meet one or more of five inclusion criteria for severe emotional disturbance laid out in the legislation, such as an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors 32 ; however, the legislation also excludes children who are classified as socially maladjusted, unless they also have an emotional disturbance. Social maladjustment, however, has never been defined in federal guidelines, and the lack of a definition has led to confusion and controversy.…”

Students’ Perceptions of Schooling: The Path to Alternate Education

“…The prevalence of EBD designations has been estimated at 1% of the overall student population (Lane, Wehby, & Barton-Arwood, 2005;Olympia et al, 2004), with approximately 25% of those designations being for girls (Trout, Nordness, Pierce, & Epstein, 2003).…”