Students served in juvenile correctional school settings often arrive with histories of trauma, aversive educational experiences, low achievement, and other severe risk factors that impeded psychosocial development, educational progress, and occupational outcomes. Schools serving adjudicated youth must address a higher percentage of severe behavioral health and educational needs than schools serving other populations of youth. Rehabilitation and education are essential to mediate the social and financial dilemmas that may result if youth return to communities unprepared to meet basic societal demands.
Research demonstrates that lack of essential supports can lead to recidivism.
A vast body of literature over the past thirty years has shown self-management procedures to be effective across school settings, grade levels, and disability identifications. Self -management procedures allow students with disabilities to be actively involved in their educational process and these procedures encourage independence by guiding learners away from external control and toward internal control of behavior (Prater, 1994) which is essential for guiding incarcerated students toward governing their lives more constructively (Houchins, 2001).
The present study taught high school age girls with disabilities to self-monitoring on-task behavior during independent practice of math calculation skills. Students received daily feedback regarding productivity and accuracy on assignments. Additional components included goal setting and incentives for goal attainment. A single-subject reversal design was used to evaluate effectiveness of the procedure on on-task behavior (time on-task), academic productivity (percentage of problems completed), and academic accuracy (percentage of problems completed correctly). Results indicated that the intervention was very effective for increasing participants’ on-task behavior. A modest to moderate impact on academic productivity was noted across participants, however, outcomes for academic accuracy did not show the expected improvement. Both students and teachers found the procedure to be easy to use and teachers viewed the strategy as useful for changing students’ behavior in the classroom.