Project SCREEN: Validation of a Free-Access Screening Tool for K-12 Educators to Screen Students with Internalizing and Externalizing Behavior Patterns

The purpose of this project is to prevent students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) from developing lifelong emotional disturbances (ED) that require the provision of special education and related services under IDEA (2004) as well as life-long mental health needs. It is essential that students at risk for ED are detected early via systematic screening so that proper interventions can be designed, implemented, and evaluated when these youth are more responsive to intervention efforts. Given the current fiscal uncertainty of educational funding, monetary concerns are a genuine consideration. For some schools, free-access screening tools may be the only realistic option. With new standards established by the National Center on Intensive Intervention (NCII) and the Institute of Education Sciences (IES)’s rigorous guidelines, we seek to validate the Student Risk Screening Scale for Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors (SRSS-IE) – a free-access screening tool – for the purpose of detecting K-12 students at risk for internalizing and/or externalizing behavior, and making available a sufficient body of evidence regarding the validity of the SRSS-IE to inform practitioner’s decision making when selecting a screening tool.