Barry Mccurdy

Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine · School of Professional and Applied Psychology

Positive school climates are associated with numerous benefits for students and school staff. Although there is some evidence that the implementation of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (SWPBIS) impacts features of school climate, such as organizational health, the specific aspects of SWPBIS that contribute to climate have...

School-based mental health programs are increasingly recognized as methods by which to improve children’s access to evidence-based practices (EBPs), particularly in urban under-resourced communities. School-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) is one approach to integrating mental health services into school-based programming; h...

This paper describes implementation (fidelity, perceived acceptability) and tier 1 and Tier 2 outcomes of school‐wide positive behavior interventions and supports approach including mental health supports at Tier 2 in two K‐8 urban schools. Interventions for Tier 2 consisted of three manualized group cognitive behavioral therapy (GCBT) protocols fo...

The number of school resource officers (SROs) is increasing nationwide. Simultaneously, the number of schools adopting schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is increasing and projected to expand in response to the greater focus of the newly passed Every Student Succeeds Act to improve school climate and safety. Without sp...

Students with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and other emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) often have significant academic needs, particularly in the area of writing. There is currently a need to identify intervention strategies that can be efficiently implemented in the school setting to improve the writing fluency outcomes of students f...

Public schools are an ideal setting for the delivery of mental health services to children. Unfortunately, services provided in schools, and more so in urban schools, have been found to lead to little or no significant clinical improvements. Studies with urban school children seldom report on the effects of clinician training on treatment fidelity...

This article presents outcome data of the implementation of three group cognitive-behavioral therapy (GCBT) interventions for children with externalizing behavior problems, anxiety, and depression. School counselors and graduate students co-led the groups in two low-income urban schools. Data were analyzed to assess pre-treatment to post-treatment...

This investigation employed a participatory action research method involving school psychology consultants and educators to design and evaluate the impact of school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports in a self-contained school serving students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The traditional practices of a universal system,...

Background: Urban schools lag behind non-urban schools in attending to the behavioral health needs of their students. This is especially evident with regard to the level of use of evidence-based interventions with school children. Increased used of evidence-based interventions in urban schools would contribute to reducing mental health services di...

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a powerful group contingency with a history of documented empirical support. The purpose of this study was to compare two interdependent group contingencies, the GBG and a positive variation, the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG), in a school implementing school-wide positive behavior support. A kindergarten and fourth-g...

School-wide positive behavior support (SWPBS) has an established evidence base in general education settings, and emerging evidence suggests that SWPBS may be effective in alternative settings (e.g., alternative, residential, or hospital schools; psychiatric hospitals). Given the intense educational and behavioral needs of students typically served...

Attending school requires that children leave the familiarity of their surroundings, many, for the first time, to interact with the larger world where they are faced with the challenge of meeting teacher demands, as well as negotiating peer-to-peer relationships. A successful outcome will depend on the degree of readiness skills and resilience fost...

Urban school officials face the challenge of a growing number of students with or at-risk for developing antisocial behavior. The school-wide positive behavior support (PBS) model provides a comprehensive structure for schools to address antisocial behavior more effectively. In this article, the authors document, in case study format, the implement...

The purpose of this pilot project was to develop a tool and a process for providing performance feedback on evidence-based classroom management strategies to teachers of students in emotional support classrooms. The project was carried out with nine classroom teachers and descriptive results are discussed. Initial results found increases in treatme...

Non-classroom settings are often the most violence-prone areas within a school. This study investigated the impact of an interdependent group contingency on the disruptive behaviors of students in grades K–6 in an urban school cafeteria. Nine female noontime aides and National School and Community Corps staff members implemented the Lunchroom Behav...

Teachers are oen ill-prepared to manage classrooms in urban schools. In the present study, an empirically-based behavioral management strategy, the Good Behavior Game (Game), was investigated. The effects of the Game on student behavior and teacher response statements, including praise, were examined. A teacher with 22 students in a first grade cla...

The need for residential services for youth with the most intractable emotional and behavioral problems continues to exist despite advances made in developing community-based systems of care. Residential treatment centers (RTCs), considered one of the most restrictive service settings, have changed little over the years and have not fared well in o...

This article describes a case study of a school-wide positive behavior support model implemented in an ethnically and racially diverse inner-city elementary school. The project brought together school-based professionals with expert behavioral consultants from a local behavioral health-care agency to address the increasing rates of student disrupti...

A significant need exists to help educators more effectively meet the academic and behavioral needs of students with, and at risk for developing, emotional and behavioral disorders. However, training alone is insufficient to change the practices of teachers. Strengthening Emotional Support Services (SESS) is a combined active training and consultat...

The sensitivity of two curriculum-based measurement procedures, maze (a modified cloze procedure), and oral reading, were evaluated with six students with mental retardation and concomitant emotional/behavioral disorders. Although teacher acceptability of the two procedures was equal, ideographic comparisons revealed oral reading fluency to be a mo...

Effects of four forms of progress monitoring were evaluated on the oral reading rate of 48 elementary-age students with learning disabilities: teacher-, peer-, self-, and no-monitoring. Student progress toward long-term goals was measured twice weekly for 9 weeks, and participants were provided verbal and visual performance feedback. Analysis of gr...

Examined the efficacy of instructional variables by comparing a progressive time delay and a trial-and-error strategy in teaching sight word acquisition to 2 boys (aged 8 and 9 yrs) with severe behavior disorders and borderline or low-average intelligence. Additionally, the value of observational learning vs direct instruction was assessed by havin...

Matching theory describes a process by which organisms distribute their behavior between two or more concurrent schedules of reinforcement (Herrnstein, 1961). In an attempt to determine the generality of matching theory to applied settings, 2 students receiving special education were provided with academic response alternatives. Using a combined si...

In an effort to increase reading proficiency, five 9th- and 10th-grade students with behavior disorders were instructed to read along with an audio type of vocabulary words recorded at 80 words per minute. Effects of the taped-words intervention on rate of reading vocabulary words as well as generalization effects of reading passages containing som...

In an effort to reduce disrurtive classroom behavior, five students attending a school for behavior-disordered youth were shown edited videotapes depicting themselves or a peer appropriately engaged in classroom activities. Effects were idiosyncratic across students, the most significant effects occuring for the self-observation procedure. The resu...