Stage 1: Selection

You may be looking for an evidence-based program or practice or you may find that a program or practice you are already using does not address your current needs. At this point, you’ll need to select a new EBP (with approval if you are an SS/HS grantee. See Utilizing Grant-Provided Support).

Below are some concrete action steps compiled from best practices and from SS/HS project staff that may help you select appropriate EBPs.

Action steps for successful program selection

1. Conduct a Needs Assessment

Use existing school and community data (Needs Assessment Planning Worksheet) and collect new data to identify and prioritize areas of need related to risk and protective factors connected to the five SS/HS elements. A needs assessment can define the scope, characteristics, and consequences of problems, and will help you answer key questions, such as:

What are the problems that need to be addressed?
What is the school already doing to address needs related to the five SS/HS elements?
What components require strengthening?
What areas are not being effectively addressed?
How safe and healthy is the school environment for students and adults?

Your needs assessment should take into consideration the particular cultural and linguistic context of your community, which will help you select the best possible program for your target population. The results of your needs assessment go into column 1 of your logic model. Use the Needs Assessment Planning Worksheet as a guide.

For more information on needs assessment support, see Working with Your Local Evaluator and Utilizing Grant-Provided Support.

Strategies

Working with Your Local Evaluator
Utilizing Grant-Provided Support

Tools

Needs Assessment Planning Worksheet
Logic Model Worksheet

We used the Protective Schools Assessment. It’s an assessment that each school site took to determine where its strengths and weaknesses were. And based on the information from that assessment, sites selected programs."

—Vail School District #20, Arizona

2. Identify Gaps

Use your needs assessment data to:

Identify programming gaps in priority areas for different age groups and to determine if specific populations are not being served by your programs.
Look comprehensively at other services and interventions that already exist within the school and the community. The Resource Mapping Tool can help you define a continuum of programs (from universal to selective to indicated) for each age group to complement your successful existing programs.
Look at existing programs that are not producing changes in the populations that they are intended to impact. Poor results may be due to poor program fit, program implementation, or program fidelity:

If the cause is poor program fit, a different program may better serve students’ needs.
If the cause is poor implementation, implementers might require additional training and support.
If the cause is poor fidelity, you might contact the developer to help you better understand the elements of the EBP that are critical to ensuring positive outcomes.

Tools

Resource Mapping Tool

In order to decrease suspensions and expulsions, the Tigard-Tualatin (Oregon) School District identified programming gaps. The district decided to use a systemic, multipronged approach that addresses the three tiers of intervention. Tigard-Tualatin employs the preventative PBIS approach at the universal level to improve the school climate for all students. The district also has PBIS Teams—Yellow Zone Teams for second-tier selected academic and behavior intervention planning and monitoring, and Red Zone Teams for intensive, targeted third-tier support. Red Zone Teams at each school include the principal or associate principal, school counselors, learning specialists, SS/HS mental health care coordinators, SROs, and the SS/HS juvenile counselor. This team works to implement interventions—based on data collection about absences, office disciplinary referrals, and suspensions—for students reaching identified thresholds in these areas.

3. Find Evidence-Based Programs or Practices

There are a number of methods you might use to identify effective programs or practices for your intended population:

Search registries of evidence-based interventions, such as the National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP), which allows you to sort EBPs by many categories (e.g., topic, age group, race/ethnicity, setting). It also allows you to compare similar programs. Registries often list the evaluated outcomes of effective programs and the populations with whom each program has been implemented with success. (See EBP Resource List for other program registries.)
Consult the National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention Web site, which provides EBP Fact Sheets describing programs commonly used by grantees.
Ask school districts who have similar demographics and needs what programs and practices they are implementing with success.
Use the SS/HS Grantee List to search for communities that are using specific EBPs, and then contact those sites about their experiences with the EBP.

You can use the EBP Comparison Tool to compile and compare your results.

If you are considering a program or practice that has not been used or tested with your specific population, contact the developer to find out if there is evidence on its use with your population, and examine the program’s logic model or theory of change to determine if there is anything that indicates efficacy for your intended population. See Working with the EBP Developer for more information.

Strategies

Working with the EBP Developer

Tools

EBP Resource List ?
EBP Fact Sheets
EBP Comparison Tool
Grantee Locator

What happened was [that] before our SS/HS project, the districts heard from the department of education, “Hey, this is coming down, you’ve got to have this in place.” So our county office provided a lot of showcases about different programs. People went to those, gained information, and then started calling other districts, “Hey, I understand you used Too Good for Drugs. How do you like it? What’s your teachers’ take on it? How is it, in terms of implementation?” So the feedback for Too Good for Drugs was pretty positive."

—San Diego County Schools, California

The goal of the Chicago (Illinois) Public Schools, District #299, SS/HS Initiative was to strengthen and expand on a continuum of services for all students, resulting in positive student outcomes. Recognizing the Illinois Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards as benchmarks for positive behavioral and mental health, the Chicago SS/HS Partnership developed the capacity to provide targeted SEL supports to the district’s student population. Using district- and school-level data, Chicago’s SS/HS Partnership identified evidenced-based interventions and practices, such as Second Step and PBS, to address students’ SEL needs, as well as mental health services and supports at each tier in the pyramid model for select schools in the South Shore. These prevention and targeted behavioral supports and strategies integrated positive discipline practices and provided school-based services that helped students meet district and state SEL standards.

4. Convene a Selection Committee

Once you have narrowed your search to a few program choices, it is important to include representatives from key stakeholder groups (e.g., teachers, parents, students, principals, and school staff) in the selection of the EBP. They can help judge how successful or accepted an intervention may be with the intended population, and can help to secure buy-in from the groups they represent.

It’s also important to get input from SS/HS partners, as they can help determine a fit with community and institutional capacity, compatibility with their own programs and services, and a commitment of funding and staff. (See Utilizing Partnerships for more information.)

The people that were involved in the selection [of the Olweus program] were the principal, students in focus groups, teachers, guidance counselors, and other school staff members, as well as some of our community connection staff working on the Safe Schools grant. It was a group of people because the school staff had to have an 80 percent vote that they’re willing to do this."

—Allamakee County School District, Waukon, Iowa