The controversy over the use labels for students who receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has been raging for decades. Do labels really serve an educational purpose? Do they stigmatize students? Do disabilities really exist? Are they just part of the normal distribution of human characteristics,…

The authors speculate only about relatively short-term advances in special education for students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Speculation is confined to the overlapping areas of core values, technologies, neuroscience, and law/policy. In core values, the authors hope to see a resurgence of commitment to special, effective instruction…

Problems in defining emotional and behavioural difficulties of all types, including bullying, are discussed. Interactions among seeing, naming and communicating about these phenomena are considered. School and community characteristics of students with emotional and behavioural difficulties are touched upon. Major problems in definition and…

Prevalence of children with emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) is a critical component in the discussion of underidentification of children served in special education. This discussion has previously focused almost exclusively on point prevalence or the number of children with EBD presumably needing services at any single point in time.…

Underidentification of students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD; emotional disturbance or ED in federal language) is a critical issue, perhaps explainable in part by causal attributions of problem behavior associated with conservatism. Conservatism in 58 counties in the state of California was measured by finding the percentage of…

The authors note that identification as having emotional or behavioral disorders (EBD) is generally acknowledged to be stigmatizing. The stigma associated with identification as needing special education for EBD (or any other disability) could be reduced by talking in readily understood language about differences, accepting the reality of…

We review the concept of response to intervention (RtI) as it is being applied to emotional and behavioral disorders (EDB) in the early part of the 21st century, examining how it differs from and incorporates features of other approaches to addressing those problems, including pre-referral interventions, applied behavior analysis, functional…

Instruction is the most important variable in special education, but it is often overlooked. Special instruction is what makes special education work, yet it is often neglected. We need to know more about how to teach both academic and behavioral skills more effectively, how behavioral and academic skills are interrelated, and how to choose those…

Comments on the nature of special education as an enterprise and judgment of its progress are offered. Five independent but necessary and sufficient criteria for judgment of progress in special education for students with emotional or behavioral disorders are suggested. Comments are made on each of the articles in the series, and concluding…

Proponents of a social model of disability derive their arguments from social constructionism. They combine different disabling conditions under one term: disability. Subsequently, they apply the specific viewpoint of the disability rights social movement of people with physical disabilities to other conditions such as intellectual disabilities,…

The civil rights movements involving skin tone, gender or gender orientation, disability, and other physiognomic features remain important in securing the legal rights of individuals to equal treatment and equal opportunities regardless of their personal characteristics of color, origin, gender, and so on. Unfortunately, these welcome civil rights…

Objective data provide overwhelming evidence that children and youth with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are underidentified and underserved. This was the central argument in our November 2007 Forum article to which Harry, Hart, Klingner, Cramer, and Sturges responded. In this rejoinder, we continue to assert the dramatic need to offer…

Data suggest that students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) are underidentified and underserved for a variety of reasons. In response to this problem, the authors identify misinformation and provide evidence-based information regarding prevalence; discuss the role of stigma and exclusion from the EBD category and appropriate responses…

The authors' association goes back more than 40 years, when they were both starting doctoral studies in special education for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) at the University of Kansas. In this article, the authors provide a balanced (albeit biased) account of the good and the bad, including some of the many achievements…

This book looks at the field of special education with regard to students with emotional and behavioral disorders. Specifically, it reflects on some of the important events and people that have shaped the field of special education. This book not only recalls prominent events and individuals, it also seeks to draw reasonable connections from past…