 Your school has chosen to use the SRSS-IE. Here's a brief introduction to this tool. The student risk screening scale is used as a universal screener to determine the social emotional needs of students. This screener fits under your school's multi-tiered system of support framework as part of looking at the needs of the whole student. What is the SRSS-IE? The SRSS assessment is a universal screening tool that helps identify students who are at risk for behavioral problems. Teachers assess various risk factors for each student in their classroom to determine who is at risk. Providing students with additional support may prevent their behavior problems from escalating over time. In addition to screening for individual students, schools use the SRSS to look at school-wide data for program evaluation. Here is an example of what the screener looks like. There is a screener for elementary students and one for middle and high school students. Your students' names will be filled in for you and you will rate each student using a Likert scale for each item. Teachers will be asked to complete this universal screening three times per year, fall, winter, and spring. Screening is a key component of prevention efforts, similar to universal screening for vision, hearing, and reading. Early detection of students potentially at risk and connecting students with appropriate resources when needed has increasingly become a standard practice in light of increases in school violence. The SRSS is not used to exclude students from the instructional environment, determine special education eligibility, label students, assess traits for personality, or identify psychological disorders or disorders of any type. It is used to help assess school-wide social-emotional practices to help identify students who may need additional support and to help assess where to allocate resources for additional support so students can be successful with social behavior, improving opportunities for academic success. The SRSS looks at both internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Internalizing behaviors are behaviors that result from negativity that is focused inward. It consists of five internalizing behavior items. One, emotionally flat, two, shy or withdrawn, three, sad or depressed, four, anxious, five, lonely. Externalizing behaviors are behaviors that are directed toward the external environment. This consists of seven externalizing behavior items. One, steel, two, lie, cheat, sneak, three, behavior problems, four, pure ejection, five, low academic achievement, six, negative attitude, seven, aggressive behavior. Before you start thinking about your students' social-emotional needs, I thought it might be good for you to think about your own needs. How it works. The scale is completed by a teacher for a class in about 15 to 20 minutes. It is important to stick to this time frame. Staff will rate students on items using a four-point Likert scale from zero to three. Zero never, one occasionally, two sometimes, and three frequently. Rating students is merely communicating that the teacher observed the behavior and the intensity of which it has been observed. It is not to assign a student a label, such as thief or liar. Some items may seem ambiguous, and this is on purpose. Teachers are expected to interpret each item without definition of what it means. Here are some questions you may have. Why aren't there definitions for the items? All psychometric studies conducted have examined the reliability and validity of the SRSS scores without operational definitions. Additional descriptions of each item should not be provided as the switch change procedures for this established tool. Also, staff should not work to develop consensus on how to interpret any items before or during screening. It is just your professional judgment. What happens after the screening? The leadership team examines the data in three ways, the school as a whole, grade level or classroom level, and individual students. Another question you might have is, can the wording be changed or the items be modified in any way? Any modification to the SRSS would invalidate the supporting research. The zero to three Likert rating scale must also be used. The SRSS must be used exactly as it is provided to you. We don't yet have tiered systems of support for students, so should we complete this screening? Using the SRSS to collect screening data on all students will help a team to know where to best direct their efforts. Most schools will have at least some evidence-based intervention opportunities available to students. Teams can start by strengthening what they are already doing. Then, as the data show it is needed and as the school and district develop capacity to implement additional supports with fidelity, those supports can be layered. If you have any further questions, please contact your principal, your school psychologist, or your school counselor. Thank you.