Starting Strong: A School-Based Indicated Prevention Program During the Transition to Kindergarten
Abbey Eisenhower
University of Massachusetts Boston
Heather Taylor
Morrissey-Compton Educational Center
Bruce L. Baker
University of California, Los Angeles
Please address correspondence regarding this article to Abbey Eisenhower, Psychology Department, University of Massachusetts Boston, 100 Morrissey Blvd, Boston, MA 02125; e-mail:
Abbey Eisenhower is an associate professor in psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Dr. Eisenhower's teaching interests include developmental psychopathology and child therapy and research interests include student–teacher relationships, the early school experiences of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), family well-being in the context of childhood intellectual and developmental disabilities, early detection of ASD, and reduction of health disparities in autism detection and treatment. Funded research includes a longitudinal study of the adaptation to school for children with ASD and their development of literacy skills, as well as a study aimed at reducing health disparities in access to early ASD diagnosis and treatment.
Heather Taylor is a clinical psychologist at the Development and Behavior Unit at Stanford Children's Health in Palo Alto, California. As a member of the High Risk Infant Follow-Up Clinic, she provides neurodevelopment evaluations of infants and children who have birth-related complications, such as extreme prematurity. She also holds a position at Morrissey-Compton Educational Center, a nonprofit agency that works to enable children and adults with learning disabilities and school-related difficulties to achieve their goals through the provision of diagnostic and intervention services. Her clinical and research interests include assessment and services for children with autism, learning disabilities, and attention and behavioral disorders.
Bruce L. Baker is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Baker's teaching and research interests focus on developmental psychopathology, with an emphasis on childhood intellectual and developmental disabilities. His funded research includes a 15-year National Institutes of Health-supported longitudinal study of the development and adjustment of youth with intellectual disabilities from ages 3 to 15 years. Of particular interest are the mutual effects of family processes (parenting and parent well-being) and child behavior disorders on each other over time.
Associate Editor: Shannon Suldo
Starting Strong in Kindergarten (Starting Strong) is a school-based indicated prevention targeting behavior problems, student–teacher relationships, and parent–school connectedness for children with or at risk for disruptive behavior problems during the transition to kindergarten. By use of a block-randomized, controlled trial to test program feasibility and efficacy, seven schools (representing 33 kindergarten classrooms and 97 children, 74% of whom were boys, 57% of whom were White, and 38% of whom were English language learners) were assigned to the immediate-intervention versus delayed control condition. A 10-week parent group (offered in both English and Spanish) and four-session teacher group consultation program addressed strategies for promoting positive behavior, student–teacher relationships, and parent–teacher collaboration. Feasibility was supported by high parent and teacher attendance, engagement, and satisfaction. The intervention had effects on overall parent- and teacher-reported behavior problems, as well as on parent-reported externalizing problems and parent- and teacher-reported internalizing problems, although not on a teacher-reported externalizing problems scale. Implications for sustainable, school-based mental health interventions are discussed. The transition to kindergarten may be a particularly apt time to address behavioral and relational adjustment in school.
Received: July 9, 2014; Accepted: July 24, 2015;
Copyright 2016 by the National Association of School Psychologists
