The Kids Who Aren't Okay

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If we were tasked with the mission of creating school and classroom ecosystems that worked for the students who are struggling, what would they look like? Probably not the way most classrooms look now. Most schools and classrooms are structured around the kids who aren’t struggling (either that, or there are just some kids who are going to do well pretty much no matter what). But what would we do differently if we structured things in the opposite direction? Safe in the belief that what works for those who are struggling also works for those who aren’t (and knowing that the reverse is not true), what structures, belief systems, and practices would we change?

We’d Focus on Developmental Variability

Developmental variability refers to the natural differences or fluctuations in how individuals develop over time. It applies to all domains of functioning—cognitive/academic, emotional, physical, and social—and it’s guaranteed to be walking into your school and classroom. Amazingly enough, it’s a term we don’t hear very often in educator training or in schools. And yet, it’s your reality. We should embrace it.

The good news is that developmental variability isn’t something you need to change; it’s something you need to focus on, be responsive to, and plan for with intentionality. The quality of a school is measured by the degree to which it is responsive to the developmental variability of its students. (By the way, a good synonym for developmental variability is diversity.)

We’d Redefine Good Teaching

If the goal is to be responsive to the developmental variability in our classrooms, then we would define good teaching as meeting every student where they’re at. This definition is broad enough to encompass the pursuit of high (yet highly individualized) expectations, getting the most out of every student (with each student as their own reference point), and being important socialization agents. It’s also a good way to define equity (as opposed to equality, which means treating every student the same). Equality would only make sense if every student were the same.

So long as we’re defining terms, what’s it called when we provide equal access to opportunities and resources for students who might otherwise be excluded or marginalized because of their developmental variabilities? That, of course, is called inclusion. While the concepts of diversity, equity, and inclusion have been leveraged in the political realm, schools have no choice but to embrace and attend to them.

Thanks to high-stakes testing, educators are under intense pressure to ensure that every student meets the same standard by the end of the school year, with evaluations of job performance and job security often pegged to how well they accomplish the mission. While there are supports that are designed to help students who are struggling to meet expectations, those supports often don’t get the job done. High-stakes testing, even with supports added, has made it harder for educators to meet students where they’re at.

What we’re circling around here is a concept we call expectation management. Simply translated, this means giving conscious, deliberate thought to whether the expectations we’re placing on students are currently in range for them, with each student as their own reference point. We fervently believe that if educators were managing their expectations better—and given permission to do so—they’d be managing behavior a lot less. And they’d be suspending, expelling, hitting, de-escalating, restraining, and secluding a lot less too.

How do we know if an expectation is in range for a student? That’s a judgment call. But we have a simple, imperfect algorithm that may help you out. If a student can sometimes meet an expectation, it’s in range. If a student is currently never meeting an expectation, it’s probably out of range for now. Not forever, but for now.

Now, at this point, you might be thinking that special education is supposed to be the mechanism by which we take care of all that developmental variability and try to meet students where they’re at. If we’re relying exclusively on special education for that, we’re selling general education and the kids short and creating an unfortunate and counterproductive distinction between the kids who are and aren’t meeting our expectations.

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We’d Accurately Interpret Concerning Behavior

What happens when we place expectations on students that they’re unable to reliably meet? They, like the rest of us, exhibit a frustration response. The synonym for frustration response is concerning behavior. Put differently, a good way to cause lots of frustration responses in a classroom is to place lots of expectations on students that they’re having difficulty meeting.

As a side note, kids also have highly variable frustration responses. Some kids have milder frustration responses such as whining, pouting, sulking, withdrawing, and crying. We refer to these frustration responses as lucky, because they tend to elicit empathy, nurturance, and support from adults. Other kids have more powerful frustration responses, such as screaming, swearing, hitting, spitting, kicking, biting, throwing, destroying, and eloping. We refer to these frustration responses as unlucky, because they’re less likely to elicit empathy, nurturance, and support from adults. Indeed, they often elicit the most punitive, exclusionary disciplinary practices our schools and society have to offer. In other words, it’s the unlucky kids we’re busy de-escalating, restraining, secluding, expelling, suspending, and hitting.

What explains the variability in frustration responses? If we pay attention to the research that has accumulated over the past 40 to 50 years on kids with concerning behaviors—and we definitely should—the answer is skills. Some students are blessed with the skills to handle problems and frustrations adaptively, and others just aren’t. We’re referring here to global skills such as flexibility/adaptability, frustration tolerance, problem-solving, and emotion regulation. But whether lucky or unlucky, the most important thing to know about concerning behavior is that it communicates that there’s an expectation a student is having difficulty reliably meeting.

Notice that last sentence didn’t say anything about a student’s level of motivation. That’s because there isn’t a single study—not one—telling us that frustration responses are due to poor motivation. That being the case, we are left to ponder why, for so long, the standard approach to handling concerning behavior in most schools has been to apply motivational strategies—consequences, some form of reward and/or punishment—aimed at ensuring that kids have the incentive to behave adaptively.

This post has been excerpted from Greene, R. (2026). The Kids Who Aren't Okay: The Urgent Case for Reimagining Support, Belonging, and Hope in Schools. Scribner.