Schools and Neurofeedback
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The Yonkers Project - the first major school success A very exciting neurofeedback project was set up in a Yonkers, NY public school in 1995 and ended in 2001. It ultimately was called the "ripple effect".
It was created primarily through the efforts of two women Linda Vergara was at the time vice-principal of a school in Yonkers. Mary Jo Sabo, Ph.D. was the other, who met Linda's when she helped her son using neurofeedback.
They initially targeted training the most difficult kids in the school -- the trouble makers, and eventually expanded the program from there. Many of these kids were ringleaders, the most difficult behaviorally. As they became successful at helping kids, it was expanded to 2 additional schools.
We hope to include a full article describing the Yonkers program in more depth. There were many news stories about the Yonkers program, including Good Morning America and CNN. You can listen to the National Public Radio story about the Yonkers project below. Funding for the program was pulled in 2001, as many "extra programs" by NY after the 9/11 event.
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The Yonkers program - continued . . .
The Yonkers project represents the opportunity and the challenges of having neurofeedback in schools. The project struggled with funding from day one. A small grant was obtained for equipment, but the bulk of the effort initially was all volunteer.
After the program ran for a year or two and showed itself effective with difficult behavior, they got funding with the help of a city council member who got behind the program. Once the funding occurred, they hired a full time staff member along with outside supervision from Mary Jo Sabo. This helped the program immensely. But funding was always a bit of struggle - Yonkers school board was under heavy pressure to cut spending. It was a big effort to convince them to keep the funding every year. After 9/11, it simply got cut.
According to Mary Jo Sabo, because of the publicity the program received, many school superintendents from around the world came to see neurofeedback at the Yonkers project. How the program was integrated into the school program was impressive. But none of them ever actually put neurofeedback in their program. In general, school superintendents are not themselves architects of change.
Challenges schools face
There have been a few other schools - individual schools, not systems, that have periodically put neurofeedback in. Some have been successful for a while. But many programs have come and gone. Here are some observations potentially why the problems occur.
1) Competition for resources. Usually, someone that already works for the school system is selected to do neurofeedback - in addition to their existing responsibilities. That's a no win situation. To do neurofeedback well, there's a significant learning curve. To do it right - there needs to be a commitment at a high level - perhaps with lobbying from parent groups or getting a local politician behind the project. At Yonkers, they finally were able to have a dedicated staff person to run neurofeedback - supervised by Dr. Mary Jo Sabo, who didn't work for the school system. That worked. There's no one with the expertise in a school system to deal with the most difficult kids.
Since there's a significant learning curve for neurofeedback, most schools simply don't have the expertise to handle it. The program needs to be managed and supervised by an outside clinician who's already very experienced with the target population.
2) Studies. Individual health professionals use neurofeedback every day to work with difficult kids. There are studies and plenty of clinical experience. But there's no study that really shows the payback to schools, even if the treatment itself works. It's hard to get buy in from top school officials without a clear payback to the system. There are many ways it will payback - but a study needs to be done to show it. Till a fairly major organization comes in and funds such a school project, it's going to be harder in many systems to sustain the use of Neurofeedback - when funds are so scarce.
3) Project coordination. We've already mentioned the need to have a dedicated staff person - an incredibly hard thing to achieve in most schools. It's not enough. There needs to be some coordinated efforts on how it will be used in the school. The Yonkers project with Linda Vergara and Mary Jo Sabo really developed a program how neurofeedback could integrate into the school environment. It took them several years. To do that again requires commitment at a high level. They had school board support. Without that, it will more difficult to sustain the success of any school project.
We don't want be negative about the potential for use in schools - it's huge. It can reduce special ed budgets by allowing some kids to be mainstreamed. It can cut down on serious disruptions. But it's hard to build a grass roots effort in the long term. Going the volunteer route makes it very, very difficult to succeed. Some high level support really should be obtained on the front end. That's more important than learning the neurofeedback itself.
Ideas on creating a school program
If you want to put neurofeedback in the schools, and get it to stick, our recommendation is to get a consortium of parents, teachers, and administrators, a school board member - even local politicians to come out in support of the project. Think about not just how it can help, but how the school can justify it. In Yonkers, they saw an increase in average number of days attending per year, which translated into more dollars for the school. They felt a calmer school (they often targeted aggressive kids with neurofeedback) contributed to increased attendance.
Focus on costs. With "no child left behind" neurofeedback can help some of the most difficult kids become much more able to mainstream and improve performance. If kids are in special programs, it's been shown that neurofeedback training can at times help them move back into the mainstream program. That's a huge savings. Some teachers assistants for autistic kids have been made unnecessary as kids improved and were able to self-manage themselves. The reduction in costs to special ed or special need programs should pay for itself many times over. These are the same kids that individual clinicians using neurofeedback have seen for years and succeed with - from severe learning problems, to out of control behavior, to developmental problems. It will succeed in a school with the same kids - if the staff doing neurofeedback are well trained and well supervised and have the time to do it. But these are the hardest kids to work with, so the level of training and supervision and time commitment must be there from day 1.
Assume any school program needs to prove the success of the program- no matter what the current support, . The first year should probably be a clearly defined pilot, with goals that support long term implementation. You will need to enlist a local or state university to help support the research side - defining and writing up the goals in a way that can be presented to the school administrator or school board. This could be from the education department, ed-psych, special ed, or the psychology department.
What about the research for neurofeedback in schools? This is an often asked question. Use the research that already exists. Point out it's being used clinically far beyond these options. Schools don't need to prove neurofeedback works. There's research, there's books, there's good explanations.
Bring in a knowledgeable clinician who can meet with all the parties interested in supporting the project. If you don't have one locally, bring in one from a distance. Once people understand how neurofeedback works, it makes sense to them. Let someone explain it who already understands it well and has professional credentials. This is part of the team approach.
Get some funding - there's plenty of potential not-for-profit funding options in every state. Someone has to apply for it. In some cases, there could be funds in the Special Ed program targeted to this project without having to write a funding grant. That obviously requires some significant support. If you get the parents association involved or interested, someone in the group probably has some knowledge of funding sources or grant writing. Also, if you find the right university to support it, they are also used to writing grant proposals.
The funding is necessary. The equipment is a minor cost compared to the supervision and staffing. Recognize that it will take time and at least one dedicated staff to do it right - not a volunteer, along with a knowledgeable neurofeedback supervisor. The staff could be someone from outside the school coming in who's trained in neurofeedback but contracting to the school, till the pilot is done. It's possible someone from the school can do it part time, but the pressures over time make that difficult to succeed. And they will still need extensive supervision.
The best supervision is not always local. Your goal is to find good supervision who are great teachers and clinicians. Some of the work can be done on the phone. On-site visits may only be needed once a month once the program gets going.
Getting outside help regarding neurofeedback
If you get the right support to make this project viable, there are some professionals in the field who are interested in helping make these projects work. They are knowledgeable about neurofeedback, but also about the requirements of accomplishing this kind of project. If you're at that stage, contact us, and we'll review the request and connect them to you if appropriate. We can't list their names. They are busy professionals and can quickly get bombarded by requests that frankly never go anywhere. But if you have a good plan, or even a good team, they can be of some help. At some point, they charge for their fees, because these efforts cannot be done with no budget. Their goal is to help these kind of school projects and make them successful. You can email us at info@aboutneurofeedback.com.
What about Play Attention?
Play Attention is a company that targets schools with a very basic neurofeedback trainer. They call it an attention trainer, and don't really call it neurofeedback. Is this a real solution? (click here)