Escape-Maintained Aggression With a Curriculum the Principal Won't Change

Aggression is escape-maintained, and the current hallway response is an escape contingency that is already reinforcing it - the environment is already "rewarding" aggression, just not intentionally. That must be said plainly, because it reframes the teachers' concern.

Standard escape extinction (problem behavior no longer produces escape; demands continue with prompting) has the strongest evidence base but requires that the team be able to withhold the break and continue the task. The aide cannot: removal lasts 10 minutes and work is waived. A pure EE plan is unfeasible here and carries risk in a general education room.

Build instead on:

1. Abolishing operations - scheduled noncontingent 2-minute breaks every 8-10 minutes, delivered before problem behavior occurs, reducing the value of escape. A scheduled break is not contingent on anything and therefore cannot reinforce anything.
2. FCT - teach a functionally equivalent mand ("break, please") with a prompt delay and immediate delivery of the 2-minute break.
3. Differential reinforcement - mands produce breaks; aggression does not produce the hallway removal (replace with an in-class calm-down that does not waive work).
4. Antecedent task restructuring - chunk the worksheet into four-problem segments, offer choice of order, sequence easier items first. This changes the schedule of presentation, not grade-level content, so it satisfies the principal's constraint.

Data: independent mands per block, aggression per block, break duration, treatment integrity.

Don't dismiss it and don't argue from authority - make the contingency structure explicit and testable.

1. The break after aggression is the reinforcer right now. The hallway removal is the contingency maintaining the behavior. What stops the reinforcement is not delivering the break contingent on aggression, not eliminating breaks.
2. The requested break sits under a different contingency. Mand → break. Aggression → no break (or a prompted mand, then a break). Because the mand is easier and produces the break faster, it should displace aggression under FCT - but only if mand reinforcement density is high enough and the aggression contingency is genuinely weakened.
3. Separate scheduled from contingent. A break given on a timer regardless of behavior cannot reinforce aggression; that is the whole point of using NCR to reduce the EO.
4. Make it low effort. Give the teacher a break card that can be honored in seconds, and offer to review the mand-versus-aggression data with the team weekly so the claim is settled with data rather than argument.

If a burst occurs, name it in advance as a predictable extinction-related effect and specify the response - that conversation is much easier before the burst than after.

Prerequisites before thinning: independent mands frequent and aggression low across roughly five consecutive blocks at high-density breaks.

Sequence - one variable at a time:

1. NCR thinning: extend the scheduled-break interval 8 → 12 → 15 → 20 minutes.
2. Demand fading: increase work required per mand from 1 problem to 2, 3, 4.
3. Break-duration thinning: 2 minutes → 90 s → 60 s.
4. Prompt fading: increase the prompt delay toward natural cues and shift mand control to the teacher and to natural stimuli.

Criteria, written into the plan before implementation: advance a thin step when aggression ≤ 1 per block and independent mands ≥ 5 per block across three consecutive blocks; if aggression exceeds criterion, return to the prior step for three blocks before re-attempting. Specify the re-attempt limit so the team does not yo-yo indefinitely.

Generalization: program explicitly across other academic blocks, teachers, and settings; keep the break card physically available and train the other staff to honor it; probe for untrained settings rather than assuming transfer.