We have been hopeful for many years that neurofeedback can be used in schools.

If you help children and adolescents learn better, learn to focus better, and learn better self-control, the societal impact could be amazing. Many therapists report clients who see them and say things, such as “you helped me change my life” or “God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t done the brain training.” Seben Fisher, a wonderful psychotherapist who works with a lot of very troubled clients, points out that some of these clients would be in prison if we couldn’t help them.

We’ve seen a number of schools integrate neurofeedback, only to lose it later. There is no real major school program we know of, though there are a some schools using it individually. We’ll describe to you the most successful project ever in schools with neurofeedback in Yonkers, NY.

There are serious questions about who in a school is qualified and trained to do neurofeedback with the most difficult kids. Are these clinical issues or school issues? It seems the schools have to deal with the problem kids anyway, whether it’s in special education or mainstream classes. How can teachers control these kids without first teaching them how to calm down? Neurofeedback performs that role and helps kids regulate their brains extremely well.

School Challenges

There have been other schools – individual schools, not systems – that have periodically included neurofeedback. Some have been successful, but many programs have come and gone. Here are some observations why problems occur:

1. Competition for resources. Usually, someone who works for the school system is selected to do neurofeedback in addition to his or her existing responsibilities. That’s a no-win situation. To do neurofeedback well, there’s a significant learning curve. To do it right, there must be a commitment at a high level, perhaps with lobbying from parent groups or getting a local politician behind the project. In 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. 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 a lot of clinical experience, but there aren’t studies that really show 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 can help, but a study needs to be done to show it. Until a fairly major organization funds such a school project, it’s going to be difficult for many school 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, which is an incredibly hard thing to achieve in most schools. There also needs to be a coordinated effort on how it will be used in the school. The Yonkers Project, with Linda Vergara and Mary Jo Sabo, developed a program showing how neurofeedback could integrate into the school environment. It took them several years. To do that again requires commitment at a high level. Without school board support, it would be difficult to sustain the success of any school project.

Conclusion: There is huge potential for use in schools. It can reduce special education budgets by allowing some kids to be mainstreamed, and it can cut down on serious disruptions. It’s hard to build sustainable grass-roots efforts, and trying to use volunteers makes it very, very difficult to succeed. Some high level support needs to be obtained on the front end. That’s more important than learning the neurofeedback itself.

Creating a school program:

1. Get it to stick. Our recommendation is to get a consortium of parents, teachers, administrators, a school board member, and even local politicians to support 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 having a school with a calmer environment (they often targeted aggressive kids with neurofeedback) contributed to increased attendance.
2. 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, neurofeedback training has shown it can help some of them move back into the mainstream program. That’s a huge savings. The need for Teachers’ Assistants for children with autism have been made unnecessary as kids improved and were able to better self-manage. The reduction in costs to special education or special needs programs should pay for itself many times over. These are the same kids that individual clinicians using neurofeedback have seen for years and have succeeded 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, well-supervised, and are given the time to do it. These are the hardest kids to work with, so the level of training, supervision, and time commitment must be there from the start.
3. Assume any school program needs to prove the success of the program The first year should be a clearly defined pilot with goals that support long-term implementation. You will likely need to enlist a local or state university to help support the research by 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, educational psychology, special education, or the psychology departments. 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 are books, and there are good explanations.
4. Bring in a knowledgeable clinician who can meet with all the parties interested in supporting the project. If one locally isn’t available 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.
5. Get some funding. There are many not-for-profit funding options in every state. There could be funds in the Special Education program targeted to this project without having to write a funding grant. That obviously requires some significant support. If you get the parents’ association interested, someone in the group might have 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 person to do it right, along with a knowledgeable neurofeedback supervisor. The staff person could be someone from outside the school who is trained in neurofeedback and contracted to the school until 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. They will still need extensive supervision.

The best supervision is not always local. Your goal is to find good supervisors 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 professionals in the field who are interested in helping make these projects work. They are knowledgeable about neurofeedback and 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. If you have a good plan, or even a good team, they can be of help. At some point, they charge for their fees, because these efforts cannot be done with no budget. Their goal is to help these kinds of school projects and make them successful.