Archival data from an elementary school self-contained program for students labeled severely behaviorally disordered were examined to investigate the relationship between timeout usage and academic achievement. Results indicated that timeout use was low to moderate for the majority of students in the program, although a few students were placed in the timeout area at much higher levels. Considerably less instructional time was lost to timeout than to other sources of classroom absence, such as suspension or truancy. Correlations between indicators of timeout usage and curriculum-based measures of academic achievement disclosed little evidence of a relationship between timeout use and achievement. In contrast, measures of school absence, in particular truancy, appeared to be consistently correlated with poor academic performance.
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