School-Wide Positive Behavior Support and RTI

Mollie: Motivating students is the foundation of all instruction. We have learned that low levels of motivation occur for multiple reasons. Anyone who offers a simple, single solution is not attending to the research. The first step is to describe the pattern of the problem behavior. Does the student attend some activities/classes and not others? Does the student attend early in the week, but not later in the week? Does the student attend when she/he has their homework done and not when they do not?

The second step is completing a functional behavioral assessment to clarify not only what and when problems occur but the maintaining reinforcer. Does the student fail to attend because school is aversive? Does the student fail to attend because there are no rewards (academic/social)? Does the student fail to attend because a peer group recruits and support skipping? Knowing why a problem keeps happening is important. Based on the answers to these questions you will be guided toward efficient support options.

Maggie: Collecting and using data for decision-making is a hallmark of effective schools. Congratulations on the fact that you are using CBM data in math and reading. To add "behavior" to your monthly agenda we would recommend looking at measures of (a) if you are implementing effective discipline systems (behavior support) and (b) if those systems are having a positive impact on students. To assess implementation we use a self-assessment tool (Team Implementation Checklist; available on the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) website) that a team completes every three months and posts on the Positive Behavior Supports website. This 15 min team-based self-assessment is a quick index of the extent to which a school is implementing school-wide positive behavior support. Changes in student behavior occur when a school is implementing with at least 80% fidelity.

To assess student outcomes, we monitor the rate of office discipline referrals. We would prefer to measure positive behavior, but the cost to collect and summarize these data has proven prohibitive. The School-wide Information System (SWIS) is now being used by over 5400 schools throughout the US to monitor office discipline referrals (ODRs). You can go to the School-Wide Information System (SWIS) to download information about this information system, and national statistics. For your schools in Alabama you should be looking for rates of ODRs per 100 students per school day of .34 or less for elementary school, .92 for middle school, and 1.02 for high school.

There are a number of different intervention options. The procedures that Don Deshler at the University of Kansas has developed are among the best documented. Their study skills procedures teach organization, schedule use, outlining, test taking, etc. The packages are well written and easy to follow. We have combined their study skills procedures with formal behavior support (check-in and check-out systems) in high schools in Oregon. In one study we are documenting increased attendance, increased academic engagement, increased completion of assignments, and improvement in grades for students who were taught the study skills, and receive daily Check-in/Check-out support.

Yes. See the School-wide Information System as one example of a progress monitoring tool. Options for universal screening include: Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (Severson and Walker), Social Skills Rating Scale (Gresham and Elliot), and Social Skills Behavior Scale (Merrell).

Carol: Tier 1 behavior supports should result in a predictable, consistent, positive and safe learning environment. Tier 1 emphasizes investing in prevention of problem behavior, and typically includes:

1. Define and teach 3-5, positively stated behavioral expectations.
2. Establish a system to acknowledge students regularly for behaving appropriately
3. Establish a set of consequences for inappropriate behavior and implement those consequences consistently.
4. Collect and report office discipline referral data weekly to the behavior support team, and monthly to the whole faculty.
5. Establish a school-wide PBS team that has the task of implementing and updating school-wide discipline systems.

Kathy: Schools that implement school-wide PBS typically include an administrator, school psychologist, a special educator and representative regular education faculty. The school-wide team meets once or twice a month. Depending on the size of the school there may also be an individual student support team. In most cases there is ONE team to address both behavior and academic supports. This allows for an integrated plan for a student. We find that behavior and academic supports are very frequently intertwined.

Ellen: Families are an essential element for effective education, and even more so for effective behavior support. In terms of Parent Role: remember that PBS is a multi-tiered model (primary prevention, secondary prevention, tertiary prevention). The role of the family varies depending on the level of support being addressed. At the primary prevention role, we encourage family participation on the school-wide team that works to build a positive, consistent, predictable school culture. At the secondary prevention level (See Check-in/ Check-out as an example) families are actively participating in the design and implementation of behavior support. At the tertiary support level the role of the family is large. See work by Tom Dishion for guidance on family support systems. See discussions by Tim Lewis about the extensive role of families in tertiary PBS support.

George: Remember that PBIS is a multi-tiered intervention. The primary prevention involves teaching all students the behavioral expectations...so this is the same for all kids. The secondary and tertiary supports within PBIS involve procedures guided by functional behavioral assessment and wrap around assessment. These procedures involve learning about a student's academic challenges as well as medical and behavioral challenges. As such students who are struggling both academically and behaviorally would receive support for both academic and behavior while students who only were struggling in one domain would receive different support. The short answer is that (a) academic and behavior supports are integrated, but (b) the type and level of support is guided by the assessment information.

Joan: PBS arose in the last 1970s in response to increased use of aversive interventions with individiuals who have severe disabilities. Luanna Meyer and Mark Durand were leading proponents. Over time PBS drew more strongly from the behavior analysis technology, and became associated with a strong emphasis on

(a) redesign of environments to reduce problem behavior,
(b) teaching new skills to reduce problem behavior,
(c) rigorous reward of appropriate behavior while withholding rewards for problem behavior, and
(d) active and on-going collection and use of data to guide the design of school, community and home settings.

Edward Carr, Glen Dunalp, Wayne Sailor, Robert Koegel and others were instrumental in the transformation of PBS into a set of systematic practices George Sugai, Tim Lewis and others built on those practices and combined them with other implementation efforts that Roy Mayer, Tony Biglan and others were advocating in schools to create school-wide positive behavior support. Yes, positive behavior support and school-pbis are effective and research based. See a monograph published by AAMR by Carr et al., 1999 for a meta-analysis of research addressing PBS in general.

See the research cited at the OSEP National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports for both randomized control trials and single case research documenting the effects of school-wide PBIS.  You may also want to read School-Wide Positive Behavior Support An Evidence-Based Practice?

Kathy: Teaching behavioral expectations happens in different ways in elementary vs. middle vs. high schools that implement school-wide PBS. In elementary schools teachers typically teach the 3-5 school-wide behavioral expectations during the first two weeks of school. (This often occurs in 15 min blocks 2-3 times a week.) In middle school the teams often teach the behavioral expectations during the first couple days of the school year. In high school the behavioral expectations often are taught by Junior / Senior "mentors" who provide "orientation" to freshmen and sophomores. One consistent finding is that the time taken to teach behavioral expectations is consistently less than would typically have been spent dealing with problem behavior. The big idea is to invest in behavioral "prevention." Teach what you want before the students fail. Remember also that the goal is to teach social skills in a way that all students not only know the expectations, but they know that everyone else knows the expectations. If this is done well you find that students begin to expect appropriate behavior from each other. Developing a positive social culture is more than teaching students how to behavior...it is about building a predictable, consistent, and positive enviornnment where student-to-student interactions promote appropriate behavior.

Jim: Among the most frequent complaints we hear from students is that teachers are "not fair" (e.g. do not administer the rules the same for everyone). If school-wide PBS practices are used with fidelity every adult in the school participates in teaching the behavioral expectations to the students. By having the adults participate in teaching the expectations it increases consistency across adults. There will always be some variation across teachers, but students can adapt to this if the range is not extreme. Remember also that part of school-wide PBS is defining clear consequences for inappropriate behavior. These consequences should be administered consistently... An important difference, however, is that we view negative consequences as ways to (a) define unacceptable behavior, (b) reduce the likelihood that un acceptable behavior is rewarded, and (c) allow instruction to continue for other students. We do NOT expect negative consequences to CHANGE behavior. Negative consequences provide a brief response to a problem but if you want durable behavior change then the solution is to define, teach, monitor and reward the behavior you want.

Daniel: We are still learning the range and patterns for implementing systems change with efficiency and success. If you are interested in the broad theory and current research I recommend that you review the writings of Dr. Dean Fixsen published by the National Implementation Research Network. (View Dr. Fixen's transcript from Dean Fixsen’s RTI Talk, Building Education Programs that Work for All Students). Our experience shows high variability in the speed with which schools can adopt school-wide PBS, and a lot depends on the commitment and support of the building administrator, and the district. A summary of the steps we follow in implementation is avaiable in the School-wide PBS Implementation Blueprint.

We typically recommend that a school team plan on three years for full implementation of all three tiers of the PBIS approach. During the first year a school team typically will meet 3-4 times (for a day or a day and a half at each meeting)with a trainer. The trainer may be a national expert, but should within a two-year period become a local district person. The second and third years the teams meet 2-3 times with trainers, and work on implemenatation of the secondary and tertiary tiers ...these are where the individual student supports are developed. Note also that initial implementation is only part of the process. If School-wide PBS is done well, it is done with active involvement of the district. This means that in addition to getting the practices in place in a school... the district establishes an annual orientation for all new faculty and new administrators.

The district also uses on-going monitoring of fidelity (the Team Checklist) and invests in Professional Development activities that ensure sustained as well as initial implementation. Schools that implement school-wide PBS to fidelity with active district support are very likely to sustain for long time periods. Jennifer Doolittle's study on sustainability documents a .85 likelihood of sustained fidelity. Schools in Oregon have sustained high levels of implementation now for over 12 years without exteral support.

Daniel: Excellent question. Oregon, Illinois, and Michigan each have formal initiatives where they are linking behavior and literacy supports. Michigan's MiBLSi program is in place in over 300 elementary schools with documented reductions in problem behavior combined with increases in the proportion of 4th graders meeting reading standards. There are many individual schools and individual districts that are investing in both literacy and behavior support... and using an RTI logic, but these three states have formal initiatives with good data supporting their efforts.

Daniel: Thank you for the kind words about SWIS. We are not planning to make SWIS also monitor academics, but we are working on a collaboration between SWIS and DIBELS that would allow an integrated analysis of academic and behavior data at the school level. You may find it useful to monitor the developments of the School Interoperability Framework (SIF)... this large project is designed to build the application framework that would allow schools, districts, and state departments to seamlessly combine data from different data sources. SWIS has invested in building a SIF agent, and will be compatible with SIF protocols when this technology is ready to go to scale. We are working toward the goal you imply...from our experience in the design of behavior support, we find use of combined data (math, reading, behavior, medical, etc) to be of tremendous value in the construction of efficient and integrated plans of support for an individual students.

Kelvin: RTI has not been extended well in high schools at this time. The basic ideas within RTI:

1. build a solid foundation
2. conduct universal screening and progress monitoring
3. use evidence-based practices and
4. (use data-based decision-making to guide implementation

These basic ideas continue to be useful in high schools. We are working with approximately 850 high schools throughout the country, and finding that while there is greater variability, high schools that invest in building a positive social culture are seen as more effective learning settings. Your specific question focused on the discipline codes... the codes themselves are not a core element of RTI...the key is that data are being used to assess student performance.

Julie: The experience we have with high schools has emphasized (a) the importance of including students in the process of identifying the expectations in the school, (b) including Juniors and Seniors in the "orientation" of freshman, sophomores and new students. Staff buy in with high schools has been more challenging, in part because high school faculty have simply seen too many "initiatives" that required their time, but produced little change, and were abandoned after a year. Building a school-wide system of support in high schools often will start with a sub-group (Freshmen).... and will involve more direct involvement of students.

Jennifer: First steps to implementing PBS always involve:

(a) building commitment with the faculty that the social behavior of students is one of the top three issues needing to be addressed,

(b) ensuring that the administrator is supportive and willing to be involved, and

(c) identifying the discipline practices that are already in place and working (and should NOT be abandoned).

See the PBIS Implementation Blueprint for a more complete discussion of the process for implementation.

Michelle: If a school (or district) report that their students are behaving well, and they have a strong social culture (AND they have data supporting this claim)... then celebrate and move on to other issues. Character Education programs have been reviewed by federal evaluators to not have been a strong intervention. There are a number of Character Education interventions, and most do a very good job of defining core expectations. The two things to look for are (a) does the program move beyond broad social constructs to specific behaviors that are developmentally and contextually relevant for the students, and (b) does the program provide the systems needed to support implementation of the practices with fidelity and sustainability? If the program used in your district meets these features (a) documented satisfactory social behavior of students, (b) effective practices for building specific skills, and (c) the administrative, data and organizational systems to facilitate maintenance...then don't do SWPBS.... use what you already have in place.

Sharon: The foundation elements of and RTI approach...[ (a) primary, secondary and tertiary prevention practices, (b) universal and progress monitoring data systems, (c) implementation with trainers and coaches to assist teams] continue to prove very useful for literacy and behavior support implementation efforts. Cautions: 1. The research support for RTI efforts (in literacy and behavior) are more compelling in elementary than in high school. 2. Implementation of PBIS will be related to improved academic performance only if there is a reasonable academic program in place. Improving the social behavior and social culture within a school will result in increased student-time in instruction... only if that time spent in instruction is well used will you see improved academic outcomes.

Barbara: Second Step to Success is a program out of Washington that teaches school-wide expectations through role-play and large pictures. This program has been demonstrated to be effective as part of a school-wide PBS effort.

Barbara: Wrap around is a term used to describe a process in which the student his/her family, advocates and support personnel build a comprehensive plan of support. This approach comes from the mental health community and is well described by Lucille Eber and others. The exciting feature about wrap around efforts that Dr. Eber is conducting is that she combines functional behavioral assessment with assessment of the student's preference and goals. This process is similar to what others have described as "person-centered-planning" The main idea is to include the person receiving support in the process of defining goals and issues. The wrap around assessment process involves obtaining preferences from those receiving the support, and including perceptions about level of "risk" in addition to the more detailed pieces of information about medical conditions, academic performance, and social behavior. Wrap around is an intensive approach usually applied at the tertiary level of an RTI model.

Heather:

 

1. If students are in a learning context where they are not experiencing academic success the likelihood of problem behavior goes up. Students will engage in problem behavior that is maintained by escaping the aversive academic demands.
2. Low income contexts are associated with both low levels of early social skills, and low levels of early academic skills. The good news is that if these children receive high quality support (not just high demands, but high level of support) they can respond quickly (both academically and behaviorally). If, however, students enter with low skills, and experience only failure in their early years, they are much more likely to have difficulty.

So Suggestions:

1. Invest in early identification and intervention.
2. Adopt literacy and behavior support systems that are demonstrated to be effective through scientific scholarship
3. Collect data to document if effective programs are being implemented with fidelity...not just if training has occurred.
4. Research is needed to document effective ways to integrate family support, academic support and behavior support for low income children. Tom Dishion recently received an NIH grant to address this very issue...so we hope to have much more precision in recommendations within the next 3-5 years.