Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS)

Our school has its annual PBIS walk-through this week. The visiting team will assess how well our students understand the expectations, incentives, and monitoring systems. They will check whether the systems we have created are being implemented with fidelity and, hopefully, whether they are resulting in improved student outcomes. At the end of the visit, they will determine whether our school will be recognized as a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum model school. While slightly less stressful than a WASC visit, the recognition validates the work we have been doing to improve our campus culture. Over 27,000 schools have some level of PBIS in place, yet many other schools struggle to make meaningful progress in student behavior. 

What is PBIS?

I am not going to pretend that there is a simple solution for managing student behavior. There will always be conflict, disobedience, and non-compliance. At its core, PBIS is about creating a system that allows you to assess the holistic impact of your school's policies on students' behavioral and academic achievement and identify students who need additional intervention. The strategy revolves around setting clear expectations and rewarding positive behaviors more often than you discipline bad behaviors (Stalie, 2021). Addressing bad behavior requires administrators and educators to examine the root cause rather than reacting to the symptom. In doing this, students are incentivized and encouraged to adopt good behaviors. By reducing behavioral distractions and lost instructional time, students will benefit from improved academic outcomes. 

Why is PBIS effective?

Beyond the slogans and awards, the system asks educators to frequently collect data on students' academic and behavioral performance. It then requires using the data to identify inequities in the administration of consequences and to identify the groups and individuals at higher risk (Kent et al., 2021). This process, known as a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS), breaks interventions into three categories: campus-wide, small group, and individualized. The entire campus is frontloaded with information on the school's expectations and consequences. Teachers then create their own expectations aligned with the schoolwide expectations, in collaboration with students. Data is collected through surveys and student records to design interventions that support students' behavior and academic performance. Groups of students are offered tutoring, attendance recovery, or support services, and individual students are referred to outside service providers or one-on-one interventions. 

What are the challenges of PBIS?

As with any system, setting the wheels in motion takes significant time and money. Our school pays for a portion of the costs with Title 1 funds, and the rest is raised through fundraising or donated by community partners and staff members. Without buy-in from staff and administration, it would be very difficult to make significant advancement. Skeptics say that on the surface, PBIS places too much emphasis on rewards, and risks incentivizing only students who are already inclined to perform well and behave (Tyre & Feuerborn, 2021). It relies on extrinsic motivation instead of encouraging students to become intrinsically motivated to do well in school. 

Truth be told, most of us are primarily extrinsically motivated. We go to work so that we can pay the bills and provide for our families. For students who don’t have bills to pay and don’t receive a paycheck to attend school, there is very little harm in providing them with extra motivation to care a little more about showing up to class on time or turning in all of their work for a week, especially for those students who don’t see themselves being college bound or attending a four year university. Hopefully, when these students see the small growth they achieve by seeking an incentive, they will be inclined to continue the momentum. Seems like a win-win to me. 

McIntosh, K., Girvan, E. J., Falcon, S. F., McDaniel, S. C., Smolkowski, K.,  Bastable, E., Santiago-Rosario, M. R., Izzard, S., Austin, S. C., Nese, R. N. T., & Baldy, T. S. (2021). Equity-Focused PBIS Approach Reduces Racial Inequities in School Discipline: A Randomized Controlled Trial. In Grantee Submission. https://doi.org/10.1037/spq0000466

Stalie, P. (2021). PBIS: Towards a Kinder Form of Discipline. Ex Animo, 1, 60–78. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/exanimo.1.1.6

Tyre, A. D., & Feuerborn, L. L. (2021). Ten Common Misses in PBIS Implementation. Beyond Behavior, 30(1), 41–50. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27229757