What is PBIS?
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a systems approach to preventing and responding to school and classroom discipline problems. PBIS develops school-wide systems that support staff to teach and promote positive behavior in all students. By reducing behavioral problems, PBIS creates and maintains safe learning environments where teachers can teach and students can learn.
PBIS Addresses
 High rates of problem behavior that interfere with learning
Ineffective and inefficient disciplinary practices
Lack of supports for staff to address problem behavior
Lack of general and specialized behavior interventions
Negative school climates
Reliance on crisis/reactive management
Core Elements
School-wide discipline practices and procedures
Active leadership and ongoing participation of Principal
Cultivation of staff commitment for consistent implementation
Team-based planning and problem-solving
Use of building-based discipline and academic data to make decisions
An instructional approach to behavior and classroom management
Classroom management and behaviorally-based interventions
Functional assessment-based behavior support planning
Comprehensive plans for individual students with intensive needs
Active participation of families, students and teacher
Integration with mental health and other community supports
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Years of research
Positive behavior support (PBS) is the application of behavior analysis to achieve socially important behavior change. PBS was developed initially as an alternative to aversive interventions that were used with students with severe disabilities who engaged in extreme forms of self-injury and aggression (Durand & Carr, 1985; Meyer & Evans, 1989).
More recently, the technology has been applied successfully with a wide range of students, in a wide range of contexts (Carr et al., in press; Horner, Albin, & O'Neill, 1991), and extended from an intervention approach for individual students to an intervention approach for entire schools (Colvin, Sugai, Good, & Lee, 1996; Colvin, Kame'enui & Sugai, 1993; Lewis, Colvin, & Sugai, in press; Lewis, Sugai & Colvin, 1998; Taylor-Greene, et al., 1997; Todd, Horner, Sugai, Sprague, 1999; Sugai, Sprague, Horner, Walker, in press).
Positive behavior support is not a new intervention package, nor a new theory of behavior. Instead, it is an application of a behaviorally-based systems approach to enhance the capacity of schools, families, and communities to design effective environments that improve the fit or link between research-validated practices and the environments in which teaching and learning occurs
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Goals of PBIS
- Build the capacity of target schools to (a) establish positive social cultures, (b) implement effective school-wide and classroom behavior support, (c) deliver function-based, comprehensive, intensive individual behavior support, and (d) integrate educational, behavioral and mental health services.
- Establish the organizational systems needed for maintenance of school-wide behavior support.
- Develop capacity of state, regional and local school staff to effectively train and support schools in PBIS implementation.
- Provide evaluation data to determine effectiveness of PBIS and specific structures and features needed for successful implementation and sustainability throughout the state.
Expected Outcomes for PBIS Schools
1. Increase consistent use of positive teaching and reinforcement strategies for behavior among teachers and other school staff.
2. Reduce discipline referrals, suspensions, and expulsions while increasing academic performance.
3. Increase databased decision making about behaviors and academic skills to be consistently taught and reinforced across all school settings.
4. Implement effective behavior and/or academic change plans for students with specific needs not being addressed by school-wide systems (5-15%) through problem-solving teams.
5. Implement effective comprehensive supports/services/interventions for students with the most intensive needs (1-7%) through wraparound plans that address home, school, and community.
6. Identify students in need of primary, secondary, and tertiary mental health services and facilitate access to a range of flexibly designed and effectively provided mental health services.
7. Increase family and student voice and participation in implementing positive behavior, academic, and mental health systems and practices at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
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Expectations of Schools
PBIS will be one of the top three school improvement goals for 2-3 years and will therefore receive major attention and focus at the building level.
The building-based administrators will provide active leadership and support for overall PBIS implementation and for the building-based PBIS Leadership Team.
The majority (80-90%) of the school staff will commit to participate in implementation of PBIS.
The PBIS Leadership Team will meet at least one time per month to plan and guide the school-wide PBIS process.
The PBIS Leadership Team will analyze and review school-wide data and actively use the data to guide implementation.
Designated school staff will participate in ongoing training and technical assistance activities to ensure their ability to effectively implement interventions at level of need for all students, including those with intensive needs.
A Problem-solving Team will meet at least one time per month to review and develop function-based support plans for individual or small groups of students identified as at-risk.
Specialized school staff will be identified and trained to provide leadership in developing individualized wraparound teams for students with intensive needs and partner with local mental health staff and other community representatives.
Staff will be trained as local and regional PBIS Coaches with the role of providing leadership and guidance to PBIS implementation at the building level.
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