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Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports: Strategies for Success

During the fall of 2006, the National Center sponsored two teleconferences in which National Center Technical Assistance Specialists, staff from the Hillsboro (Oregon) School District, and grantees discussed this approach. The following is a summary of some of the observations and recommendations made during these teleconferences.

Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an approach to establishing a school environment conducive to effective learning. PBIS employs three levels of support: 1) primary prevention (support for all students); 2) secondary prevention (support targeting students at risk for behavioral problems and failure); and 3) tertiary prevention (intensive support for students with chronic behavioral problems). PBIS is also known as School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SW-PBS).

  • Unlike most evidence-based interventions (ebi’s), which focus on the classroom. PBIS focuses on affect the entire school. PBIS provides a framework for implementing other ebi’s. In implementing ebi’s in a school committed to PBIS, it is important to understand where they fit in terms of the three PBIS support levels.
  • Although PBIS is most effective when implemented at the district level, it can be extremely effective when implemented in an individual school.
  • Starting by implementing PBIS in a few schools allows a district to focus its resources, demonstrates the benefits of PBIS, and creates a pool of teachers and staff experienced with PBIS to help other schools implement the program.
  • Practitioners experienced with PBIS note that the more teams implementing PBIS use data to make decisions, the more data they want. Discipline data is critical to targeting problems - and to evaluating success. But teams also look to academic outcome data as another indicator of success. It is essential to create a climate in which data is used to make decisions – and a climate in which staff understand the relationship between behavioral interventions and academic outcomes.
  • PBIS can be implemented in stages. Implementing the primary prevention support services first will decrease the number of students who need the more intensive (and costly) secondary and tertiary support services. Implementing PBIS in the elementary grades first will decrease the number of students with behavioral problems in higher grades (and thus the need for more intensive and costly services in those grades).
  • Some schools have had such success with PBIS that YMCAs and other community groups have implemented PBIS is preschool programs and church Sunday schools.
  • It is useful to involve the mental health providers to which the schools refer students. They can be convened once a month with school staff – or made part of a school’s referral or student-assistance team.

The Hillsboro School District summarized the factors contributing to its successful PBIS
start up in a document that can be found at: (http://learn.aero.und.edu/pages.asp?PageID=89665)

Additional information on PBIS can be found in the National Center’s PBIS Fact Sheet and at the OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (http://www.pbis.org/).