families, and educators” (NTACPBIS, n.d.). As Robert Horner, George Sugai, Anne Todd, and Teri Lewis-Palmer (2005) described:
Schools are expected to be safe environments where students learn the academic and social skills needed for life in our society. The basic goals of any system of schoolwide [PBIS] must be to provide the behavioral assistance needed to achieve those [outcomes]. (p. 365)
To that end, school teams identify their desired outcomes and define those in measurable manners. All students, staff, and parents decide upon and value these outcomes (Sugai & Horner, 2006). One way to frame the outcomes is to consider them as goals of implementation; what do teams want SWPBIS to achieve?
Schools will identify long- and short-term outcomes of using SWPBIS. Long-term outcomes are overarching and global outcomes that are often distal; they take months or years to achieve, such as improved academic performance or increased safety within the school. Short-term outcomes are more immediate and pressing goals, and they are typically reached within a few weeks or within the semester or quarter. For example, schools may identify a short-term outcome of reducing referrals among sixth-grade students or increasing attendance of students during the second semester. The outcomes can also be organized across tiers. For example, a Tier One outcome is to ensure that at least 80 percent of students have zero to one office referrals or that all Tier Two interventions are provided with at least 90 percent fidelity.
As an example, a PBIS team at XYZ Elementary School implemented SWPBIS to improve the overall climate within its school and to decrease student problem behavior. During implementation, it identified a need to examine behavior during recess. The team wanted to decrease disrespectful behavior that occurred when students were lining up from recess to come inside. It set a goal to reduce office referrals by 50 percent over a two-month period. This reduction in office referrals was the outcome the team monitored to determine if they had been successful. The intervention involved special recess positive tickets that students got for lining up appropriately. Students took those tickets back to the classroom, and at the end of the week, the class with the most tickets for this behavior got an extra recess (and the teacher got an extra fifteen minutes to herself because extra recess was given during another recess period, so someone other than the classroom teacher was responsible for supervision). When the team reviewed the outcome of this intervention, it met the goal of reducing the office referrals by at least 50 percent. In addition, teachers and staff reported an increase in focused instruction and acknowledgment for lining up appropriately and respectfully transitioning in from recess. The classroom teachers also reported that the focus on appropriate behavior at recess reduced time spent responding to “tattling” and other inappropriate recess behaviors (students still being frustrated when they came into the classroom, and arguments extending into the classroom), resulting in shorter, more pleasant transitions and increased instructional time immediately following recess (Rodriguez, 2015).
Identifying the outcomes that school teams wish to achieve provides an organizing framework to make decisions about the data schools will gather, the practices they use, and the systems they need to put into place. For example, if a school team identifies increases in attendance as a valued outcome, one would expect that school to examine data on attendance rates throughout the school year. When faced with decisions about which professional development to conduct, this school team would select trainings related to attendance and truancy rather than trainings unrelated to attendance. Although decisions about professional development are often made because of mandates and priorities from district leadership, having clearly defined outcomes assists schools in determining which practices to adopt and which ones not to adopt. In short, any school that uses SWPBIS needs to define its purpose and outcomes for using the model.
Practices: Supporting Student Behavior
As school teams identify the outcomes they want to achieve and the data they need to gather, they also decide upon the practices needed to achieve those outcomes. The practices refer to the strategies and methods used to improve student behavior and prevent undesired behavior. This is the instructional piece of SWPBIS that is organized into tiers. Tier One is universal support provided to all students, and it’s designed to foster prosocial behavior and decrease occurrences of inappropriate behavior. In practice, it consists of identifying schoolwide expectations, teaching them to all students, and providing a high rate of reinforcement for meeting these expectations. It also includes establishing a continuum of procedures for managing undesired behavior.
At Tier Two, students continue to take part in the Tier One practices but are also provided more intensive support based on a common need through additional instruction and reinforcement of the schoolwide expectations (Hawken, Adolphson, MacLeod, & Schumann, 2009). Designed to be provided quickly and efficiently, Tier Two consists of a range of interventions that may include social skills instruction, frequent check-ins with school staff, or before- and after-school programs.
At Tier Three, teachers provide students with individualized and intensive instruction in addition to the prosocial climate and supports (Scott, Anderson, Mancil, & Alter, 2009). The interventions reduce the severity of problem behaviors and enhance prosocial behaviors, and they are multifaceted. The coordination and delivery of Tier Three often entails academic and behavioral supports and is function based (Crone & Horner, 2003). This can include school-based supports, school-home components, and community supports.
Systems: Supporting Staff Behavior
To ensure that practices are implemented well and that the staff can gather the necessary data to inform outcomes, school teams also consider the systems and procedures they need to adjust or put into place to support the staff.
Systems change is often one of the more complex aspects of the SWPBIS elements because it typically involves adjustments that are more difficult to see, and it requires administrative leadership and strong buy-in to change many moving parts that have become engrained habits within the school (Bohanon & Wu, 2014). For example, schools may need to adopt new processes and programs for office discipline referral data recording, entry, and management that allow staff to have meaningful information, which enables them to determine the effectiveness of a practice. Changing this one aspect of the SWPBIS system to better assess outcomes will require a thoughtful data-revision process. The team will:
▴ Reassess what data are collected for each office discipline referral form
▴ Design the form and consider how teachers can feasibly complete it (such as a half sheet that recess attendants can carry and has less information than a full sheet, or checkboxes rather than blanks to maximize efficiency)
▴ Determine which information other staff and parents receive, who communicates office referral to other staff and parents, and how the communication occurs
▴ Determine the program for data entry and management
▴ Decide logistics for who will input the data into the program and when the data will be entered
▴ Determine which team will review the data and how often
▴ Assess the impact of the changes and monitor whether the referral procedures are being followed accurately
There are numerous considerations for just one tiny aspect of SWPBIS. Another example could involve an administrator providing time in the master calendar for schoolwide teaching of expectations following a school break. This often involves adjusting multiple schedules as well as dealing with protecting instructional time for teachers to meet certain academic mandates. For the individual chapters on the tiers (chapters 2, 3, and 4), we discuss the specific systems that need to be in place. Here is a summary.
At Tier One, school teams put systems in place that include establishing
