School-wide PBIS is a multi-tiered framework to make schools more effective places. It establishes a social culture and the behavior supports needed to improve social, emotional, behavioral, and academic outcomes for all students. PBIS is flexible enough support student, family, and community needs.
The four critical features of SW-PBIS include:
Locally-meaningful and culturally-relevant outcomes
Empirically-supported practices
Systems to support implementation
Data to monitor effective and equitable implementation and to guide decision making.
Setting observable and measurable goals helps schools hold themselves accountable to creating the kind of place where every student succeeds. Schools select the outcomes to target based on data they find meaningful, culturally equitable, and centered on students’ achievements or school-level implementation.
Schools implementing PBIS select, implement, monitor, evaluate, and adapt the evidence-based practices they use in their settings. Specifically, they invest in practices that are:
Defined with precision
Documented with how and for whom to use them
Documented with specific outcomes
Demonstrated through research to be effective
Because PBIS is not a packaged curriculum or intervention, schools implement the core features of evidence-based practices in a way that fits with the schools’ cultural values.
When it comes to school-wide practices, all schools:
Document a shared vision and approach to supporting and responding to student behavior in a mission or vision statement.
Establish 3-5 positively-stated school-wide expectations and define them for each school routine or setting.
Explicitly teach school-wide expectations and other key social, emotional, and behavioral skills to set all students up for success.
Establish a continuum of recognition strategies to provide specific feedback and encourage contextually appropriate behavior.
Establish a continuum of response strategies to provide specific feedback, re-teach contextually appropriate behavior, and discourage contextually inappropriate behavior.
Schools invest in the administrative, professional, and organizational systems critical to sustain PBIS implementation. These systems create the ability to deliver Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 practices. They also serve as the foundation to establish
Teaming structures
Scheduling practices
Staff selection
Training and coaching procedures
On-going data-based problem-solving routines
School-wide PBIS schools collect and use data to guide their implementation and evaluate outcomes. It is critical to consider the local culture and context throughout the decision-making process to ensure equitable outcomes for all students and staff.
The type and level of behavior support provided for any student must match the intensity of his or her needs. Student responsiveness to academic and behavioral supports must guide instructional and intervention decisions. Schools implementing PBIS school-wide must organize behavior support across multiple tiers which increase in intensity as students’ needs dictate.
Tier 1 supports are delivered to all students and emphasize teaching prosocial skills and behavior expectations. Schools acknowledge appropriate student behavior across all school settings. Tier 1 PBIS builds a social culture where students expect, prompt, and reinforce appropriate behavior for each other. When implemented with fidelity, Tier 1 PBIS systems and practices meet the needs of 80% or more of all students’ needs.
Tier 2 supports focus on students who are not successful with Tier 1 supports alone. Students receiving Tier 2 support require additional teaching and practice opportunities to increase their likelihood of success. Tier 2 supports are often successful when provided within groups. At this level, systems and practices are efficient. This means they are similar across students and can be quickly accessed. Schools monitor fidelity and outcome data regularly to adjust implementation as needed. The typical range of Tier 2 supports include:
Self-management
Check-In, Check-Out
Small group social skill instruction
Targeted academic supports.
Typically, schools deliver Tier 2 supports to 5-15% of the student body.
Tier 3 are more intensive and individualized. Schools use more formalized assessments to match interventions to the behavior’s function. They create individualized plans incorporating the student’s academic strengths and deficits, physical and medical status, mental health needs, and family/community support. Support plans emphasize:
Prevention of problem situations
Active instruction of new, replacement, and adaptive behaviors
Formal strategies to acknowledge desired behavior
Systematic procedures to reduce the likelihood problem behaviors are reinforced
Safety routines
Accurate and sustained implementation
Data collection procedures to measure fidelity and impact
Coordination of family, agency, and other systems of care.
Tier 3 supports target the 3-5% of students with the highest support needs in the school.
Specifically, PBIS implemented school-wide is associated with the following outcomes: (1), (2), (3), (4)
Improved academic performance
Reduced bullying behaviors
Improved social-emotional competence
Improved social and academic outcomes for students with disabilities
Reduced office discipline referrals, suspensions, and incidents of restraint and seclusion
Improved teacher outcomes, including perception of teacher efficacy; school organizational health and school climate, and perception of school safety
To get started implementing SW-PBIS, identify a representative leadership team. This team typically:
Completes readiness activities like securing staff buy-in and evaluating data systems
Identifies relevant training and coaching resources
Develops an action plan to guide implementation of PBIS practices, systems, and data school-wide
Implements a contextualized approach to PBIS to match the school’s values and culture
Monitors, evaluates, and adjusts implementation in an on-going way