Behavior Support Plans (BIPs or BSPs)

Many students with educational needs in the area of behavior can receive FAPE through an IEP alone. Prevention, reinforcement, and response strategies can be documented directly in the accommodations and modifications section of the IEP. A student's behavior-related goals and progress monitoring procedures are included in the IEP, and the teaching strategies needed to support those goals should be described to some extent in the PLAAFP and/or LRE pages of the IEP.

You may be thinking, 'If IEPs include all of this information, then why do we need BIPs?' For starters, the BIP organizes the information into a meaningful context rather than these pieces of information being spread across the IEP, scattered amongst information about the student's non-behavior programming. This benefits intervention quality by making it easier to get all of the school staff who work with a student on the same page regarding the student's behavior programming. In a BIP, behavior-related accommodations and modifications are also meaningfully organized into the categories of prevention, reinforcement, and response strategies.

In addition, BIPs include other information that is key to understanding the student's behavior and intervening successfully. These include: descriptions of the target undesired behaviors that are most problematic for the student, the function(s) of the undesired behavior(s), identified replacement behavior(s), safety/crisis plans, and procedures for ensuring intervention integrity.

If the change to the BIP is significant, yes. Because the BIP is considered an extension of the IEP, significant changes must follow due process requirements for prior written notice and the case manager should operate using the same procedure that is used when amendments are proposed for the IEP in SpEd Forms.

Significant changes include:

• Replacement behaviors

• Response strategies (those that impact setting)

• Location of strategy (GenEd vs. SpEd). For example, if processing with the student was happening within a GenEd classroom but will now be happening in a SpEd resource room.

• Behavior goals/progress monitoring/amount of service time

• Safety plan/use of restrictive procedures

In addition, if the target behavior(s) is different from what is identified in the most recent FBA, a new FBA must be completed (e.g., verbal aggression has escalated to physical aggression).

Minor changes include:

• Response strategies provided within current setting (e.g., format of corrective teaching or behavior processing)

• Reinforcement strategies (e.g., menu of preferred items)

Although written notice is not required in these cases, communication with parent(s) is encouraged and documented in the SpEd forms communication log.

If one or more sources of data indicate that a student isn't making sufficient progress with the program currently in place (e.g., progress on behavior IEP goals is insufficient, student has been repeatedly suspended, etc.), we encourage you to reach out to your School Psychologist or School Social Worker for consultation and support. If after that, contact your Sped Administrator for additional guidance.

During consultation, one resource available is the BIP Reflection Form. This is meant to be a brief, informal reflection activity that helps to pinpoint which areas we need to adjust because the current BIP isn't working well enough. It's worth noting that — in order to say that the current BIP isn't working well enough — we need to know whether or not we've actually been implementing the plan with integrity. This is where integrity checks come in.