Positive behavioral interventions and supports

a multi-tiered system of support

One of the most prominent concepts in modern educational practice is something known as a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, or MTSS. In brief, an MTSS is an evidence-based framework created to meet the academic needs of all students. The academic curriculum received by all students constitute the first tier of support in the MTSS. Students who struggle to master the academic concepts presented in the first tier may receive small group or individualized interventions in the second and third tiers. The state of Iowa promotes the use of an MTSS framework for both academics and social-emotional and behavioral health (SEBH.)

Davenport Schools uses Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports, or PBIS, a multi-tiered system for social-emotional well-being and behavioral supports. PBIS was developed and endorsed by the US Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs and the Office of Secondary and Elementary Education, and is supported by forty years of research.

The Davenport Community School District is committed to providing tiered levels of support to ensure that all students have the opportunity to be successful, while maintaining a safe and effective learning environment for all. PBIS is not in and of itself a specific curriculum or program, but rather a framework for using data to make targeted decisions to benefit individual students. The purpose of this document is to explain and clarify the systems, processes, strategies, and data used by Davenport Schools staff when making decisions about how to best support students.

Cultural responsiveness

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy is a concept that has gained recognition in the field of education over the last three decades, beginning with the work of scholars like Gloria Ladson-Billings and continuing today in the work of practitioners like Geneva Gay, Sharroky Hollie, and Zaretta Hammond. Cultural Responsiveness is the idea that students bring unique cultural assets to the classroom that are based on their life experiences, and that harnessing those assets will lead to increased learning and success. Some examples of cultural assets are styles of dress, music, dialect, and preferences for social vs. independent task completion. Many of these cultural practices have historically been penalized by school systems, resulting in disproportionate rates of suspension and exclusion from learning activities for students of minority heritage.

It is therefore the work of educators to recognize their students' unique cultural assets and to design their pedagogy to build from students' cultural strengths. Many teachers might connect this concept to that of differentiation, and that association would be correct. Differentiation is a concept most often associated with academic instruction; Cultural and Linguistic Responsiveness has implications both in academic instruction as well as behavioral expectations and learning. Since PBIS is rooted in the notion that behavior is something learned, behavior is therefore something that is taught. For teachers, this requires intentional decisions about pedagogy. This means making the intentional decision to take students' cultural differences and assets into account when scaffolding instruction for academics and behavior. In short, PBIS is not fully implemented unless its pedagogy is culturally responsive to students and their families. It is only through this intentional focus on cultural responsiveness that DCSD may ensure social and academic success for all students.

DCSD began the journey to cultural responsiveness with presentations and workshops presented by Dr. Sharroky Hollie during the 2017-2018 school year. This work must continue and each educator must own their responsibility for it. Importantly, Dr. Hollie asserts that cultural responsiveness begins with identifying, reflecting upon, and valuing one's own cultural heritage and beliefs, not suppressing them. Teachers would become highly ineffective and experience a range of adverse emotions if they were told they must put on airs or act in ways that did not fit their cultural ways of being while at work. The same is true for students. Rather, cultural responsiveness means intentionally creating an environment where everyone's cultural ways of being are validated, so that a shared way of being that is beneficial to all may be agreed upon. This new, inclusive, cultural space is the academic environment, which must validate and affirm everyone who enters it, so that professional skills may be built, and bridges may be created between a student's home culture and the culture of work and academia.

PBIS Tiers

It is important to note that, from a teacher's perspective, supports offered at Tiers I and II should become routine parts of the instructional day. For example, at any given time, 15% of a teacher's students may be receiving a "Check-In, Check-Out" (CICO) intervention. While the specifici students receiving this intervention will fluctuate, teachers should expect that the tasks associated with this intervention will need to be performed every day at similar times for those students. In an effective implementation, all teachers are aware of how to give these supports, who receives them, and they provide them with consistently.