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BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

Behavior Plans: Studying the Purposes and Effectiveness of Positive Behavioral Interventions
and Supports in the Classroom
Caitlin Crouch
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

Behavior Plans: Studying the Purposes and Effectiveness of Positive Behavioral Interventions
and Supports (PBIS) in the Classroom

A plethora of challenges await school children upon their arrival to primary and
secondary school. Most students face pressures to succeed academically. These internal pressures
students today face often manifest themselves externally in the classroom. For some students,
pressures to succeed academically act as motivations to meet the behavioral expectations of the
school. For other students, pressures to succeed academically result in behaviors that disrupt
learning and positive social development. For students living in poverty, the effects of poverty
if left unaddressed impact their ability to develop sustainable, practical academic and social
skills. Students living in poverty experience a range of stress factors, which affect their ability to
perform in schools where these needs arent addressed. Fortunately, several positive behavioral
support models exist that can help schools address and accommodate the needs of their students.
These support models take into consideration the stress factors associated with poverty and meet
students where they are at behaviorally. These behavioral support models shift the focus on
negative behaviors to positive behaviors in ways that provide students with opportunities to
understand their behaviors and gradually replace physically, emotionally, and academically
detractive behaviors with proactive behaviors.
This paper specifically focuses on the necessity and effectiveness of Positive Behavioral
Interventions and Supports (PBIS), a behavioral support model created by the U.S. Department
of Education to improve social, emotional, and academic outcomes for students. In order to
assess its effectiveness in schools, it is crucial to understand the need for such a model of

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

support. This paper begins by outlining the physical, emotional, and social effects of poverty,
which all affect academic performance. The paper then explains how these effects necessitate
certain actions from schools before high-level academic performance outcomes can be expected.
Finally, the paper introduces the practices, goals, and measured achievements of PBIS in schools
in the United States.
Before explaining the need for models such as PBIS, it is important to understand the
students behavioral support models help. In Teaching With Poverty in Mind, author Eric
Jensen, a human development specialist and former teacher, explains that children raised in
poverty often lack the three crucial needs a strong caregiver, safe and predictable
environments, and ten to twenty hours each week of harmonious interaction necessary to grow
into emotionally healthy children: Children raised in poverty are much less likely to have
these crucial needs met than their more affluent peers. . . Deficits in these areas inhibit the
production of brain cells, alter the path of maturation, and rework the healthy neural circuitry in
childrens brains, thereby undermining emotional and social development (Jensen, 2009, 16).
The effects of these deficits, according to Jensen, can be witnessed in the repertoire of emotions
and behaviors teachers observe daily.
Jensen suggests that these deficits typically lower the range of appropriate emotional
responses students display inside the classroom. For example, Jensen refers to the fact that some
emotions are hardwired in our DNA while others are learned. Sadness, joy, disgust, anger,
surprise, and fear are hardwired, according to Jensens research, while humility, forgiveness,
empathy, optimism, compassion, sympathy, patience, shame, cooperation, and gratitude are
taught. Jensen concludes by saying that every proper response that [teachers] dont see at school
is one that [teachers] should be demonstrating and teaching (Jensen, 2009, 19). Jensens

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

research suggests that teaching these emotions will not only help teachers understand their
students but also help to create a classroom that runs smoothly. Jensen boasts that with the
research available no students should be failing academically: Today, we have a broad research
base that clearly outlines the ramifications of living in poverty as well as evidence of schools that
do succeed with economically disadvantaged students. We can safely say that we have no excuse
to let any child fail. (Jensen, 2009, 5). Jensen goes on to describe the stress factors associated
with poverty than can affect student behavior in school.
Jensens research in the development of childrens brains suggests that children living in
poverty experience a range of stressors that influence childrens physical, psychological,
emotional, and cognitive functioning. Some of these include evictions, utility disconnections,
overcrowding, or lack of a stove or refrigerator. Jensen claims that over half of children living in
poverty experience one or more of these stressors yearly. (See Figure 1.) According to Cara
Wellman in Neurobiology, continual exposure to expressions like these can impair the brains
ability to learn: Experiments have demonstrated that exposure to chronic or acute stress actually
shrinks neurons in the brains frontal lobes an area that includes the prefrontal cortex and is
responsible for such functions as making judgments, planning, and regulating impulsivity and
can modify and impair the hippocampus in ways that reduce learning (Jensen, 2009, 236).
Jensens research corresponds to such findings. He includes the list of symptoms of chronic
stress teachers should watch for in the classroom shown in Figure 2. To ease these symptoms and
alter the environment of the classroom, Jensen has a number of suggestions that easily fit into
behavioral support models such as PBIS. Jensen recommends giving students a weekly life
problem to solve each week, role-modeling how to solve real-world problems, introducing stress
reduction techniques and conflict resolution skills, and incorporating celebrations, role plays, and

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

physical activities into the classroom (Jensen, 2009, 31). While the stressors that children living
in poverty experience affect them in complex ways, small adjustments to teacher responses and
lessons have the potential to improve cognitive and social lags gradually.
The results of traditional discipline systems, which tend to rely on punitive methods of
addressing student behaviors, are widespread. According to How Can We Improve School
Discipline, traditional methods such as suspension, expulsion, and office referrals are often
quick fixes to chronic, long-term problems. Whats more is that researchers have found that
school discipline records often can mark students as high risk for juvenile and adult incarceration
rates. In School discipline feeds pipeline to prison, researcher Deborah Fowler cites
disciplinary referrals at school as the number one predictor of future involvement in the juvenile
system (Fowler, 2011, 16). Furthermore, she claims each additional disciplinary infraction
increases the likelihood of future involvement in the juvenile system by 1.5% and each day a
student was suspended from school increased the probability of referral to the justice system by
0.1% (Fowler, 2011, 16). Fowler also reports that traditional methods of discipline fall heavily
on minority populations: Similarly, suspension and expulsion disproportionally affect students
with emotional and behavioral disorders and students of color, contributing to disengagement,
lost opportunities to learn, and dropout (Fowler, 2011, 48). While research abounds
documenting the causes of this disproportionality, the notion that schools often fall short of
accommodating the basic needs of these populations is well documented. Furthermore, research
also exists suggesting that accommodating basic needs of students goes miles in creating positive
school climates where students feel comfortable and less behavioral mayhem transpires.
Research shows that behavioral support models such as Positive Behavioral Interventions
and Supports (PBIS), when implemented correctly, help students learn what explicitly what do

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

and how to maintain positive behaviors. The program developers divided the support model into
three tiers primary, secondary, and tertiary. At the primary level, the school implementing PBIS
outlines clear behavioral expectations, teaches these behavior expectations, introduces a reward
system for appropriate behavior, creates a continuum of consequences for problem behavior and
continuously collects data. At the secondary level, the school monitors the progress of at risk
students and continues to collect data. It is also in this stage that the school establishes systems
for increasing structure and predictability, increasing contingent adult feedback, linking
academic and behavioral performance, and increasing home/school communication. At the
tertiary level, schools begin to conduct Functional Behavior Assessments, team-based
comprehensive assessments, and individual interventions and instructions based on assessment
feedback. Data continues to be collected at this stage as well. Fowler insists that this structure
allows schools to implement the program with very little cost or dramatic change to current
models: Schools are often able to integrate existing curricula or programs into the PBIS model
so that expense is minimized (Fowler, 2011, 19). She also claims that PBIS pays off with
increased student attendance and significant cost savings from fewer alternative placements
(Fowler, 2011, 19). Fowler also explains that PBIS developers created the program with a broad
range of suggestions in order for schools to cater to the unique local needs of their
communities (Fowler, 2011, 18). This particular detail has become what appears to be the only
complaint with the support model.
Though the developers of the program at the U.S. Department of Education created the
program with the intent to leave the nuanced decisions of its implementation up to the states,
school districts, or administrators, some education officials have offered dissent against the
programs loose expectations. In Education Weeks article Tensions Accompany Growth of

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

PBIS Discipline Model, author Christina Samuels notes that some officials hold misconceptions
about the program. She claims that Randy Sprick, the creator of Safe and Civil School, another
positive intervention program wrote in a letter to U.S. Department of Education Arnie Duncan
that the program was too confusing for administrators (Samuels, 2013). Other officials also
claim that the program is an unfair attempt by the U.S. Department of Education to push any
type of national practice or curriculum (Samuels, 2013). According to Samuels, this argument is
flawed because school personal arent required to implement positive behavior supports.
PBIS, correctly implemented in schools, draws the focus away from negative behaviors
to positive ones that are sustainable and applicable outside the classroom. Fowler explains that
schools provide ideal settings for teaching urban students to help manage the stress they carry
around: There is no better place than the child-centered environment of a school for students to
learn how to handle frustration and manage the host of negative emotions that are part of
growing up. That lesson is too important to leave to the courts (Fowler, 2011, 48). Behavior
models like PBIS can help schools proactively secure the futures of their students.

BEHAVIORAL SUPPORT MODELS

8
References

Fowler, Deborah. (2011). School discipline feeds pipeline to prison. Phi Delta Kapplan, 93.
14-19.
Jensen, Eric. (2009). Teaching With Poverty in Mind. Association for Supervision and
Curriculum Development.
Samuels, Christina. (2013). Tensions accompany growth of PBIS discipline model. Education
Week.

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