Practice Briefs

Introduction Over 25,000 schools have embraced positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) as a highly effective way to build children’s social-emotional-behavioral skills and reduce challenging behaviors. PBIS can be effectively used at home too and is especially helpful when events disrupt normal routines (e.g., worldwide health pandemics, natural disasters, extended breaks). Here are some recommendations for families and caregivers on how to use PBIS to support their children’s social and emotional growth and minimize behavioral disruptions in the home.

Positive greetings at the door is an effective strategy for increasing academic engagement, decreasing unwanted behavior, and improving student-teacher relationships. This strategy brief breaks it down into easy steps for daily implementation.

This practice brief shares tips for maintaining continuity of learning through defining classroom expectations for remote (i.e., distance) instruction and online learning environments. With a few adaptations, teachers can use a PBIS framework to make remote learning safe, predictable, and positive.

Clip charts have been a common classroom strategy for many years. Once considered an effective tool for displaying behavioral progress and adherence to classroom rules, they may not be as helpful as once thought. In this practice brief, we describe how such strategies are inconsistent with a PBIS approach and, more importantly, can be harmful. We also provide alternative strategies that are evidence based and more likely to improve student behavior while promoting a safe, positive classroom.

In October 2017, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency to address rising overdose deaths related to the opioid epidemic. With the effects of the opioid crisis affecting students at multiple levels, it is important to identify clear targets for school-based interventions. We describe here the ways students and families may be affected, and how school teams can leverage the PBIS framework to support them.

This brief provides guidance for schools or districts looking to integrate strategies for improving attendance within the PBIS framework.

As states and districts adopt policies that address the “whole child,” many look to multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) that attend to academic and social-emotional-behavioral needs of students. Key features of MTSS include a continuum of supports with increasing intensity matched to student need, the use of research informed practices, and data for decision making. School-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) is an example of an effective MTSS for behavior.

In this Practice Brief we propose that there are at least four core types of data needed by high school PBIS Leadership Teams and that these data can be used to problem-solve at the (a) whole school, (b) at-risk group, or (c) individual student levels.

This brief discusses the importance of student voice, describes the unique features of high school settings that can make it challenging to include students, and offers strategies to address these barriers.

This practice brief defines restraint and seclusion, addresses prevalance, describes prevention approaches, and reviews policy implications.

Buy-in from stakeholders is important for the successful adoption, full implementation and sustainability of any school-based initiative. It’s also one of the critical elements for implementation of Tier 1 PBIS included in the TFI, BoQ, and the Blueprint. This brief describes the unique features of high school settings that can make building buy-in more difficult and identifies strategies that have been successful for securing staff buy-in in high schools.

The purpose of this practice brief is to describe family-school collaboration in Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and review approaches that help to create conditions that promote collaboration. A brief background on family-school collaboration is provided, followed by guidance on a schoolwide approach for collaborating with families that strengthens family-school connections and improves student performance.

The 2018 PBIS Leadership Forum juvenile justice roundtable dialogue gave a voice to the conference participants who work with youth in restrictive settings. This is a summary of their ideas to spur additional conversations and to continue the growth of FW-PBIS with this population of vulnerable and marginalized youth in restrictive settings.

The significance of the student-teacher relationship is substantial. The brief discusses key elements of positive student-teacher relationships and approaches for strengthening teachers' relational skills with students.

This brief was developed to provide core features and strategies for integrating academic and behavior practices to support students in a “whole child” approach at the classroom level.

The results of decades of research consistently show that students of color, particularly African American students (and even more so for African American boys and those with disabilities), are at significantly increased risk for receiving exclusionary discipline practices, including office discipline referrals and suspensions. We describe here a 5-point multicomponent approach to reduce disproportionality in schools.

The purpose of this technical brief is to summarize proactive, efficient, and evidence-based systems for supporting teachers’ implementation of positive classroom behavior support (PCBS) practices school-wide. Specifically, this technical brief is designed to inform and support school and district leadership teams as they address the following questions while implementing PCBS school wide.

The purpose of this document is to summarize the Mental Health Integration strand, including the roundtable dialogue, from the 2017 PBIS Leadership Forum in Chicago, Illinois. Recognizing that the ISF provides an example of effective alignment of initiatives, programs and practices in schools, this summary will be organized around the steps included in the Technical Guide for Alignment (see Figure 1 below). Illustrations from sites working to implement the ISF are included as examples of the alignment process. Input and discussion from presenters and participants at the 2017 PBIS Leadership Forum Mental Health Integration sessions and roundtable dialogue, including responses to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), are included in this Brief.

With the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), State education agencies (SEA) have a great opportunity to revisit and update their state-wide school improvement plans. A particularly important emphasis of ESSA is school climate and safety, which are so integrally linked to academic achievement, active student and teacher engagement, and tiered systems of support for all students, but especially students with high failure risk (e.g., students with disabilities English language learners, students from disadvantaged and diverse backgrounds and environments).

An operational and applied overview of school climate that can guide decisions related to policy, professional development, and practice and systems implementation at the classroom, school, district, and state levels.

Coaching is important and necessary to maximize transfer and translation of skills and practices acquired during training into sustainable and high fidelity implementation of evidence-based practices and systems. Coaching has been identified as the most critical factor in successful implementation. This brief quickly defines coaching at the district level. It includes a graphic representation of how the role fits within a district structure and outlines the functions a district coach is expected to conduct.

This document is intended to be a practical tool and resource for educators interested in implementing, sustaining, or enhancing PBIS in the classroom practices. (RDQ)

For the purpose of this brief, clinicians are considered school social workers, school psychologists, school counselors, guidance deans and community mental health clinicians based in the school setting. These clinicians play an integral role in helping build, support, and sustain a MTSS framework in schools and districts. (RDQ)

This technical brief is based on the 5-point multicomponent approach to reduce disproportionality. This brief elaborates on point one, regarding academic instruction, by defining key principles of evidence-based instructional practices.

The purpose of this brief is to help build a common language and a common understanding of the critical role Coaching plays in ensuring the EBP/EIIs can be implemented as intended (fidelity) and sustain over time.