Response to Intervention and
Positive Behavior Support:
Brothers from Different Mothers
or
Sisters with Different Misters?
PBIS Newsletter, June, 2007
Authors:
Therese Sandomierski, University of Florida;
Don Kincaid, University of South Florida;
Bob Algozzine, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Recent updates to state and federal special education guidelines are changing the
way schools are expected to support students with problem behavior. Traditionally,
approaches to assisting these students included parent conferences, observations,
a minimum number of general interventions, a review of educational and social records,
and a psychological evaluation. Now, with the passage of the No Child Left Behind
Act and revision of IDEA, schools are being encouraged to turn towards proactive
approaches that match the service a student receives with his/her level of need.
One such approach is called Response to Intervention, or RtI.
Response to Intervention (RtI) is defined as “the practice of providing high-quality
instruction and interventions matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently
to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying child response
data to important educational decisions” (Batsche et al., 2005). Based on a problem-solving
model, the RtI approach considers environmental factors as they might apply to an
individual student’s difficulty, and provides services/intervention as soon as the
student demonstrates a need. Focused primarily on addressing academic problems, RtI
has emerged as the new way to think about both disability identification and early
intervention assistance for the “most vulnerable, academically unresponsive children”
in schools and school districts (Fuchs & Deshler, 2007, p. 131, emphasis added).
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is based on a problem-solving
model and aims to prevent inappropriate behavior through teaching and reinforcing
appropriate behaviors (OSEP Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions
& Supports, 2007). Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a process
that is consistent with the core principles of RtI. Similar to RtI, PBIS offers a
range of interventions that are systematically applied to students based on their
demonstrated level of need, and addresses the role of the environment as it applies
to development and improvement of behavior problems.
Both RtI and PBIS are grounded in differentiated instruction. Each approach delimits
critical factors and components to be in place at the universal (Tier 1), targeted
group (Tier 2), and individual (Tier 3) levels. Our goal is to describe the shared
(identified in bold) characteristics of these approaches as a basis for highlighting
how best to meet the needs of children experiencing academic and social difficulties
in school.
Tier 1(Universal)
School achievement and success requires that students have adequate exposure to
a quality curriculum and instruction. While this feature is easily understood and
accepted with regard to academic achievement, it is less easily evident or applied
for behavior. With academic achievement, a curriculum contains the critical content
skills every student is expected to learn, and it directs assessment and intervention
practices central to RtI. For behavior, a universal curriculum focuses attention
on the set of social skills all students are expected to display. For proponents
of PBIS, the universal curriculum consists of the school-wide expectations, rules,
and procedures, as well as the lesson plans used to teach them. While easily articulated
and supported, this aspect of high quality school-wide behavioral instruction is
seldom evident in what is taught in schools. One important contribution of PBIS has
been its’ proponents efforts to elevate behavior curricula and instruction to levels
of interest and importance that are similar to those found with academics.
Both RtI and PBIS support a preventative approach to teaching academic and social
behavior, beginning at the Tier 1 level. In schools using PBIS, the practice of teaching
and reinforcing students for displaying the school-wide expectations is considered
to be a universal intervention, delivered to every student in every setting. By teaching
and reinforcing expected behaviors, teachers and other professionals using PBIS increase
the probability that the majority of students will act according to the expectations,
and acts as a proactive intervention for students with a history of problem behavior.
Similarly, those who envision potential payoff from RtI see it coming from early
identification of and strong preventive intervention for academic problems.
When universal intervention is carried out with fidelity, schools can begin to identify
students who are in need of additional support. These are the students who,, in spite
of receiving assistance that has been successful with a majority of other students,
continue to display academic and/or social problems. The benchmark assessments and
progress monitoring procedures that are prominent in RtI illustrate this, and speak
to the importance of using data for decision making. The collection and use of records
of behavior provides important decision-making data in PBIS schools. For many students,
a history of office discipline referrals (ODRs) may be adequate to identify them
as needing more support; students who have a high number of ODRs relative to the
rest of the school’s population are easily identified as having a poor response to
the universal intervention.
While ODRs are necessary for identifying students with high rates of externalizing
behaviors, they are not sufficient for identifying all students in need of Tier 2
supports. Students who have internalizing behaviors, and students who have less severe
externalizing behaviors, are often not captured in school-wide ODR information (Clonin,
McDougal, Clark, & Davison, 2007; Nelson, Bennen, Reid, & Epstein, 2002; Severson,
Walker, Hope-Doolittle, Kratochwill, & Gresham, 2007). The needs of these students
still must be addressed in order to prevent future behavior problems and to facilitate
school-wide academic achievement. Therefore, schools that implement tiered interventions
for behavior must also incorporate a screening measure to proactively identify at-risk
students. This idea is consistent with RtI for academics, where schools use academic
screeners (such as DIBELS) to identify students experiencing reading difficulties
(University of Oregon Center on Teaching and Learning, 2007; University of South
Florida Problem Solving and Response to Intervention Project, 2007). However, no
such screening or identification measure has been widely investigated or implemented
for the behavioral side of RtI. Nomination processes which ask teachers to rank the
top internalizing and externalizing students in their classrooms, such as the one
used in the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders [SSBD] system (Walker & Severson,
1992) appear to hold much promise for identifying students at-risk of or exhibiting
significant problem behaviors.
Identifying and meeting the educational needs of students requiring additional support
must also address the classroom environment. Otherwise, it would be difficult to
argue that a student had a poor response to intervention, when the intervention was
put into place in the midst of a maladaptive environment. As part of the prevention
process, schools must continually look at their classroom-level data to determine
the overall health of each of their classrooms. Classroom environments in which numbers
of students experiencing academic difficulties are consistently high require analysis
and attention. Classes that generate a high number of ODRs, have high levels of off-task
behavior, have continuing low achievement, or have extended periods of unstructured
time also require action. Administrators and support teams should work with those
classroom teachers to pinpoint the areas that are most in need of development. It
is only after high-quality academic and behavior instruction and interventions are
established at both the school-wide and classroom levels that schools could conclude
that a student has a need for additional services.
Tier 2 (Targeted Group)
Once a student has been identified as needing additional support, both RtI and PBIS
advocate for using evidence-based interventions that require resources appropriate
to the student’s level of need, and then monitoring the progress of students receiving
those interventions. At Tier 2, this is interpreted as providing interventions that
are easy to administer to small groups of students, and which require limited time
and staff involvement. In schools that are using PBIS, a check-in/check-out program
such as the Behavior Education Program (Crone, Horner, & Hawken, 2004) meets these
criteria and provides a way to focus at-risk students’ attention on the school-wide
expectations. Other possibilities for Tier 2 interventions include social skills
groups, group counseling, or mentoring programs. While a plethora of such programs
exist for purchase and use within schools, many do not have a solid research base
that supports their effectiveness. Similarly, although there are instructional procedures
with promise for improving academic skills, there is “widespread uncertainty” about
what “scientifically validated” instruction means within RtI (Fuchs & Deshler, 2007,
p. 131). Therefore, districts and schools are encouraged to closely monitor the implementation
and outcomes of such programs. And even the best programs, if they are implemented
poorly, will likely not produce the desired impact on academic and/or behavior change.
Clearly, the area of targeted group/Tier 2 interventions will benefit from future
efforts at applied research.
Another area of common interest and overlap is the degree to which students have
the necessary academic and behavioral skills to succeed at school. Most educators
would agree that it is rare to find a student who has behavior challenges who does
not also have academic challenges, and many times the behavioral problems originate
because of the student’s inability to succeed academically at a level comparable
to his/her peers. An analysis conducted by the FL PBIS Project of three schools in
Florida found that over 80% of all students identified as having severe behavioral
problems were also identified by their teachers as having academic problems. If a
student has shown a poor response to universal and classroom-level behavioral interventions,
his/her academic proficiency should be assessed. If the student has academic deficits,
they should receive evidence-based interventions that directly address their needs.
Schools may find that it is necessary to provide academic and behavior interventions
simultaneously, but a judgment of the student’s response to the behavior intervention
should be interpreted cautiously until the academic problems are remediated.
Progress monitoring can be efficiently achieved for Tier 2 interventions using variations
of teacher rating scales that reflect students’ academic and/or behavior goals (the
school-wide expectations). Samples of these scales for behavior can be accessed at
the Florida PBIS website (http://flpbs.fmhi.usf.edu/). Most commonly, rating scales
require teachers (or another adult) to record their opinion of a student’s behavior
during a specific time period, such as a 50-minute class or subject period (e.g.,
Language Arts, or Math). As the teacher fills out the rating scale, they provide
brief, specific verbal feedback to the student about why they earned that rating.
The most obvious drawback to this method of progress monitoring is that the teacher’s
reported opinion is being measured, not the actual instances of academic or social
behavior. However, at this level of analysis, the resources dedicated to any particular
student should match his/her level of need; more time-consuming and intensive measures
should be left to levels of intervention that are equally intense.
As with the universal and classroom levels of intervention, academic and behavior
interventions must be carried out with fidelity in Tier 2 before the student can
be judged to have an adequate or insufficient response to intervention. This would
mean that interventions would be evaluated not only with regard to how they were
delivered to the student, but also with regard to the way in which they generalized
to non-treatment settings. For example, if a student participates in a “pull-out”
social skills group with the school’s guidance counselor, fidelity would have to
be evaluated for the manner in which the counselor presented the social skill lessons
to the students, as well as the manner in which the teachers applied the social skill
lessons in the classroom. Similarly, evidence of academic performance should reflect
improvements across settings, people, and materials. The process of monitoring intervention
fidelity and supporting teachers while effective interventions are implemented is
of key importance, and requires further investigation on both state and national
levels.
Tier 3 (Individual Student)
Prior to selecting a Tier 2 intervention, the school’s PBIS/RTI team should have
already met to discuss the student’s behavioral needs, classroom issues, and academic
needs. At Tier 3, the school team needs to conduct a more in-depth analysis of the
student’s data, which at this point would include all of the information examined
at Tier 1, as well as the student’s response to and the fidelity of the Tier 2 intervention(s).
The classroom teacher(s) should have a larger role at this stage of the problem-solving
process, as more in-depth information is collected through one-on-one consultation.
At the beginning of Tier 3, consultation regarding persistent behavior problems could
include a brief Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA), and/or completion of a behavioral
or mental health rating scale. If a student continues to have difficulty, a comprehensive
FBA would be warranted. As a student moves along the third Tier of intervention and
support, schools will want to continue to use the guiding principle of matching services,
time, and resources to a student’s demonstrated need. A simple Behavior Improvement
Plan (BIP) that includes evidence-based interventions and is based on the results
of the FBA should be used early in the Tier 3 stage, and the student’s response to
the plan should be closely monitored. If a student continues to show a poor response
to the plan, additional school personnel are gathered to apply a more structured
problem-solving process to the situation, and develop a more detailed plan. As a
student’s behavior problems are revealed to be persistent and/or severe, additional
data collection procedures (such as direct observation by non-classroom personnel)
may become necessary. This same process (e.g., developing an individualized education
program) is evident in efforts to implement Tier 3 interventions in RtI approaches
although these actions often are reserved for or emerge from special education professionals
and programs.
At Tier 3, access to an array of assessment information is essential for effective
team decision-making. Different data are necessary for identifying students in need
of more intensive support, for assessing the function(s) of their problem behaviors,
and for evaluating the outcomes of individualized education programs. At this stage,
more intensive progress monitoring techniques should be applied. Teacher rating scales
can still play an important role in this process, but they should provide more detailed
information than what was gathered during Tier 2. For instance, time periods within
the rating scale may be reduced to create a more precise measure of how the teachers’
perception of the student’s behavior improves or worsens over time. In cases where
students repeatedly show poor response to intervention, it may be necessary to gather
data on specific instances of behavior using direct observation. This, of course,
would require significant amounts of staff time and expertise; however, by this stage
of the intervention process, the student’s behavioral difficulties have been shown
to be persistent, and may also be intense, and the additional time and resources
would be warranted. Again, the similarities in and importance of teams across RtI
and PBIS are obvious and compelling.
Changing the Lives of Students with Problems
RtI and PBIS offer opportunities to address academic and behavior problems effectively
with interventions at different levels of intensity and support. If a student is
not making adequate progress, decision-making teams consider if the interventions
were implemented with fidelity. If not, additional support is provided or intervention
plans are revised to better match the context of the classroom and the teacher’s
ability to respond effectively.
While RtI and PBIS offer great promise, “…it is untrue and misleading to claim that
we currently have a necessary and sufficient knowledge base to guide the implementation
of RTI [and PBIS]…across all grades, for all academic [and behavior] skills, in all
content areas, for all children and youth” (Fuchs & Deshler, 2007, p. 134). We have
few models of districts implementing these systems across all schools and all three
levels for all students. As such, it sometimes feels as if we are watching a “runaway
train” destined to wreck and are trying to lay track (practices, research, and data)
to avoid the disaster. So, while RtI and PBIS share common parentages, histories,
and features, there is still much work to be done to insure that a combined approach
can deliver on the promise of improving both academic and behavior outcomes for all
students.
Reprinted from PBIS Newsletter, www.pbis.org , Dr. Tim Lewis, Co-Director, USDE,
OSEP, Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports,
presented at the Spring 2010 VCASE conference on “The Road Not Taken: Making a Difference
in Students Lives” and “Connecting Classrooms to Systems of Schoolwide PBS.”
