Week 3 Assignment: PBIS, How is it affecting my School?

A.   Title: Is PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Systems) working?

B.  Needs Assessment:  My school has seen an increase in behavior problems, write ups, suspensions, and expulsions over the past 10 years.  We have also noticed a drop in our test scores as well.  We believe the drop in our tests scores is influenced by our discipline problems.  Our district started to implement a new positive behavior intervention program at different schools over the past few years.  My school decided that we needed to try a different approach to what we were doing with discipline and two years ago we implemented PBIS at my school.  My school is a public school Baton Rouge, LA.  The majority of our students are African American (95%-98%), the other 5% are mixed between Caucasians, Hispanics, and Vietnamese.  Many of our students come from broken homes where they are not receiving the proper amount of love and support.  We believe this lack of attention contributes to their behavior problems at school.  We determined that trying an approach that involves positive reinforcement and incentives may motivate and encourage them to want to behave and work harder in the classroom.  Our thought process is that if we can reduce the amount of students getting kicked out of class or suspended that it will improve test scores because they will be in the classroom receiving instruction.  We also think our new behavior program could eventually raise our school’s letter grade.  Our state gives each school a letter grade based on performance on test scores.  Right now my school has a “D” for grade and we are working hard to bring that up.

C.  Objectives and Vision of the Action Research Project: After completing the needs assessment my school knows we need to find a way to reduce behavior problems (office referrals, suspensions, and absences).  We reduce the amount of students being sent home and focus on keeping them in the classroom where they can receive the instruction they need to do well on tests.  I also want to point out that the teachers are not sending students to the office or getting them suspended for no reason.  Our teachers bend over backwards to help our students but we have many students who really do not want to be here and who disrupt our classrooms.  My vision is to have PBIS totally change our school and make it one that has very few discipline problems and students being suspended. 

Objectives for my Action Research Project: My main objective for this project is to see how effective PBIS has been thus far.  This is my school’s third year doing PBIS and I want to see what kind of impact it has made on our school.  I want to see if referrals, suspensions, and absences have gone down.  I also want to see how it has affected our tests scores.  My next objective is to share what I have learned with my school.  PBIS requires a lot of extra paper work for teachers and can be tedious.  I think by presenting our teachers with data showing how effective PBIS has been it will let know them if their hard work is paying off or if we need to tweak things.  I expect to get results showing that PBIS has made an impact on our school.  I’m just not sure how big of an impact it has made.  To make sure I can get an accurate portrayal of PBIS I have picked 20 students to examine for my project.  These 20 students are currently in 4^th grade.  They have also been at our school since the implementation of PBIS, meaning they were in second grade when it started.  We are constantly getting new students throughout the year and are also losing students throughout the year.  I think the best thing for me to do is look at students who have been under the PBIS program the entire time rather than students who have just started at my school.

D.  Review of the Literature and Action Research Strategy:  I have found many articles and other resources that all point to a need for a new approach towards discipline in schools.  Most approaches have to do with positive behavior support and ways to keep students in the classroom not just suspending them constantly.  For my research I plan on using many different resources.  Here are a few of the resources I will be using.

Horner, R., Sugai, G., School-Wide Positive Behavior Support, 2005

Lassen, S. R., Steele, M. M., Sailor, W. The Relationship Of School-Wide Positive Behavior Support To Academic Achievement In An Urban Middle School, 2006, 701-710

Luiselli, J. K., Putnam, R., F., Handler, M., W., Feinberg, A., B., Whole-School Positive Behavior Support: Effects on student discipline problems and academic performance, 2005, 183-198

I’m still really putting together my project and deciding exactly how I want to do it and what to research.  I know the overall theme in that I want to do research on my school’s new PBIS program.  This summer I plan on going up to my school and working with my principal and guidance counselor on exactly what will be the best way to research our new PBIS program.  My principal and guidance counselor are the ones who deal with our discipline problems and they know what will be the best way to research PBIS for our school.

E.   Articulating the Vision: I have met with my principal and guidance counselor a few time regarding my idea for an action research topic.  They both think it is an idea that can benefit our school and really help us see what is working and what is not.  I have also discussed my idea with staff members and they are all looking forward to seeing the results because PBIS has changed the way they do discipline.

F.   Manage the Organization:  I have taken on most of the duties for this project.  I will receive a lot of help from my principal and guidance counselor as far as getting data from them.  I will also go to them to help me review data and get their opinion on how I should put it all together.  I will not have to involve many students in my research project other than looking at data on how many office referrals, suspensions, and absences they have.  I may have a group of students take a survey but it will not be anything they have to sign.

G.  Manage Operations: I will lead the project and put most of it together by myself.  I will receive help from my principal and guidance counselor to analyze and interpret the data.  They will help me collect all of the referrals of the students I plan on researching.  They will also provide me with the data showing how many suspenions we have had over the past three years under our new PBIS program.  The data from our school is clear that we needed a new way of doing discipline.  Our suspension rate is high, and we have too may referrals each week.  Because of this we implemented PBIS and I want to see what kind of impact PBIS is making on our school.  Building consensus for this project was easy.  My principal immediately encouraged me to do a research project on this topic because it is something our school needs.

H.  Respond to Community Interest and Needs: Our students need to be staying in the classroom learning.  Instead we have so many behavior problems that many of our students are being suspended or referred to the office.  Implementing PBIS is something we hope will reduce the number of office referrals, behavior problems, and suspenions.  We then hope this will lead to more learning and improved student performance.  PBIS is for all students and it’s goal is to make sure all students are in the classroom not being sent home.  I have chosen 20 students to research and they include many different ethnic, economic, and special education groups.  I think my research will provide an accurate view of our school’s population.

Not sure if I posted this correctly. Tried the spreadsheet thing and it didn't look right.

Patrick's Action Research Plan
Goals:  1.  To find out if my school’s new positive behavior discipline system is making a difference in office referrals, suspensions, and test scores.  2.  To get feedback from students and teachers about our new positive behavior discipline system and ways to improve it.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Collect all 4th grade office referrals from 2009.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor	Complete by December 2011	Data showing all office referrals.  Data will be saved on the computer as well as hard copies in the guidance counselors’ office.	I will determine how many office referrals were totaled by our fourth grade for 2009.  I will save that data and compare it to 2010 and 2011 data.  Using graphs I will show how we improved or stayed the same in the number of referrals.
Collect all 4th grade office referrals from 2010.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor	Complete by December 2011	Data showing all office referrals.  Data will be saved on the office computers as ell as hard copies in the front office.	I will determine how many office referrals were totaled by our fourth grade for 2010.  I will save this data and information and compare it to 2009.
Collect all suspensions from our fourth grade in 2009.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor	Complete by March 2012	Data showing all suspensions from the 2009-2010 school year.  Data will be located in front office files or on the computer.	I will determine how many suspensions were totaled in fourth grade and compare that total to how many occurred in 2010.
Collect all suspensions from our fourth grade in 2010.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor	Complete by March 2012	Data showing all suspensions from the 2010-2011 school year.  Data will be located in front office files or on the office computer.	I will determine how many suspensions were totaled in fourth grade in 2010-2011 and compare that total to how many occurred in 2009-2010.

Get results of our fourth grade LEAP scores from the 2009-2010 school year.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor	Complete by December 2011.	Collect data showing our fourth grades’ test scores in each area of the LEAP test from 2009-2010.	I will compare the scores from the 2009-2010 school year to the results I get from the 2010-2011 school year test scores.
Get results of our fourth grade LEAP scores from the 2010-2011 school year.	Myself, Principal, guidance counselor, and TOR counselor.	Complete by December 2011.	Collect data showing our fourth grades’ test scores in each area of the LEAP test from 2010-2011.	I will compare the scores from 2010-2011 to the test scores from 2009-2010.  Looking at the differences in the two scores.
Conduct a teacher survey on how they view our new positive behavior discipline system.	15-20 teachers from my school.  Ranging from grades 1st-5th grade.	Complete by May 2012.	Collect surveys that show how our teachers feel about PBIS and what are areas they think need improvement.	I will gather the surveys from our teachers and see what areas are the most common as far as strengths and weaknesses from the surveys.
Conduct a student survey to see what the students think of our new positive behavior discipline system.	20-30 students from my school.  Ranging from 4th-5th grade.	Complete by May 2012.	Collect surveys that show how our students feel about PBIS.  What areas they like and what are things that they would like to see improve or done differently.	I will gather surveys from our students and determine which areas are most common for strengths and weaknesses of PBIS.
Collect all office referrals from our current school year for the fourth grade.  2011-2012.	Myself, Principal, Guidance Counselor, and TOR counselor.	Complete by May 2012	Collect all office referrals from our current school year and compare those results to the previous two school years.	Compare the results of the amount of office referrals from this year to the previous two years.  Noting any improvement or decline in the results.
Collect all the suspensions from our current school year for our fourth grade.	Myself, Principal, Guidance Counselor, and TOR counselor.	Complete by May 2012.	Collect all suspensions from our current school year and compare those results to the previous two years.  Hard copy of all suspensions from our current school year.	Compare the results from this year to the previous two years noting any improvement or areas of difference.
Gather results of LEAP test from our current school year.  2011-2012	Myself, Principal Guidance Counselor and TOR counselor	Complete by August 2012	Collect all LEAP scores from 2011-2012 and compare them to the previous two school years’ scores.  Hard copy of all LEAP scores from our current school year	Compare the results of the LEAP scores from this school year to the past two years.  Noting differences and areas of improvement.
Gather literature and information supporting positive behavior reinforcement and the effects it could have on school discipline.	Internet, articles, journals, and other school principals	Complete by May 2012	Gather research that supports positive behavior reinforcement and document the most common reasons it is effective.  Internet, Articles, and books that address positive reinforcement	Determine whether positive reinforcement is the best way of disciplining students.  Look at other schools that have been doing this new system and see how their school has improved.
Develop graphs and charts showing areas of change or improvement since implementing the new positive behavior plan.	Myself, Guidance counselor, Principal, classroom teachers	Complete by August 2012	Information showing all test scores, referrals, suspensions, and surveys from the previous three years.	By making graphs I can determine how effective our new positive reinforcement program really is.

What I learned from Week 2

Week 2 of 5301 has been very helpful and beneficial for me.  I have never done much research in the past and was kind of nervous about getting started with my action research.  By reading the assignments and watching the videos it has given me confidence and good ideas about how to conduct a good action research project.  One thing that stuck out to me was when Mr. Briseno said that many times there are underlying issues or reasons for why a student is misbehaving or not learning.  He said to always look for a way or opportunity to intervene and help the student and never give up on them.  I also learned that as a leader we must never stop growing and learning.  A leader must continue to learn just like students and teachers by reading and attending workshops and seminars.  I also think I have improved when it comes to using APA format.  My first class I wasn't really sure how to use APA, but with practice and looking at website I believe I have improved.

How educational leaders might use blogs.

I think educational leaders can use blogs in many different ways.  One way I would use a blog if I were an educational leader is for reflection.  A blog could be a way a principal could reflect on the week or express things he/she could've done differently or things that went well throughout the week.  A blog could also be used to share things that happened that week in their school that were positive. A lot of times principals get bogged down with angry parents or behavior problems, but there are also times when they hear great stories of student achievement and improvement.  A blog would be a good way to post those inspiring stories.

What I have learned about action research

Honestly, up until this course I have never heard or used the term "action research."  That obviously does not mean that I have never heard of administration or staff investigating or researching different school issues.  I think action research is the correct way to get data and information about your school.  There is nothing wrong with traditional research and you can learn many things from what it says.  However, to truly reach your school, you must do specific research at your school and on your school's issues.  I have learned that action research can be done on a small scale as well as a large scale.  Not all research has to be 40 pages of data and charts.  It can be as simple as asking questions or giving surveys.  I think I can use action research in my school in many different areas.  One area specifically is in student discipline and behavior.  My school has recently started a new behavior program in which positive reinforcement is stressed.  We are trying to get students to behave and want to learn by rewarding them with different incentives and prizes.  I think I can research and compare our old way of disciplining and managing behavior to our new behavior program.  By comparing test scores, office referrals, and suspensions from previous years to the past two years, I can see what is working and what needs to be tweaked.  This new behavior program has never been researched thoroughly at my school and would definitely benefit from someone doing research on it.