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 4th 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.
