Scaling Up School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

Abstract

Scaling of evidence-based practices in education has received extensive discussion but little empirical evaluation. We present here a descriptive summary of the experience from seven states with a history of implementing and scaling School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS) over the past decade. Each state has been successful in establishing at least 500 schools using SWPBIS across approximately a third or more of the schools in their state. The implementation elements proposed by Sugai, Horner, and Lewis (2009) and the stages of implementation described by Fixsen, Naoom, Blase, Friedman, and Wallace (2005) were used within a survey with each element assessed at each stage by the SWPBIS coordinators and policy makers in the seven states. Consistent themes from analysis of the responses were defined and confirmed with the surveyed participants. Results point to four central areas of state “capacity” as being perceived as critical for a state to move SWPBIS to scale (administrative leadership and funding, local training and coaching capacity, behavioral expertise, and local evaluation capacity), and an iterative process in which initial implementation success (100–200 demonstrations) is needed to recruit the political and fiscal support required for larger scaling efforts.

Predictors of Sustained Implementation of School-Wide Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports

“…These results provide some empirical support for the survey findings of Horner et al (2014), which showed that capacity at the state level was perceived as critical to ensuring the sustained implementation of SWPBIS. The results are also somewhat surprising, given the emphasis of previous research on school-level factors such as administrator support and staff commitment.…”

Updating and expanding systematic reviews and meta‐analyses on the effects of school‐wide positive behavior interventions and supports

“…Secondary interventions, or Tier 2, are typically implemented with a small group of students and include strategies such as Check and Connect (Anderson, Christenson, Sinclair, & Lehr, ), Check‐in/Check‐out (Crone, Hawken, & Horner, ), and Social Skills Groups (Lane et al, ). Lastly, tertiary intervention, or Tier 3, typically includes functional behavior assessment‐based behavioral intervention plans to target the most intensive behavioral needs of individual students (Horner, Kincaid, Sugai et al, ).…”

Scaling Effective Innovations

“…Criminology & Public Policy (Fixsen, 2009;Horner et al, 2014;Spicer et al, 2014). The denominator and the quality of the numerator both need to be defined and operationalized when determining scale and assessing social impact.…”