Positive Behavior Intervention & Support (PBIS)

Improving student academic and behavior outcomes is about ensuring all students have access to the most effective and accurately implemented instructional and behavioral practices and interventions possible. PBIS provides an operational framework for achieving these outcomes. More importantly, PBIS is NOT a curriculum, intervention, or practice, but IS a decision making framework that guides selection, integration, and implementation of the best evidence-based academic and behavioral practices for improving important academic and behavior outcomes for all students.

What Outcomes are Associated with Implementation of PBIS?
Schools that establish systems with the capacity to implement SWPBS with integrity and durability have teaching and learning environments that are:

  • Less reactive, aversive, dangerous, and exclusionary, and

  • More engaging, responsive, preventive, and productive

  • Address classroom management and disciplinary issues (e.g., attendance, tardies, antisocial behavior),

  • Improve supports for students whose behaviors require more specialized assistance (e.g., emotional and behavioral disorders, mental health), and

  • Most importantly, maximize academic engagement and achievement for all students.


What is a Continuum of SWPBS?
PBIS schools organize their evidence-based behavioral practices and systems into an integrated collection or continuum in which students experience supports based on their behavioral responsiveness to intervention. A three-tiered prevention logic requires that all students receive supports at the universal or primary tier. If the behavior of some students is not responsive, more intensive behavioral supports are provided, in the form of a group contingency (selected or secondary tier) or a highly individualized plan (intensive or tertiary tier).

To learn more about PBIS, go to the following site at the Department of Public Instruction.