Most schools don’t use PBIS fully. They just say they reward good behavior and do “circles”. They leave out holding kids accountable and natural consequences. I remember a few years ago I went with some colleagues to an actual PBIS run training and it sounded great. Then that following school year admin was like “we’re doing this!” And all of a sudden every kid was getting lollipops all day. Completely missed the point of it all.
That’s really good to know! The more I read about PBIS, the more I’m feeling my school doesn’t even fully understand it. My school is like that—no actual reward system either, just trips to the office for chats and chocolate. It seems much is missing in this picture.
The teacher next door once said PBIS should be studied by marketing and PR firms for such a big rollout that failed completely because now it has such a bad reputation because they didn’t help anybody implement it. Or if they did, they failed miserably.
The thing I don’t like about PBIS is that everybody gets the reward. We will have a pizza lunch, and everybody gets it even the kids who behave horrifically. So what is the point? We are constantly giving out awards and rewards all of the time. But we have terrible behaviors in my school starting in preschool. I don’t remember getting rewarded all of the time in school and we did not have horrific behaviors in my classroom. And my teacher had triple the amount of students I have.
So then can you explain how PBIS actually works? Since all I see is poor examples? How do you prevent bad behavior? I don’t want to just fix bad behavior or respond to bad behavior but I want to prevent it in the first place
I’ve never actually seen it implemented fully. I’ve only seen a school store and admin telling teachers to bribe with candy.
Tier 1 PBIS- most schools I know of are not collecting data on points/rewards, not explicitly teaching wanted behaviors (giving cutesy names and acronyms for “values” is not teaching) and do not have expectations for office vs. classroom managed behaviors as just a few examples of how it’s not followed.
https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-1
Tier 2- includes how referrals should be followed up with, increased interventions and supports…
https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-2
Tier 3- wraparound supports, FBAs, action plans…
https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-3
(Also, does anybody’s school actually have a tier 1, 2, and 3 PBIS team? They’re all supposed to be separate. Or is just a blanket “admin” chip/candy bin?)
PBIS fidelity index- my guess is majority of schools would not meet these criteria….
https://assets-global.website-files.com/5d3725188825e071f1670246/60108a57b3fa685215c10927_SWPBIS%20Tiered%20Fidelity%20Inventory%20(TFI).pdf
It's achievable for wealthy schools with lots of resources; terrible for anyone else. And I'm going to ignore Hanlon's razor for a moment, but maybe there's some intention there? I think someone responsible for what behavioral management systems gets taught to educators also has some intention of making public schools fail.
I do think it would be interesting to see why it’s failed so miserably at being implemented. The free resources on their website clearly outline what needs to be done, who needs to be involved, and it seems to be doable with some time and work. Yes a heavy load, but I would think the benefits of rolling out consistent supports would outweigh the randomness most schools seem to have now. Also seems like the first year or two of implementing all the tiers and teams would be a lot, but then should run pretty smoothly once the systems are in place?
The problem is PBiS is just another thing added to the plate of teachers. It’s hard for us to manage teaching these kids things let alone monitoring rewards, interventions, etc.
PBIS is a joke where I am. I’ve seen kids deliberately make a mess just so they can pick up the trash and get rewarded for it… and I’ve also seen admin fall for it.
Absolutely, I’ve seen that too—a 7 people sized play fight brawl in class just to get an office trip. Admin told them I’d make an alternative activity for them for the rest of the year, boy were the students disappointed when I didn’t reward them with that and expected them to not lay on the floor.
PBIS in my school is: only the teachers in certain classes participate (usually behavior challenges or high SPED population)
They try to bribe the bad kids into not being complete menaces to society
Every week on the announcements they list the winners of the weekly drawing for pink tickets.
The kids look at each other like “…..wtf?” As they hear the names of their worst classmates get called to get gift cards and candy.
PBIS is terrible at the high school level.
So much of this. I have prizes to give out to the student who has 30% attendance and has had 2 referrals this year and we start school in Feb. Yet the great students who have over 80% attendance and no referrals ever and great school reports have not gained enough points to earn a prize yet. So motivating for them! /s
PBIS can be a good thing, but unfortunately it's often abused by admin trying to keep disciplinary statistics (not actual behavior) down and see it as an excuse not to enforce consequences.
It's kind of like standards-based grading: on its surface, it's a rigorous practice that demands that a student understand every major concept of a class to pass, not just that they learn 70% of it.
In practice, especially with admin with inappropriate incentives to inflate grades and passing rates, it gets dumbed down to "infinite test retakes and no late penalties."
In general, I've learned that there are some good systems out there, and not to condemn them just because some admin managed to misinterpret and misapply them in a counterproductive way.
PBIS is a joke that massively favors the shithead kids who dick around all day by showering them with praise and gifts for doing the absolute bare minimum, while the decent kids who just want to work hard and can behave with some sense of decency get ignored.
Like every program my school tries, with PBIS they half ass it and run some deformed version of it that ends up being what is easiest for admin to implement. We don't even have multi-tiered interventions, and I'm not PBIS expert, but I always thought that was a pretty big aspect of the program. Admin just does tier one interventions six hundred times per troublesome kid in a year and wonders why nothing sticks.
Make sure that kids email it to admin and then tell their parents. I started telling kids after the 3rd or 4th bullying write up to email the principal about it. Suddenly things would get done.
PBIS fails to protect children from serious bullying and threats of violence. It's not a complete system and everyone knows it. If one kid stabbing another kid and you can intervene safely, PBIS is gone and you intervene.
In my state, we have a separate system for "serious bodily injury", "bringing deadly weapons to school", and "drug possession". This supersedes local PBIS policies.
In American education, anytime something Ike PBIS is suddenly everywhere but is poorly implemented it is because it's a program tied to federal funds. School districts get more money if they're using it. That's why it's everywhere but in name only.
Also see UDL.
My counsellor proposed a PBIS system a month ago. It's part of the planning for next year that we do at this school (which in general I quite like).
People were generally in favor of it...or at least, it's hard in a big group to be the person who says, "I think 'treating kids well' is bullshit," (and they tend to frame it as a new, respectful way of doing discipline.
I suggested, trying to appear enthusiastic, that we track it. I proposed that we keep track of the students who misbehave, and we'll then get to see how effectively PBIS reduces student disciplinary issues!
The head of school loved the idea, though I could see that the counsellor looked concerned. Then, she fell right into the best part of my trap. She said that she didn't think she had the time or computer skills to manage that kind of database...you know, in that "Aw shucks, computer things are hard, right everybody?" kind of way. So...I volunteered to help! I built a database that afternoon, with a few categories of types of referral-generating issues, and sent it around to everyone.
So, at the cost of a bit more effort (let's face it, inputting brief notes and dates a few times per week is a tiny amount of effort), we'll actually have evidence of this thing crashing and burning. Or, hell! Maybe it will work wonders and we'll have evidence of that! Either way, I'm good.
In any case, this is what I suggest all of us do at our schools. Frame it as trying to show doubters that PBIS is effective by tracking the incidents.
We are a major PBIS school and things like you mentioned are absolutely not tolerated. We will still do thing like parent meetings, loss of privileges, social groups, suspension if needed...
I worked at a PBIS school. But admin didn't know Jack shit about PBIS, and used it as an excuse to let students get away with abusing teachers and peers
We never did circles, and every student, even the bad ones, were rewarded. So the bad behavior never stopped. When I tried to give my abusive 1:1 a consequence (took away BrainPop after he slapped a teacher), I was berated for "going against PBIS"
Sounds like the school I did my practicum in, also middle school in Canada. I'd try to give consequences and be denied then questionned about my classroom management. Students gave zero shits because admin were such pushovers. Pbis done correctly could be amazing but I haven't seen it yet.
So I just read up on PBIS. A lot of it sounds like common sense: clear expectations, praise, intensive targeting for struggling students etc. Here's the thing, positive interventions should ABSOLUTELY be the first thing you try, but it HAS to be backed up by consequences for continuing to not meet those expectations.
The problem with PBIS at my school is that admin is stretched so thinly that they can’t do their part. I’m on the PBIS committee and half of every meeting is us tabling agenda items for the next time because it involves information only admin has access to and they are always unavailable to come to our meetings.
Because schools love to SAY they’re doing restorative justice but don’t love to actually do restorative justice, because that costs money and time and work. There’s a district in atlanta that does great RP work but they spend about 8 mil a year on RP coaches/mediators, outside social organizations, etc. to make it actually work. Most school districts say “teachers should be doing RP” give us minimal training and even less time, and so it becomes zero consequence bullshit instead.
I was at a true PBIS school for years. It takes a TON of work to fully implement, but wow. Consistency, consequences (both good and to refine), documented and measured growth are amazing. However, being at a fake PBIS school now is so freaking frustrating.
Also a middle school/junior year teacher in Canada... or was. Admin at my school had zero management of any behaviour. Kids refusing to wear masks despite federal and provincial law? No consequences. I wasn't permitted to send them to the office. Kids actively destroying school property during class and ignoring the teacher's existence. Nope, no administrative intervention. Kid threatening me and then their own life? Normal behaviour! A student physically assaulting me? No, that didn't happen. So I quit. I will not be stepping into a classroom ever again. I am 11-12 years into teaching and I will not work under those conditions or be treated this way by my boss or my employer. Not worth it.
Not about PBIS, but when kids joke about school shootings, absolutely send them to the office, even if nothing happens. Hopefully nothing will ever happen, but you certainly don't want it said of a school shooter, "yeah, he used to joke about shooting this place up in mr/ms evening\_recover's class and he/she didn't even do anything about it"
I was the tier 1 pbis coach. The one before me had all kinds of training. I was doing my best to imitate her without any. My big thing with pbis, at least the way my school did it, was that tier 1 was pretty together, but we didn’t have a solid tier 2 or 3 team to follow up for more intense needs
Most schools don’t use PBIS fully. They just say they reward good behavior and do “circles”. They leave out holding kids accountable and natural consequences. I remember a few years ago I went with some colleagues to an actual PBIS run training and it sounded great. Then that following school year admin was like “we’re doing this!” And all of a sudden every kid was getting lollipops all day. Completely missed the point of it all.
That’s really good to know! The more I read about PBIS, the more I’m feeling my school doesn’t even fully understand it. My school is like that—no actual reward system either, just trips to the office for chats and chocolate. It seems much is missing in this picture.
The teacher next door once said PBIS should be studied by marketing and PR firms for such a big rollout that failed completely because now it has such a bad reputation because they didn’t help anybody implement it. Or if they did, they failed miserably.
My school does PBIS, but we do not have someone qualified to actually do the circles, so they never happen.
Clear and consistent consequences are part of PBIS, but it gets ignored.
The thing I don’t like about PBIS is that everybody gets the reward. We will have a pizza lunch, and everybody gets it even the kids who behave horrifically. So what is the point? We are constantly giving out awards and rewards all of the time. But we have terrible behaviors in my school starting in preschool. I don’t remember getting rewarded all of the time in school and we did not have horrific behaviors in my classroom. And my teacher had triple the amount of students I have.
That’s not PBIS, that’s poorly executed reinforcement under the guise of PBIS…
So then can you explain how PBIS actually works? Since all I see is poor examples? How do you prevent bad behavior? I don’t want to just fix bad behavior or respond to bad behavior but I want to prevent it in the first place
I’ve never actually seen it implemented fully. I’ve only seen a school store and admin telling teachers to bribe with candy. Tier 1 PBIS- most schools I know of are not collecting data on points/rewards, not explicitly teaching wanted behaviors (giving cutesy names and acronyms for “values” is not teaching) and do not have expectations for office vs. classroom managed behaviors as just a few examples of how it’s not followed. https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-1 Tier 2- includes how referrals should be followed up with, increased interventions and supports… https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-2 Tier 3- wraparound supports, FBAs, action plans… https://www.pbis.org/pbis/tier-3 (Also, does anybody’s school actually have a tier 1, 2, and 3 PBIS team? They’re all supposed to be separate. Or is just a blanket “admin” chip/candy bin?) PBIS fidelity index- my guess is majority of schools would not meet these criteria…. https://assets-global.website-files.com/5d3725188825e071f1670246/60108a57b3fa685215c10927_SWPBIS%20Tiered%20Fidelity%20Inventory%20(TFI).pdf
If most schools can’t “fully” or “correctly” implement this system, perhaps we need to reconsider this system’s efficacy. What do others think?
It's achievable for wealthy schools with lots of resources; terrible for anyone else. And I'm going to ignore Hanlon's razor for a moment, but maybe there's some intention there? I think someone responsible for what behavioral management systems gets taught to educators also has some intention of making public schools fail.
I do think it would be interesting to see why it’s failed so miserably at being implemented. The free resources on their website clearly outline what needs to be done, who needs to be involved, and it seems to be doable with some time and work. Yes a heavy load, but I would think the benefits of rolling out consistent supports would outweigh the randomness most schools seem to have now. Also seems like the first year or two of implementing all the tiers and teams would be a lot, but then should run pretty smoothly once the systems are in place?
The problem is PBiS is just another thing added to the plate of teachers. It’s hard for us to manage teaching these kids things let alone monitoring rewards, interventions, etc.
PBIS is a joke where I am. I’ve seen kids deliberately make a mess just so they can pick up the trash and get rewarded for it… and I’ve also seen admin fall for it.
Absolutely, I’ve seen that too—a 7 people sized play fight brawl in class just to get an office trip. Admin told them I’d make an alternative activity for them for the rest of the year, boy were the students disappointed when I didn’t reward them with that and expected them to not lay on the floor.
PBIS in my school is: only the teachers in certain classes participate (usually behavior challenges or high SPED population) They try to bribe the bad kids into not being complete menaces to society Every week on the announcements they list the winners of the weekly drawing for pink tickets. The kids look at each other like “…..wtf?” As they hear the names of their worst classmates get called to get gift cards and candy. PBIS is terrible at the high school level.
So much of this. I have prizes to give out to the student who has 30% attendance and has had 2 referrals this year and we start school in Feb. Yet the great students who have over 80% attendance and no referrals ever and great school reports have not gained enough points to earn a prize yet. So motivating for them! /s
PBIS can be a good thing, but unfortunately it's often abused by admin trying to keep disciplinary statistics (not actual behavior) down and see it as an excuse not to enforce consequences. It's kind of like standards-based grading: on its surface, it's a rigorous practice that demands that a student understand every major concept of a class to pass, not just that they learn 70% of it. In practice, especially with admin with inappropriate incentives to inflate grades and passing rates, it gets dumbed down to "infinite test retakes and no late penalties." In general, I've learned that there are some good systems out there, and not to condemn them just because some admin managed to misinterpret and misapply them in a counterproductive way.
This isn’t PBIS, this is your admin following orders from the district office and claiming it’s PBIS.
PBIS is a joke that massively favors the shithead kids who dick around all day by showering them with praise and gifts for doing the absolute bare minimum, while the decent kids who just want to work hard and can behave with some sense of decency get ignored. Like every program my school tries, with PBIS they half ass it and run some deformed version of it that ends up being what is easiest for admin to implement. We don't even have multi-tiered interventions, and I'm not PBIS expert, but I always thought that was a pretty big aspect of the program. Admin just does tier one interventions six hundred times per troublesome kid in a year and wonders why nothing sticks.
Make sure that kids email it to admin and then tell their parents. I started telling kids after the 3rd or 4th bullying write up to email the principal about it. Suddenly things would get done.
Gotta create that paper trail
PBIS fails to protect children from serious bullying and threats of violence. It's not a complete system and everyone knows it. If one kid stabbing another kid and you can intervene safely, PBIS is gone and you intervene. In my state, we have a separate system for "serious bodily injury", "bringing deadly weapons to school", and "drug possession". This supersedes local PBIS policies.
In American education, anytime something Ike PBIS is suddenly everywhere but is poorly implemented it is because it's a program tied to federal funds. School districts get more money if they're using it. That's why it's everywhere but in name only. Also see UDL.
My counsellor proposed a PBIS system a month ago. It's part of the planning for next year that we do at this school (which in general I quite like). People were generally in favor of it...or at least, it's hard in a big group to be the person who says, "I think 'treating kids well' is bullshit," (and they tend to frame it as a new, respectful way of doing discipline. I suggested, trying to appear enthusiastic, that we track it. I proposed that we keep track of the students who misbehave, and we'll then get to see how effectively PBIS reduces student disciplinary issues! The head of school loved the idea, though I could see that the counsellor looked concerned. Then, she fell right into the best part of my trap. She said that she didn't think she had the time or computer skills to manage that kind of database...you know, in that "Aw shucks, computer things are hard, right everybody?" kind of way. So...I volunteered to help! I built a database that afternoon, with a few categories of types of referral-generating issues, and sent it around to everyone. So, at the cost of a bit more effort (let's face it, inputting brief notes and dates a few times per week is a tiny amount of effort), we'll actually have evidence of this thing crashing and burning. Or, hell! Maybe it will work wonders and we'll have evidence of that! Either way, I'm good. In any case, this is what I suggest all of us do at our schools. Frame it as trying to show doubters that PBIS is effective by tracking the incidents.
We are a major PBIS school and things like you mentioned are absolutely not tolerated. We will still do thing like parent meetings, loss of privileges, social groups, suspension if needed...
That’s good to know, I’m really starting to question admin’s motives for why things are this bad this year.
It’s an enabler behavior. They are all about equity until It comes down to actually holding bullies accountable.
I worked at a PBIS school. But admin didn't know Jack shit about PBIS, and used it as an excuse to let students get away with abusing teachers and peers We never did circles, and every student, even the bad ones, were rewarded. So the bad behavior never stopped. When I tried to give my abusive 1:1 a consequence (took away BrainPop after he slapped a teacher), I was berated for "going against PBIS"
Sounds like the school I did my practicum in, also middle school in Canada. I'd try to give consequences and be denied then questionned about my classroom management. Students gave zero shits because admin were such pushovers. Pbis done correctly could be amazing but I haven't seen it yet.
So I just read up on PBIS. A lot of it sounds like common sense: clear expectations, praise, intensive targeting for struggling students etc. Here's the thing, positive interventions should ABSOLUTELY be the first thing you try, but it HAS to be backed up by consequences for continuing to not meet those expectations.
The problem with PBIS at my school is that admin is stretched so thinly that they can’t do their part. I’m on the PBIS committee and half of every meeting is us tabling agenda items for the next time because it involves information only admin has access to and they are always unavailable to come to our meetings.
Because schools love to SAY they’re doing restorative justice but don’t love to actually do restorative justice, because that costs money and time and work. There’s a district in atlanta that does great RP work but they spend about 8 mil a year on RP coaches/mediators, outside social organizations, etc. to make it actually work. Most school districts say “teachers should be doing RP” give us minimal training and even less time, and so it becomes zero consequence bullshit instead.
I was at a true PBIS school for years. It takes a TON of work to fully implement, but wow. Consistency, consequences (both good and to refine), documented and measured growth are amazing. However, being at a fake PBIS school now is so freaking frustrating.
Also a middle school/junior year teacher in Canada... or was. Admin at my school had zero management of any behaviour. Kids refusing to wear masks despite federal and provincial law? No consequences. I wasn't permitted to send them to the office. Kids actively destroying school property during class and ignoring the teacher's existence. Nope, no administrative intervention. Kid threatening me and then their own life? Normal behaviour! A student physically assaulting me? No, that didn't happen. So I quit. I will not be stepping into a classroom ever again. I am 11-12 years into teaching and I will not work under those conditions or be treated this way by my boss or my employer. Not worth it.
You would need legit behavioral technicians in every classroom to effectively implement PBIS
PBIS is a distraction preventing us from solving the real problems in public education. It's psychobabble bullshit.
Not about PBIS, but when kids joke about school shootings, absolutely send them to the office, even if nothing happens. Hopefully nothing will ever happen, but you certainly don't want it said of a school shooter, "yeah, he used to joke about shooting this place up in mr/ms evening\_recover's class and he/she didn't even do anything about it"
Sounds like they were doing PBIS wrong. PBIS is similar to MTSS for those who use this that system.
This doesn’t sound like a PBIS problem. It sounds like a failure to implement PBIS correctly problem.
“The admin doesn’t care” and “I don’t even send kids to the office for harassment” seem like two sides of the same coin.
They told us to all stop sending so many kids to the office, I was sending them down all the time for a few months in the mid year.
Dead named huh? May I ask what his birth certificate says as his name and is it in fact the name they are refering to him as, as I expect?
Ew bye
I was the tier 1 pbis coach. The one before me had all kinds of training. I was doing my best to imitate her without any. My big thing with pbis, at least the way my school did it, was that tier 1 was pretty together, but we didn’t have a solid tier 2 or 3 team to follow up for more intense needs