How the U.S. Department of Education has Consciously Confused its Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) Framework with ESEA’s “positive behavioral supports” Language
Dear
Colleagues,
Prologue
Earlier this week, Senators
Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray unveiled a bipartisan bill to reauthorize the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
The Senate Education Committee (that Senator Alexander chairs) will be
marking this bill up, through the amendment process, this coming Tuesday.
In the draft of the bill, the term “positive behavioral
supports and interventions” (in lower case and without an
accompanying acronym) appears five times.
The term is NOT defined in the draft bill. Critically, this term is also not
defined in the current federal special education law (IDEA 2004) where it
appears only seven times.
This leaves the definition of
“positive behavioral supports and interventions” to the U.S. Department of
Education (US DoE). Critically, this is not
recommended (see the remainder of this BLOG), and it is counter to many
sections of the draft ESEA bill- - which are devoted to consciously
controlling the US DoE and the Secretary of Education from creating their own
national education agenda.
The Issue: The U.S. Department of Education, through its
National PBIS Technical Assistance Center and for over the past decade, has
consciously confused their upper case PBIS framework with IDEA’s and (if it
stays in the final bill) ESEA’s lower case “positive behavioral interventions
and supports.”
This has resulted in hundreds of
millions of dollars- - from, for example, the US DoE, IDEA (Part B and D),
ARRA, Race-to-the-Top, and the Department of Health and Human Services- - being
singularly targeted or awarded only to those who use the PBIS framework. This is especially problematic because the
PBIS framework has significant flaws (see below), it often delays services and
supports to students in great need, and because officials in the US DoE have
long expressed the desire “to brand” PBIS nationwide- - thereby marginalizing
other successful programs and approaches.
_ _ _ _ _
The Proof: Relative to the “UPPER” versus “lower case”
assertion above, one only needs to look at the “PBIS and the Law” webpage on
the National PBIS Technical Assistance Center website (CLICK HERE for the page). Here, there is an entire page where the
federal law is misprinted, misquoted, and misinterpreted to make it (incorrectly)
appear that our country’s current federal special education law advocates- - if
not even mandates- - the TA Center’s PBIS framework. For example:
* This PBIS TA Center webpage misprints
the law wherever it reprints sections of the federal law with “Positive
Behavioral Interventions and Supports” in capital letters
* This PBIS TA Center webpage misquotes
the federal law every time it quotes or cites a section from the law
with the uppercase PBIS acronym embedded in the quote (NO acronym ever
appears in the law)
* This PBIS TA Center webpage misinterprets
the law many, many times. For example,
the following statements on this webpage are legal misinterpretations:
Thus,
in amending the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act both in 1997 and in
2004, Congress explicitly recognized the potential of PBIS to prevent exclusion
and improve educational results in 20 U.S.C. § 1401(c)(5)(F).
Congress
further recognized that, to encourage implementation of PBIS, funds needed to
be allocated to training in the use of PBIS. Thus, IDEA provides additional
support for the use of PBIS in its provisions by authorizing states to use
professional development funds. . .
_ _ _ _ _
The Question: The obvious question is, “Why does a National
TA Center, which has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office
of Special Education Programs, need to resort to such misinterpretations?” Moreover, as I have personally brought these
anomalies to the Department’s attention since 2006, why have they not been
corrected?
The Solution: The new draft of the Senate’s ESEA bill
returns a great deal of “local control” back to the states and its
districts. For example, if passed:
* States will no longer be
required to develop and implement teacher evaluation systems; they will be
responsible for establishing “challenging academic standards for all students;”
and they will still have to identify low-performing schools (although a
federally-mandated number would no longer apply).
* School districts identified
for improvement will be in charge of designing evidence-based interventions
(which IS defined in the law—in a more flexible way than currently
defined by the federal government); states will be required to monitor these
interventions and assist the districts if the turnaround strategies prove
ineffective; and the current federal School Improvement Grant models will
be eliminated.
* Finally, the U.S. Secretary of Education will
be prohibited from “mandating, prescribing, or defining specific steps school
districts and states must take to improve (low performing) schools;” and the
Secretary will be prohibited from mandating additional requirements for states
or districts seeking waivers from the federal law.
Given this move away from
federally-driven elementary and secondary school programs, and the federal
government’s approaches toward monopolizing the conversation regarding positive
behavioral interventions and supports (now embedded in their multi-tiered
systems of support), we strongly recommend that you call
(202-224-5375) the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP)
committee, or E-mail Senator and Chair Lamar Alexander (CLICK HERE
for link) to ask for the following changes to the draft ESEA bill:
* Delete the term “positive
behavioral interventions and supports” so that the U.S. Department of
Education can no longer use it as a point of confusion. The term should be changed to “positive
behavioral supports” - - a term that also appears in IDEA 2004.
* Delete the term “multi-tiered
systems of support” which is the newest US DoE buzz-word that has replaced
RtI, and that the US DoE has also built a dedicated web of funding for.
* Introduce language
that allows all schools and districts to use any “evidence-based positive
behavioral service, support, strategy, or program” that helps them to
accomplish the academic and social, emotional, and behavioral goals and expected
outcomes in the ESEA statute.
* Introduce language
that creates “an independent oversight panel and process” to hold the US DoE
accountable such that it can never again promote, endorse, or fund any single
framework or approach relative to any ESEA goal or outcome.
_ _ _ _ _
Additional
PBIS Concerns
Beyond the problems of grammar
(UPPER/lower case confusion), funding, and branding, the biggest PBIS concerns
relate to its functional efficacy in the field.
Among the primary concerns are
the following:
·
Concern #1. As noted
above, the PBIS framework has been developed and disseminated by the National
PBIS Technical Assistance Center (now at the Universities of Oregon,
Connecticut, and Missouri) and funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s
Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) since 1998. It has received a singular level of
funding, support, publicity, and sponsorship from the U.S. Department of
Education and OSEP to the point that it has basically become a monopoly
relative to its use in state departments of education and schools/districts
across the country.
This concern
has been publicized (but not addressed in Washington, DC) in an August 27, 2013
Education Week story (CLICK HERE for link).
_ _ _ _ _
·
Concern #2. As noted
above, the PBIS approach advocated through the National PBIS Technical
Assistance Center is actually a framework (their term) of possible
implementation activities that are chosen by individual districts or
schools. Many of these approaches
have not been adequately field-tested; and some of the approaches actually
delay services to students with disabilities or who are in critical need of
social, emotional, or behavioral (including mental health) interventions, or
exacerbate some students’ problems while making them more resistant to change.
[A technical
assistance paper documenting this statement is available upon request.]
Parenthetically, when testifying before
Congress in the past, the PBIS framework has been touted more for the number
of schools that are implementing different parts of the framework across
the country than its consistent and comprehensive outcomes. Moreover, any school can implement any part
of the framework that it wants.
Thus, given the 19,000 schools that the
National PBIS TA Center says are implementing PBIS, it is more probable that
any “statistically” positive “PBIS” results (when reported to Congress) are more
due to chance than to intentionality.
And even if there are results that can be attributed to the PBIS
framework, how do we know that the results are replicable if the schools
involved implemented substantially different parts of the framework?
_ _ _ _ _
·
Concern #3. To expand
on Concern #2, a recent (2013) study commissioned by the U.S. Department of
Education’s Institute of Education Science (IES) concluded that, in
participating schools across the country, the PBIS framework is not being implemented
consistently, effectively, with integrity, or with a focus on classroom (as
opposed to common school area) behavior (CLICK HERE for the link and look at the reports on the right-hand side).
Critically, this study was not widely
distributed- - unlike other reports that tout the PBIS framework’s
“efficacy.” In fact, the report was made
“public” primarily as an Appendix to an IES report (ED-IES-13-R-0035) that
received minimal national distribution.
The thrust of this entire report (it included four appendices) was to
provide a rationale and recommendation for another IES-funded study (for $3
million) that is being co-managed by two large independent research
conglomerates (for $19 million), and that was recently awarded to the Maryland
and Illinois PBIS groups that run their respective state PBIS programs.
Consistent with the theme of this Blog, it
is notable that at least two members of the Illinois PBIS group that received
this $3 million grant were members
of the IES study’s Expert Panel/Technical Working Group that
contributed to the IES report that recommended the development of this grant
initiative. Moreover, key leaders of the
Maryland and Illinois PBIS groups that received the grant are “Collaborators”
and national trainers for the National PBIS TA Center.
_ _ _ _ _
·
Concern #4. Finally, as
but one more recent example of how the U.S. Department of Education continues
to disproportionately support and sponsor its PBIS framework, one only needs to
look at the $43 million in grants that were awarded this past September to 12
state departments of education and 71 schools/districts nationwide under the
U.S. Department of Education’s two School Climate Transformation grant programs
(CLICK HERE for link to award announcement).
A review of the grant’s original application
packet for the schools and districts reveals 22 direct references to either the
PBIS framework or the National PBIS TA Center (no other national
positive behavioral support models or programs were cited). In addition, all of the grant recipients were
required to attend the 2014 National PBIS Leadership Forum in Chicago, IL on October
28-30, 2014- - where the workshop and presentation sessions were dominated
either by national or state PBIS leaders or schools/districts already
implementing parts of the PBIS framework.
Critically, all of the grant recipients are required to attend these National
Forums for the duration of their grants.
_ _ _ _ _
Summary
There
are many well-researched and documented positive behavioral support
strategies, interventions, programs, and models that have helped many students,
staff, and schools to be more successful in addressing the needs of all
students, as well as the needs of students with social, emotional, and
behavioral challenges.
To have
the federal government dictate or advocate for their own approaches or
frameworks (whether in behavior, literacy, testing, teacher evaluation, or
school improvement) restricts the flexible options for schools and districts,
and their ability to individualize the solutions that they need at a local
level. This also represents an
inappropriate encroachment, by the federal government, in the important work of
educating our country’s students.
Given the spirit of the Senate’s draft ESEA
bill, we recommend that you let your voice be heard before the Senate’s
Education (HELP) Committee begins to mark this bill up on Tuesday. Call the HELP committee at 202-224-5375, or e-mail
Senator and Chair Lamar Alexander (CLICK HERE for link), and let’s help our
schools to have more control over their own success.
Remember: “Educational excellence cannot be legislated;
it needs to be motivated.”
Have a great week.
Best,
Howie
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