Project Description:
This is a five-year Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) that builds on current advances in behavior support practices, improved approaches to data-based decision-making, scalable implementation strategies, and a 20-year history of successful technical assistance (TA). A central theme is the application of evidence-based practices within a multi-tiered framework tailored to meet the needs of students and their families. We propose to extend this multi-tiered logic to the delivery of TA for SEAs, LEAs and schools, with particular focus on implementing and sustaining practices and systems for targeted and intensive supports.
The Center will be organized around three priorities. The first priority will emphasize assistance to SEAs and LEAs to implement, scale up and sustain the PBIS framework with special emphasis on establishing support for those students with more significant behavior support needs. This effort will document and demonstrate improved tiered implementation capacity for at least 15 SEAs and 50 LEAs. Together the TA efforts will extend PBIS to at least 30,000 schools by 2023. As part of Priority 1, we will develop, evaluate, and disseminate the data systems needed by schools, LEAs, and SEAs to assess both fidelity and impact of PBIS and provide model demonstrations of PBIS (at all three tiers) across elementary, middle, and high schools, and across high-needs, low-performing, and priority schools. The combined results from Priority 1 activities will be disseminated through a national website, professional papers, and national forums to educators, families, researchers, and policy makers. Extended efforts to collaborate with other OSEP-funded projects, and partners in mental health, juvenile justice, and family advocacy will ensure that products from the Center are informed from multiple perspectives, widely disseminated, and likely to have broad impact. An external evaluation team will provide annual assessment and guidance.
The second and third priorities involve extensions of our technical assistance to SEAs and LEAs. Under Priority 2, the Center will continue to provide TA needed to assist SEAs and LEAs funded under the School Climate Transformation Grants (SCTG) and School Safety National Activities (SSNA) Programs with focus on high-needs, low-performing, and priority schools. During the first year of Priority 2 we will emphasize the Alignment, Scaling and Sustaining goals identified by SCTG sites in the last year of their five-year projects. We hope to then replicate this successful effort with a new group of SCTG grantees who will launch their projects in year two of the Center. Under Priority 3, the Center will provide Technical Assistance to SEAs to improve school conditions for student learning under Title IV Part A funding. These efforts will also (a) establish successful exemplar schools and LEAs, and (b) build the capacity of SEAs, and LEAs to implement scale up and sustain PBIS. Emphasis with these sites will be given to reducing the use and impact of drug and other substance abuse, enhancing mental health supports for students, and aligning with law enforcement to reduce juvenile offense rates. Formal evaluation of PBIS implementation will be conducted to provide lessons learned for future TA efforts by federal and state agencies.
