The Effects Of School Wide Positive Behavior Interventions And Supports On The Number Of Office Discipline Referrals And Academic Achievement At East Elm Middle School Compared To Roughedge Middle School PDF Download

Despite the ongoing debate and attention given to the achievement gap between racial groups there has been little progress in closing it. A factor that may be contributing to the achievement gap is a racial discipline gap in schools. Exclusionary discipline practices are used at a higher rate with students from underrepresented populations such as Black and Hispanic students (McIntosh, Chard, Boland, & Horner, 2006; Vincent, Sprague, & Tobin, 2012). Exclusionary discipline equates with a reduction in instructional time, therefore, students who are excluded from school at a higher rate than their peers have reduced opportunities for learning. Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), when implemented with fidelity, serves to support a positive school environment that teaches expected behaviors in the setting and reduces office discipline referrals (ODRs) in schools (Solomon, Klein, Hintze, Cressey, & Peller, 2012). This study examined the impact of PBIS implementation on ODR rates. Two hypotheses guided the study. Hypothesis 1: When PBIS is implemented with fidelity there is a main effect for years of implementation, with fewer ODRs in the fourth year of implementation than in the first year. Hypothesis 2: When PBIS is implemented with fidelity there is a greater reduction in the number of ODRs for Black students and for Hispanic students than for White students. The data used for this study was from the database of the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) National PBIS Technical Assistance Center, housed by the University of Oregon's Educational and Community Supports research unit (University of Oregon, 2016). The main hypothesis was tested with two two-way within schools ANOVAs. The first factor was the year of implementation with two levels (Year 1 vs. Year 4) and the second factor was ethnic subgroup with two levels (Black vs. White, or Hispanic vs. White). A significant interaction effect between year of implementation and subgroup would indicate a change in the size of the discipline gap from Year 1 to Year 4 for either or both comparisons. The findings for this study demonstrated no support for either hypothesis.