Growing Pains: How to Keep EBP Alive and Well

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Growing Pains How to Keep EBP Alive and Well

• Teri Lewis-Palmer

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Purpose

• Present critical features to facilitate
  sustainability
• Compare Maryland PBIS to these features, and
• Provide considerations for next steps

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Sustainable Defined

• Able to be maintained, continue to exist
• Exploit natural resources without destroying
  balance
• To keep something in position by holding it from
  below
• To keep someone going with emotional/moral
  support
• To withstand something and continue doing it
  something in spite of it

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Building Process

• Phases of learning
• Acquisition - early learning
• Awkward, difficult
• Fluency - becomes automatic
• like riding a bike
• Maintenance - durable over time
• Keep goal of teaching
• Generalization - across settings, people, etc.
• Life long skill
• Adaptation - changed to fit different settings
• Flexible, more practical and useful

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Sustainability

• Phases of learning
• Acquisition - early learning
• Fluency - becomes automatic
• Maintenance - durable over time
• Generalization - across settings, people, etc.
• Adaptation - changed to fit different settings

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Importance of Early Learning

• Reading
• Letter sounds
• Oral reading fluency
• Read to learn
• Read for leisure, work, etc.

• French
• Limited pronunciation vocabulary (Fr 100)
• Conversation skills (or not)
• Retain 2-3 impractical sentences
• ??????
• Back to Fr 100

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Sustained Implementation(Detrich et al., 2007)

• Maintain over time
• Maintain across generations of practitioners
• Operate within existing financial and staffing
  resources

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Challenges to Implementation(Kratochwill,
Albers, Steele Shernoff, 2004)

• Primary focus on education
• Lack of emphasis on prevention programs
• Organization impedes collaboration, working as
  team
• Lack of skills, training, resources

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Sustainability

• Successes
• New staff involved
• Regular meeting
• Communication
• Predictable events
• Data (change as needed)
• Admin. Support
• Share successes
• Consistency

• Challenges
• Key staff turn-over
• At-risk/chronic students
• Misunderstanding practices (pink slips)
• Multiple initiatives

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Nature of the Problem

• In education innovations come and go in 18-48
  months (Latham, 1988).
• Sustainability should be a focus from the day a
  project is implemented. With most projects, the
  pressure of just becoming operational often
  postpones such a focus until well into the 2nd
  year (Alderman Taylor, 2003).

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Why Such a Short Life Span?(Detrich et al., 2007)

• Poor system design
• Implementation more difficult than expected and
  takes too much time.
• Supporters leave
• Lack training and resources
• Inadequate supervision, support, etc.
• Limited accountability (for implementation or for
  not implementation)

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A solution is to build a model that allows
schools to...

• Efficiently organize and distribute limited
  resources
• Establish policy that can guide efforts
• Centralize and streamline decision-making
• Provide opportunities for schools to collaborate
  and share
• Allow districts to support, acknowledge, etc.

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• District, county and/or state level assistance is
  required to achieve sustained and effective
  implementation.

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Working Smarter, Not More(Kameenui and Darch)

• Do less, better
• Consolidate and integrate initiatives that are
  similar (e.g., focus, outcomes, etc.)
• Think small
• Based on resources, must identify and give
  priority to a realistic and manageable number of
  priorities.

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PBIS

• Is a systems approach to enhancing the capacity
  of schools to education all students, especially
  students with challenging social behavior
• Systems that support staff
• Practice the students, and
• Data that guide decisions

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Social Competence Academic Achievement
Positive Behavior Support
OUTCOMES
Supporting Decision Making
DATA
Supporting Staff Behavior
SYSTEMS
PRACTICES
Supporting Student Behavior
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Critical Features

• Elliott Mihalic (2004) review Blueprint Model
  Programs (violence prevention and drug prevention
  programs) replication in community settings.
  Programs reviewed across 5 dimensions
• Site selection
• Training
• Technical assistance
• Fidelity
• Sustainability

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Site Selection

• Well connected local champion
• Strong administrative support
• Formal organizational commitments
• Formal organizational staffing stability
• Up front commitment of necessary resources
• Program credibility within the community
• Program sustained by the existing operational
  budget

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State Organizational Chart
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School Requirement

• Active administrator
• Staff commitment
• Representative team
• Identify coach (exists w/i system)
• All attend training
• Allocate 500-1000 for team budget
• Complete and submit evaluation items

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Estimated Annual Costs per School
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Critical elements of training

• Adhere to requirements for training, skills, and
  education
• Hire all staff before scheduling training
• Encourage administrators to attend training
• Plan and budget for staff turnover
• Implement program immediately after training

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Training Overview

• Coordinated by state
• Consistent content, activities and format
• Spring Forum - provide information to interested
  schools
• Summer Institutes - returning and new teams,
  short and long term action planning,
  administrators attend training
• Periodic coach and team trainings

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Expansion Highlights

• 65 of total schools were trained within the past
  two years
• 35 of total schools were trained last year
  (summer 2004)
• Anne Arundel (Ginny Dolan), Baltimore (Joey
  Levina-Parr) and Charles (Elsa Velez), Somerset
  (Tracy Cottman) Counties all have had rapid
  expansion as a result of identifying a
  facilitator (lead coach)

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Critical Features of Technical Assistance

• Proactive plan for technical assistance
• On-going
• Accessible, builds local capacity

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Half v. Whole Approach(Lewis-Palmer, 2007)
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Schools and Coaches
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Critical Elements of Fidelity

• Important to measure outcomes
• Did it work?
• Well enough?
• Next steps?
• Equally important to measure fidelity
• Were practices, techniques, etc. implemented as
  planned?

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Quality Decision-Making(Wing Institute, 2007)
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Overview of Evaluation Model

• What schools are involved in the implementation?
  
• How well are schools with implementation?
• What impact has implementation had on student
  success?

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Evaluation Schedule
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Implementation Fidelity (SET-External Assessor)
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Office Discipline Referrals (SWIS - School)

• 90 of elementary schools are reporting ODRs at
  .43 per day per 100 students or lower
• 94 of middle schools are reporting ODRs at .95
  per day per 100 students or lower
• 75 of high schools are reporting ODRs at .95 per
  day per 100 students or lower

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• Sustainability is a function of how well other
  dimensions are implemented
• (Elliot and Mihalic, 2004)

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Effective Systems(Gilbert, 1978 Horner, 2003)

• A Common Vision Has a mission that is embraced
  by the majority of members and serves as the
  basis for decision making and action planning.
• A Common Language Establishes a means of
  describing its vision ands actions so that
  communications are informative.
• A Common Experience Is defined by a set of
  procedures that are universally practiced and
  experienced and includes a data feedback system.

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Sustainability Summary(e.g., Sugai et al., 2005)

• Implemented with high accuracy
• Sustained to realize durable changes and expand
  efforts
• Implemented by local/natural resources
• Adapted to fit culture
• Guided by data-based decisions
• Supported by systems to support staff

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PBS Organizational Logic
Visibility
Political Support
Funding
Leadership Team
Active Coordination
Evaluation
Training
Coaching
Local School Teams/Demonstrations
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Current Status

• Detrich et al (2007)
• Maintain over time
• Maintain across generations of practitioners
• Operate within existing financial and staffing
  resources

• Maryland PBIS
• 8-9 years
• State level training and evaluationNew
  schools/coachesNew state coordinator
• Redefine existing positionsFaded state level
  supportRegional trainings

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Moving ForwardNIRN (2005)

• What doesnt work
• Information dissemination alone or training
  alone
• What works
• Long-term multi-level approach
• Practice based curriculum
• Skill-based training
• Practice based coaching
• Administrative support
• Evaluation
• Systems support

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Recommendations for Practitioners (NCIR, 2005)

• Develop partnerships with skilled researchers
• Establish a community of practice at
  implementation sites
• Learn from each other
• Share lessons learned across teams from different
  programs
• Coordinate and collaborate with other initiatives

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Four Basic Recommendations(Horner, 2007)

• Never stop doing what is already working
• Always look for the smallest change that will
  produce the largest effect
• Avoid defining a large number of goals
• Do a small number of things well
• Do not add something new without also defining
  how to make the addition possible.
• Collect and use data for decision-making

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Sustain SWPBS by making it(Doolittle, 2007)

• Easier to do each year.
• Effective for all students
• Available to everyone in the school
• Adaptive to change over time
• Publicly accountable

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Make SW-PBS Easier to do

• Handbook
• Description of SW-PBS core ideas
• School-wide Behavioral Expectations
• Teaching matrix
• Teaching plans and teaching schedule
• Reward system
• Continuum of consequences for problem behavior
• Teaming System
• Regular meeting schedule and process
• Regular schedule for annual planning/training
• Annual Calendar of Activities
• On-going coaching support

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Make SW-PBS Effective for allImplement to full
criterion.

• School-wide
• Targeted
• Intensive Individual (wrap around)
• Build capacity for access to behavioral expertise
• Document impact of SW-PBS on student outcomes
• Clarify expectations at district, regional, state
  level.

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Make SW-PBS Adaptive to change

• Collection and use of data for decision-making
• Are we implementing SW-PBS with fidelity?
• www.pbssurveys.org
• Team Checklist EBS Survey SET Benchmarks of
  Quality
• Are students benefiting behaviorally,
  emotionally, academically?
• www.swis.org
• SWIS (ODR, Suspensions, Referrals to SPED)
• School Safety Survey
• Standardized tests, Oral Reading Fluency
• Are the systems and practices efficient?
• Faculty/staff time Student academic engagement
  Cost benefit
• Satisfaction (student, faculty, family)

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Make SW-PBS efforts Public

• Newsletter to families
• Regular reports to faculty/staff
• Formal system for reporting to school board or
  district
• Information to community at large
• Websites

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Big Idea

• Educational leaders must strive to lead and
  support development of sustainable and positive
  school climates
• The goal is to establish host environments that
  support adoption and sustained use of
  evidence-based practices(Zins Ponte, 1990)