Challenges
- Lack of consistent schoolwide expectations, policies, and procedures
- Lack of alignment after classification as a turnaround school with all new staff and leadership
- Prevalent discipline issues and fragmented school culture
Solution
Results
- Transparency and data analysis into teacher and leader practices
- Consistent responses to challenging behaviors
- 82% decrease in suspensions and 75% decrease in office referrals during the next school year
When the Arkansas Department of Education established Baseline Academy as a turnaround school in 2015, it meant a new principal and all new staff.
There were inconsistent schoolwide expectations, policies, and procedures—each teacher had their own rules and expectations. The lack of alignment led to discipline issues and negatively impacted school culture.
The new leadership team knew they would need unified schoolwide cultural expectations if they were going to turn the school around successfully.
Challenges
In preparing for their first year as a turnaround school, leaders at Baseline learned about positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and set a plan in motion to establish an effective schoolwide system.
Pamela Freeman, now Baseline’s principal, could see that students responded positively when teachers began narrating expected behaviors. Freeman noted, “it was refreshing for them to have people talking to them in positive tones.” Baseline began their PBIS implementation with “Bluejay Bucks” that students could earn for positive behavior choices and spend in a school store.
While this was a step in the right direction, there were still challenges. The Bluejay Bucks system was paper-based, which prevented staff from gathering data or seeing patterns. Plus, there was no way to analyze behavioral data and share promising practices or have an accountability measure for teachers.
Without schoolwide norms, there was still a lack of consistency in how teachers used positive reinforcement. One teacher might reward $1 for a behavior, and a different teacher may give $10 for the same behavior. There was also no system in place for addressing corrective behaviors.
Their district handbook explicitly laid out three categories or tiers of corrective behaviors, but Baseline did not have a schoolwide process for responding to those behaviors. With no clearly defined response to intervention (RTI) or multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in place, students who struggled with behavior were not getting the systematic help they needed.
There was no day-to-day data to show the impact of their shift to positivity or the gaps in student behavior, but there were 94 suspensions at Baseline that school year, which leaders felt was too high. Baseline’s leadership realized they were not doing enough and needed to take more action on a schoolwide level to improve school culture. The change was starting to happen, but there was no precise measure of success.
Getting Started with PowerSchool Behavior Support: Recording Positive & Corrective Behaviors
In the summer of 2017, Baseline’s leaders learned about PowerSchool Behavior Support and were excited that it could be customized to fit the PBIS structures they already had. Staff started tracking positive and corrective interactions with students in PowerSchool Behavior Support, aligning behaviors to their PBIS behavior matrix and district handbook. They focused on positive framing, working toward a schoolwide goal of five positive interactions for every negative interaction with students.
When they implemented Behavior Support, Baseline started rewarding students with points whenever they exhibited one of the “Baseline Be’s”—be safe, be kind, be respectful, be responsible.
Students also earned points for showing the school’s core values, like leadership, empowerment, and progress. They could use these points to make purchases at the school store.
Unlike previous years, each behavior had a specific numeric value in Behavior Support, making the incentive purchasing process easy. Students’ effort in their behavior improvement resulted in tangible outcomes they earned with their actions.
In addition to recording positive behaviors, the staff made sure to record and address corrective behaviors in Behavior Support as part of their Tier 1 practices. Their district handbook laid out a detailed three-tier matrix of corrective behaviors, sorted as minor, moderate, or major depending on their severity, all easily trackable in Behavior Support.
Leadership wanted to track positive and corrective behavior data consistently to show what was happening and see which specific behaviors still needed work.
Leadership coaching from PowerSchool Behavior Support
Baseline made great strides with PBIS. Behavior improved, teachers were on board, and they knew they could get valuable data from Behavior Support. But they needed a more targeted and intentional approach.
Freeman explained that while staff consistently entered behaviors into Behavior Support, they had no professional development (PD) on gleaning insights and taking action on that behavior data. They were using Tier 1 best practices and knew they had Behavior Support data but did not know how to merge everything to effectively “run reports and make decisions.”
Toward the end of the 2017-2018 school year, Baseline school leaders also noticed that while school culture had improved, there were still gaps. They successfully taught students positive behaviors and saw those behaviors exhibited consistently by most Tier 1 students. However, some needed more targeted social and emotional learning (SEL) support.
Baseline leaders decided to participate in a Behavior Support webinar about combining SEL and Behavior Support, beginning the conversation about how they could move forward with a plan for even more structured support and intentional data analysis.
Freeman was intrigued by PowerSchool’s Proven Practices Professional Development around leadership team support and realized her leadership team had room for improvement.
When she connected with PowerSchool’s Proven Practices Learning & Innovation Advisor, they decided that a Proven Practices School Culture Coach would join for Baseline’s upcoming leadership retreat. The coach also provided individualized support to Freeman. Before the leadership retreat, they spent a day discussing where Baseline had been, where the school was now, and what the vision for the future was. This conversation framed the PD for the upcoming leadership retreat, as it was tiered to fit the specific needs of Baseline.
After analyzing and reflecting on the past year’s data with Proven Practices School Culture Coach, the Baseline team set two primary goals for the 2018- 2019 school year at the leadership retreat:
- Maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive-to-corrective interactions
- Reinforce and capture at least 200 interactions per week for their class
They also planned to track SEL competencies in Behavior Support and use data more intentionally and proactively.
Positive Reinforcement of Behaviors
In the 2018-2019 school year, in addition to earning points in Behavior Support for the “Baseline Be’s” and school values, students could also earn points for exhibiting social-emotional competencies like relationship skills, self-awareness, self-management, responsible decisions, or social awareness. Students could spend these points in the school store like those earned for other positive behaviors.
Baseline also celebrated students who exhibited these SEL behaviors by posting “Social & Emotional Awareness Awards” in the hallways. Baseline staff recognized students for behaviors including cooperating with others, showing empathy, asking for help, and sharing their feelings and ideas. This public display added another positive reinforcement to Baseline’s existing practices.
By using Behavior Support to record positive behavior, Freeman could dig into what was going well, which behaviors staff recognized the most and the least, and whether there was equity across the classroom regarding student recognition.
This detailed information would also help them see teacher-specific data to help inform individualized support for staff members and whole-school professional development.
Schoolwide Consistency in Corrections
While Baseline had already been recording corrective behaviors, they now established a detailed plan and consistent protocol for how teachers and school leaders would respond to each tier of behaviors. Baseline’s Proven Practices School Culture Coach helped Freeman and her leadership team create a protocol for teacher and admin actions, an early warning system to prevent behavior escalation, and clear expectations for communication via Behavior Support.
Minor misbehaviors like inappropriate language, not following directions, or disrupting learning were Category 1 behaviors, which teachers were to address in their classrooms with various interventions before documenting in Behavior Support. If a Category 1 behavior persisted, or if a student exhibited more moderate misbehavior like repeatedly not following directions, teachers were to “flag” in Behavior Support that the student needed a behavior intervention.
Freeman set up Behavior Support’s automatic triggers so that when teachers flagged these behaviors, the principal and behavior interventionist would automatically get a text notification of the behavior on their cell phones. Then, they could support the student and note the details of the intervention in Behavior Support. This two-way communication improved transparency across the staff and captured a complete picture of a student’s behavior and the steps taken to address it.
Category 3 misbehaviors, like aggression or major class disruptions, were addressed similarly. The teacher (after ensuring student safety) documented the behavior in Behavior Support alongside an “Office Referral” behavior. That entry immediately notified the principal and behavior interventionist, who addressed the student’s misbehavior, documented the response, and recorded the outcome of the referral. This process created clear communication channels among staff.
With the new proactive system in place, teachers reported they felt more supported regarding serious misbehavior, and administrators reported feeling free to respond only when teachers needed their support.
This detailed data could also be used in parent-teacher conferences and school-based intervention team (SBIT) meetings when discussing how to best support an individual student.
Intentional Analysis of Data
With support from their Proven Practices School Culture Coach, Baseline leaders and teachers could analyze data to see behavior trends on a teacher and student level, identify which behaviors users documented most frequently, and respond to comprehensive real-time data instead of having to wait for end-of-quarter suspension data. This access allowed Baseline staff members to be more proactive and responsive to students’ needs instead of addressing issues reactively.
Principal Support from PowerSchool Behavior Support
During the 2018-2019 school year, Freeman and her Proven Practices School Culture Coach also met regularly to dive into data, set and monitor progress toward their goals, and identify actions for continuous improvement.
During the summer, they planned to implement SEL across the school and for teachers to use culture professional learning communities (PLCs) and peer culture walks to help one another improve. They also looked at behavior data from the previous year and set targeted goals.
In the fall, the Proven Practices School Culture Coach worked with Freeman to analyze schoolwide data and make necessary adjustments. They looked at teachers’ positivity ratios and student data to put plans in place for addressing areas of improvement.
With continuous support from their Proven Practices School Culture Coach, the PBIS team could address issues as they surfaced and create incentives for teachers when there was a dip in Behavior Support usage. By rewarding teachers during a difficult time of year, they could meet their 200 interactions-per-week goals, which ultimately helped them reach the school culture outcomes their students needed.
Professional Learning Communities
During the summer of 2018, Baseline’s Proven Practices School Culture Coach helped Freeman establish Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) so that teachers could intentionally analyze culture data in Behavior Support and reflect on their practices as well as collaborate with their peers.
In October of that year, the Behavior Support coach supported teachers as they participated in their first round of culture PLCs. Teachers met in grade-level teams and followed the PLC meeting protocol that Behavior Support provided. Each teacher reflected on their own Behavior Support data and classroom culture and collaboratively brainstormed how they could tweak their practices.
Teachers committed to specific actions like working on naming and categorizing behaviors as they occur to develop fluency with social-emotional competencies. After each teacher had gone through this process, the group discussed common patterns and determined the next steps they could work on together.
Baseline had support from their Proven Practices School Culture Coach for their second round of culture PLCs as well, and then teacher groups continued to meet on their own throughout the rest of the year.
Peer Culture Walks
In addition to culture PLCs where teachers formally met and discussed data, Proven Practices School Culture Coaching helped Baseline teachers set up a peer-to-peer feedback system.
Teachers were given resources for conducting Peer Culture Walks, including a rubric and protocol to follow when providing feedback to their colleagues. While in a peer’s classroom, the observing teachers would tally positive and corrective interactions to accurately capture the positivity ratio during that class.
They also recorded specific phrases the teacher used when addressing students to provide anecdotal evidence alongside the quantitative data. Once they captured this information, they would leave feedback for their peers regarding what they did well and ideas for improvement.
Results
With the guidance of Proven Practices School Culture Coaching, Baseline could build on their established Tier 1 behavior systems and incorporate consistent responses to challenging behaviors. They worked with their Behavior Support Leadership Coach to integrate data analysis into teacher and leader practices and saw impressive results.
Freeman says, “people walk into our school and they sense a positive environment.”
Baseline has a school culture intentionally founded on positivity. After implementing Behavior Support alongside their robust and communicated Tier 1 systems, they now have the data to back up that positive feeling. This year at Baseline, 95% of student-teacher interactions were positive instead of corrective.
With the guidance of Proven Practices School Culture Coaching, Baseline could build on their established Tier 1 behavior systems and incorporate consistent responses to challenging behaviors.
Suspensions and office referrals have decreased since Baseline implemented Behavior Support and started planning with a Behavior Support Leadership Coach.
The number of suspensions dropped from 95 during the 2016-2017 school year to only 15 during the 2017-2018 school year—an 82% decrease. While the number of suspensions increased slightly to 19 during the 2018-2019 school year, Freeman could look at that data in detail. She saw that a significant portion of those 19 suspensions was for one student who needed extra support. This crucial data will help Baseline leaders put the appropriate interventions in place for that student as they move forward.
Office referrals have also been decreasing since the implementation of culture PLCs, peer culture walks, and consistent leadership data practices.
Baseline went from having almost 35 office referrals in November 2018 to fewer than 10 in subsequent months due to more infrequent category 2 and 3 behaviors and the ability to address students’ behavior before it escalates proactively.
Looking forward, Baseline hopes to use data from Behavior Support to identify students needing additional Tier 2 or 3 behavioral support and provide services based on a student’s specific area of needed growth. They hope to utilize Behavior Support data in school-based intervention team meetings to inform RTI decisions around how to best support individual students.
Freeman also looks forward to pulling additional Behavior Support reports to look at behavior in various ways. By analyzing data on a teacher, student, and behavior-specific level, she can get a well-rounded picture of what’s going on in the school at any given time, informing her decisions on what to focus on moving forward. She’s looking forward to continuing the practice of data conversations and plans to make data analysis and personal reflection part of the school culture at Baseline.
Thanks to their strong Tier 1 behavior systems and the support from PowerSchool Behavior Support’s professional services, Baseline is equipped to build on its success with positivity, suspension, and referral deduction and continue its path of improvement.
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