The Impacts of School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports on School Discipline Outcomes for Diverse Students

Abstract

School-wide positive behavior interventions and supports (SWPBIS) have been widely implemented in more than 25,000 schools. Although extant literature provides experimental evidence supporting the positive impacts of SWPBIS on decreased office discipline referrals and suspensions, those effects for diverse students have not been fully investigated. Therefore, this study aims to examine the effects of SWPBIS on eight different school-level discipline outcomes for all students and disaggregated by student demographics (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, disability status). Using a post hoc quasi-experimental design and propensity score matching, we matched 112 schools implementing SWPBIS with fidelity with 112 schools in which teachers and administrators never received SWPBIS training. Poisson regression models revealed significant reductions in the use of school discipline outcomes for all students and for student subgroups. Discussion and implications of results are provided.