Each year, U. S. schools issue millions of office discipline referrals. The students who accumulate the most of them are disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and students with disabilities — and the suspensions that follow pull them out of the instructional time they need most. Positive behavior interventions and supports (PBIS) is the most widely researched school-wide framework for addressing this cycle at its root, before a referral is ever written.
But PBIS is not a set of expectations on a hallway poster or a prize box on the teacher's desk. Used with rigor, it restructures how an entire school thinks about behavior. Used carelessly, it reinforces the very inequities it claims to solve.
This guide covers what PBIS actually is, how the three-tier model works, what the research says about outcomes, and what educators at every level need to know to implement it with fidelity and with equity.
What Is PBIS? Understanding the Framework
PBIS stands for Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports. Developed in the 1990s by researchers Rob Horner at the University of Oregon and George Sugai at the University of Connecticut, and now supported by the U. S. Department of Education's Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), PBIS is a framework for organizing how a school prevents, addresses, and responds to student behavior.
The key word is framework. PBIS is not a packaged curriculum, a specific set of rules, or a single intervention. It is a decision-making structure that schools populate with evidence-based practices suited to their own context and community.
PBIS sits within the broader Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) architecture, which applies the same three-tier logic to academics, behavior, and social-emotional and behavioral (SEB) health. Schools already using MTSS for reading or mathematics intervention will find PBIS structurally familiar.
The central premise is straightforward: most students who exhibit problem behavior have not been explicitly taught the expected alternative. PBIS shifts the response from punishment to instruction — defining behavioral expectations clearly, teaching them directly, and reinforcing them consistently across the entire school community.
The Three Tiers of Positive Behavior Interventions
The PBIS framework divides supports into three tiers, each targeting a different level of student need. Evidence reviewed by the OSEP Technical Assistance Center on PBIS supports the effectiveness of this tiered structure in reducing disciplinary incidents and increasing academic engagement.
Tier 1: Universal Supports
Tier 1 is the foundation. It targets every student in the school and focuses on building a positive, predictable environment. In practice, this means school-wide expectations posted and taught explicitly (not just announced), consistent acknowledgment of positive behavior, and clear, fair procedures when behavior falls short.
When Tier 1 is functioning well, roughly 80% of students respond without needing additional support. Universal screening, typically through office discipline referral (ODR) data, attendance records, or behavioral rating scales, identifies the remaining students who need more.
Tier 2: Targeted Interventions
Tier 2 serves the roughly 15% of students whose behavior does not respond adequately to universal supports. Interventions at this level are more structured but delivered in groups rather than individually, which makes them scalable.
Check-In/Check-Out (CICO) is the most widely used Tier 2 practice. Students meet briefly with a mentor each morning to review their goals, receive structured feedback throughout the day, and debrief at the end of the afternoon. The structure alone produces measurable improvements for many students, without requiring a deep one-on-one relationship with every teacher.
Social skills groups, increased adult supervision during high-risk transition times, and brief individual behavior plans also belong at this tier.
Tier 3: Intensive, Individualized Support
Tier 3 addresses the 1–5% of students whose needs are too complex for group-level supports. This is where Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBAs) and individualized Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs) are developed, typically by a team that includes special education staff, school counselors, and administrators.
Students at Tier 3 often have co-occurring challenges: mental health needs, trauma histories, or disability diagnoses. The goal is not permanent separation from the school community but to identify the function the behavior serves and teach a more effective replacement behavior.
The Five Core Elements of PBIS
The PBIS framework rests on five interconnected elements that must work together for implementation to hold.
Outcomes. Schools define measurable goals tied to student social-emotional-behavioral health, not just reductions in disciplinary counts.
Data. Decisions about which students need which supports are made using evidence, not intuition. This includes ODRs, attendance, academic performance, and validated screening tools.
Practices. Every intervention selected must have a research base. Schools choose from a menu of practices that match the tier and the needs of their student population.
Systems. School-wide routines, training schedules, and team structures make consistent implementation possible. Without systems, even well-chosen practices decay quickly when staff turn over or priorities shift.
Equity. Equity is not a fifth component added as an afterthought — it is embedded throughout. Research cited in this overview from the PBIS center demonstrates that standard PBIS implementation, without an explicit equity focus, can leave racial and ethnic disparities in discipline intact or worsen them. Culturally responsive PBIS requires examining who is being referred, by whom, and for what behaviors, then using that data to drive systemic change in adult practice.
Schools implementing PBIS without disaggregating discipline data by race, disability status, and gender risk using the framework to manage disparities rather than address them. A randomized controlled trial published by the PBIS center found that explicitly centering equity in implementation decisions significantly reduced racial inequities in school discipline.
PBIS and Restorative Justice: A Complementary Approach
PBIS and restorative justice are sometimes positioned as competing philosophies. They function better as complementary tools with different purposes.
PBIS is fundamentally preventative. It works upstream, before a behavioral incident occurs. Restorative justice is fundamentally relational. It works after harm has occurred, repairing the relationships and community trust that a disciplinary incident disrupts.
A school that uses only PBIS can reduce the frequency of harm, but when harm does occur, a purely punitive response (detention, suspension) may undermine the community norms PBIS is trying to build. A school that uses only restorative practices without clear, consistently taught expectations may find itself running reactive circles for incidents that could have been prevented.
The integration looks like this: Tier 1 PBIS establishes a school culture with explicitly taught expectations and consistent positive reinforcement. When a significant incident occurs, restorative practices such as circles, conferences, and structured dialogue replace or supplement exclusionary discipline. The student is held accountable, the relationship is repaired, and the community's standards are reinforced rather than simply enforced.
PBIS reduces how often harm happens. Restorative justice addresses what happens when it does. Neither approach replaces the other, and the two work better together than either does alone.
Districts that have paired PBIS with restorative justice have seen reductions in suspension rates that neither approach produces as consistently in isolation. The key is sequencing: use PBIS to build the culture, use restorative practices to maintain it when ruptures occur.
Implementing PBIS Across Grade Levels
PBIS does not look the same in a kindergarten classroom as it does in a high school of 1,800 students. Schools that apply an elementary-level model to secondary settings consistently underperform, because the developmental needs and social dynamics are fundamentally different.
Elementary Schools
In elementary settings, explicit teaching of behavioral expectations fits naturally into the school day. Teachers walk students through what "respectful" looks like in the cafeteria, the hallway, and the classroom separately — because children at this age do not automatically generalize expectations across contexts.
Token economies, sticker charts, and public acknowledgment are common Tier 1 reinforcement strategies at this level. The challenge is ensuring that reinforcement is contingent on genuine behavioral growth rather than compliance or passivity.
Elementary PBIS teams also benefit from focusing on transition times. Most behavioral incidents in lower grades happen during lunch, recess, and arrival and dismissal: exactly where adults are least likely to have established clear expectations and supervision structures.
Middle and High Schools
Adolescents are highly sensitive to how behavior systems signal identity and status. A token economy that works for a third grader lands very differently with a tenth grader who is aware of being watched by peers.
Effective PBIS at the secondary level tends to emphasize relationship-based strategies over tangible rewards. Advisory periods, mentoring structures, and meaningful student voice in shaping school norms align with adolescent development far better than prize boxes.
High schools also face a concentration of students with complex histories. Students who have cycled through Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports throughout elementary and middle school often arrive at secondary settings carrying unresolved behavioral and emotional challenges. High school PBIS teams need robust connections to community mental health services, not just in-school counselors.
The research base on PBIS effectiveness specifically in high schools is thinner than in elementary settings. This is an honest gap that researchers and practitioners are actively working to fill, and one that districts should factor into their expectations for secondary implementation timelines.
How to Use Data to Monitor Student Progress
Data-based decision-making is the operational core of PBIS. Without it, schools implement practices on faith and have no mechanism for catching early signals that something is not working.
The most common data source is office discipline referrals. Schools using PBIS examine ODR data at least monthly, asking: Which students are referred most often? Which staff members refer most often? Which locations generate the most incidents? Which time of day? The answers often reveal systemic patterns that no individual educator can see from inside their own classroom.
Universal screening adds another layer. Tools like the Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD) or the Behavior Assessment System for Children (BASC-3) identify students who may be struggling before they accumulate a referral history. Earlier identification leads to earlier intervention, and a higher likelihood that Tier 2 supports will be sufficient without escalating to Tier 3.
PBIS teams typically review data on a tiered cycle: weekly for Tier 3 students, monthly for Tier 2 trends, and quarterly for school-wide Tier 1 patterns. This rhythm keeps decisions grounded in what is actually happening rather than assumptions about what should be happening.
Equity audits of behavioral data are non-negotiable. If Black students are referred at rates far exceeding their white peers for subjective infractions like "disrespect" or "defiance," the problem is in the system of adult interpretation, not the students. A randomized controlled trial on equity-focused PBIS confirmed that explicitly centering equity in data review and implementation decisions measurably reduced these disparities. Schools that skip this step are not implementing PBIS — they are implementing a behavior management system dressed in PBIS language.
What This Means for Your School
Positive behavior interventions and supports offers a well-evidenced path toward fewer suspensions, more instructional time, and a school climate where students are taught to succeed rather than punished for falling short. The evidence is also clear that the framework delivers on these outcomes only under specific conditions.
**Fidelity matters.**Partial implementation, posting expectations without teaching them or collecting data without acting on it, consistently underperforms. Schools need trained leadership teams, regular professional development, and clear administrative commitment to sustain implementation through staff transitions and competing priorities.
Equity must be built in, not bolted on. The framework's five elements explicitly include equity, and the research on culturally responsive PBIS is unambiguous: disaggregating data by race, disability status, and other demographic factors is required work. Schools that treat equity as an optional add-on will see PBIS entrench disparities rather than reduce them.
This is a long-term investment. Researchers and practitioners consistently find that meaningful changes in school climate take two to three years of sustained implementation to solidify. Districts that abandon the framework after one difficult year rarely see the outcomes the research documents.
The open questions in this field, about long-term sustainability with high staff turnover, authentic cultural adaptation, high school effectiveness, and the experience of students labeled as Tier 2 or Tier 3 over time, reflect a framework that is still developing, not one that has been discredited. Engaging with those questions honestly, rather than treating PBIS as a solved problem, is what separates schools that build something durable from those that cycle through initiatives every three years.
When positive behavior interventions are implemented with rigor and genuine equity, they shift the logic of school discipline from reaction to prevention — a shift that benefits every adult and every student in the building.
