The Effectiveness of School-Wide Positive Behavior Programs in Georgia Middle Schools

Discipline issues and inappropriate student behavior in the classroom are issues that administrators and teachers throughout the country deal with on a daily basis and often lead to a loss of instructional time. This causal comparative study examined school-wide discipline programs and compared the behavior of students in schools using school-wide positive behavior management systems to the behavior of students in schools that do not implement school-wide programs based on the numbers of office referrals at each level of behavior. Three middle schools in one northwest county in Georgia were compared based on the presence of School-Wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (SWPBIS). The Findings suggest that middle schools utilizing this universal discipline approach had significantly fewer serious, or level three behavior problems than non-SWPBIS schools