The Behavior Plan Is Not Working. Before You Rewrite It, Read This.

By Dr. Sarah Heller, Ed.D., BCBA, LBA-NY · Meaningful Metrics

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You have a behavior plan. It was written thoughtfully, reviewed by the team, explained to the family. Maybe you even had professional development on it. And yet ... here you are, three months in, watching the exact behaviors it was supposed to address continue to occur, possibly with more enthusiasm than before.

Before anyone suggests rewriting the plan from scratch, it is worth asking a different question: is the plan actually being implemented, and if so, is it being implemented the way it was written?

It is one of the most commonly overlooked variables in behavioral support, and it has a formal name: treatment fidelity. It is also, in my experience, the answer to "why isn't this working" far more often than anyone is comfortable admitting. And the research backs this up in ways that should make every school team sit with this question before touching a word of the document.

What the research actually says about fidelity in schools

Schools are, in the polite language of implementation science, "confronted with an implementation gap." A widely cited review found that even when evidence-based practices are selected and adopted by schools, they are frequently not implemented with fidelity or sustained over time (Gottfredson & Gottfredson, 2002; Ringwalt et al., 2004). A large-scale study of school-wide PBIS across 421 schools in Maryland found that fidelity of implementation was directly associated with improved math achievement, reading achievement, and lower truancy, meaning whether the plan worked or not was largely a function of how well it was being delivered, not whether the intervention itself was sound (Bradshaw et al., 2012).

When it comes specifically to behavior intervention plans, a statewide survey of over 600 teachers found that one of the most prominent barriers to BIP implementation was inconsistent delivery across staff (Bruhn et al., 2020). Not a flawed plan. Not a resistant student. Inconsistency across the people responsible for carrying it out. That same survey found that teachers from urban schools and schools with higher percentages of students of color reported significantly greater challenges with implementation fidelity, which means the students who most need consistent support are often the ones receiving the least of it. That is worth sitting with.

Meanwhile, a chapter in a widely used school intervention resource states plainly: "Treatment fidelity is rarely assessed, despite data indicating educators regularly struggle to implement interventions consistently" (Sanetti & Luh, 2020). Rarely assessed ... not because educators don't care, but because the systems to monitor it are usually not in place.

What fidelity actually means, and why it is harder than it sounds

Treatment fidelity means the plan is being delivered the way it was designed. Not approximately. Not "we do something like that." Consistently, correctly, and by everyone who interacts with the student throughout the day. Researchers generally break it into three components: adherence (are the right steps being taken), quality (how well is each component being delivered), and exposure (how often and for how long) (Sanetti & Kratochwill, 2009). All three matter, but adherence is foundational, quality and exposure are irrelevant if the core components are not happening at all.

Here is where it gets complicated. A student might have a dozen adults in their school day: a general education teacher, a co-teacher, two paraprofessionals, a specialist, the lunch aide, the person who covers recess! Each of those people has their own understanding of the plan, their own habits, their own level of comfort with behavioral strategies, and their own wildly different amount of time they have spent actually reading the document in front of them.

If even a few of those people are responding differently than prescribed, providing attention when the plan says to withhold it, skipping the visual cue that is supposed to precede a transition, or using a consequence in a way that inadvertently reinforces the very behavior it was meant to reduce, the plan is not failing. The plan is not being tested. What you are measuring is the inconsistency itself.

The reinforcement problem nobody talks about

One of the trickiest parts of behavioral support in school settings is that reinforcement is happening constantly, whether anyone intended it or not. Every time a student gets out of a difficult task by escalating, that works. Every time calling out gets them noticed, that works too. Behavior that works gets repeated. This is not a character flaw. This is learning, functioning exactly as designed.

The implication is that a behavior plan has to be airtight, not because students are trying to find loopholes, but because they will naturally drift toward whatever is effective. If the plan has gaps, behavior will find them. If the plan is implemented by some people some of the time, the student learns that persistence pays off. Which, again, is not a character flaw. That is a reasonable and entirely predictable conclusion based on the data the environment is providing them.

Intensive coaching has been shown to make a measurable difference here. Research comparing one-time workshop-style training to ongoing coaching found that intensive coaching significantly increased educators' fidelity to criterion levels, and that those gains generalized from practice sessions to real implementation with students in their actual classrooms (Fallon et al., 2018). One training is rarely enough. Ongoing, embedded support is what actually changes behavior, and that applies to adult behavior just as much as student behavior.

A child-friendly study desk arranged to promote focus and comfort

Three questions worth asking before you rewrite anything

• First: when did everyone on the team last read the plan? Not have it summarized to them in a five-minute meeting. Actually read it. If the answer is "at the meeting where it was written," that is worth knowing.

  
  

• Second: is there a data system in place that allows you to see who is implementing which components, not just whether the target behavior is occurring? Aggregate behavior data tells you what is happening. Implementation data tells you why. These are different things, and collecting only one of them will send you in circles.

  
  

• Third: what does the student's behavior look like across different staff members? If things go significantly better with one person than another, the question is not "what is that teacher doing right" in isolation. The question is "what is that person doing with their environment and their interactions that the rest of us could learn from?" That gap is not a personnel problem. It is information.

  
  

When the plan itself does need to change

Sometimes, after all of this, the plan genuinely does need revision.

• The function of the behavior was misidentified in the original FBA.

• The replacement behavior being taught is not actually easier or more efficient than the problem behavior, which means a rational person would not choose it.

• The reinforcers identified are not, in practice, reinforcing for that particular student on that particular day in that particular setting.

These are real possibilities, and they are fixable. But only once you have ruled out the fidelity question first. Otherwise you are writing a new plan that will run into the same implementation gaps as the last one, and the cycle continues.

The plan is not always the problem. Sometimes the plan is fine and the support system around it needs work. Getting clear on which one is which is the most important diagnostic step you can take before anyone opens a new document.

REFERENCES

Pas, E. T., & Bradshaw, C. P. (2012). Examining the association between implementation and outcomes : state-wide scale-up of school-wide positive behavior intervention and supports. The journal of behavioral health services & research, 39(4), 417–433. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-012-9290-2

Bruhn, A. L., Woods-Groves, S., Fernando, J., Spath, K., & Manka, B. (2020). Barriers to implementing behavior intervention plans: Results of a statewide survey. Preventing School Failure, 64(3), 201–212. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339589156_Barriers_to_Implementing_Behavior_Intervention_Plans_Results_of_a_Statewide_Survey

Fallon, L. M., Collier-Meek, M. A., Maggin, D. M., Sanetti, L. M. H., & Johnson, A. H. (2018). Is performance feedback an evidence-based intervention? A systematic review and evaluation of single-case research. Exceptional Children, 81(2), 227–246. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/284240498_Is_performance_feedback_an_evidence-based_practice_A_systematic_review_and_evaluation

Gottfredson, D. C., & Gottfredson, G. D. (2002). Quality of school-based prevention programs: Results from a national survey. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 39(1), 3–35. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002242780203900101

Sanetti, L. M. H., & Kratochwill, T. R. (2009). Toward developing a science of treatment integrity. School Psychology Review, 38(4), 445–459. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ867973

Sanetti, L. M. H., & Luh, H. (2020). Treatment fidelity in school-based intervention. In L. M. H. Sanetti & M. A. Collier-Meek (Eds.), Supporting successful interventions in schools. Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-37285-9_4