Tier 3 Behavior Intervention Guide
for School Leaders

An alarm is sounding — according to a recent APA survey, almost half of all teachers reported a desire to change jobs due to safety and climate concerns. Many schools are overwhelmed with the surge of mental health needs and challenging behaviors, leaving school leaders wondering what they can do to address student needs while supporting teacher well-being.

I’ve been there, and although building a system of intensive behavior support for students who need it (and their teachers!) is a long game, it IS possible, and absolutely worth the investment. All student growth is exciting to see, but my most meaningful experiences as an educator were those where a child went from being unable to function safely, make friends, or participate in learning, to then getting the support they needed to become a thriving member of the school community.

This guide will touch on the critical elements of an effective intensive behavior support system from a school leader’s perspective, along with practical tips and recommended resources to explore. Don’t miss the section on making Tier 3 behavior intervention actually practicable amidst the many day-to-day challenges of running a school or district..

1. Where Does Intensive Behavior Intervention Fit in MTSS?

Intensive intervention refers to the highest level of individualized support offered along the continuum of interventions in a Multi-Tiered System of Supports for Behavior (MTSS-B), also called “Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports” or PBIS. These levels of support are often referred to as: Tier 1-Universal (prevention, instruction, and differentiation for all students), Tier 2-Strategic (targeted skill-building and support), and Tier 3-Intensive (individualized behavior plans with wrap-around services).

An organized system of universal, targeted, and intensive behavior interventions, along with a data-driven continuous improvement cycle, enables schools to be both preventative and responsive to the behavior needs of all students, even those with very challenging behavior.

Students who exhibit missing social, emotional, or behavior skills or who exhibit chronic severe misbehavior or withdrawal should be identified through a screening process and decision rules, typically by the campus Tier 3 Behavior Intervention Team (or combined Tier 2 / 3 Behavior Team.) Almost always, these students also have academic deficits, either because their behavior has prevented access to instruction, or because their experience of academic failure is a driver of their misbehavior, especially at the secondary level.

2. How to Build a Tier 3 Behavior Intervention System

It is important to consider the systems that support staff behavior along with the practices/ interventions that support student behavior. Without an underlying framework for teaming, data collection, and problem-solving, it is unlikely that individual student behavior plans will be carried out successfully or that the overall intervention program will be sustainable. (www.PBIS.org)

The School-Wide PBIS Tiered Fidelity Inventory (Algozzine et al., 2019) is a freely available rubric for both systems and individual student planning. Here are important system features for Tier 3 intervention:

Student Overview Page in Branching Minds

Hypothesis statement: If the behavior is the smoke, the underlying cause of the behavior is the fire. Address the fire, not the smoke! The “hypothesis statement” is the team’s best guess as to what factors are triggering a specific behavior and causing it to continue. Everyone on the team should have some basic training in determining the function of behavior, and at least one person on the team, such as a behavior specialist or school psychologist, should have significant training and expertise to help guide the discussion and provide a clear, operational definition of the problem.

Preventive and proactive strategies for teaching and reinforcing new skills: This is the meaty part of the plan involving direct services to the student. The team will ask:

• What can we change in the environment to make the behavior less likely to occur?

• What new skills and coping strategies does the student need to learn, and how will we teach those skills?

• How will we motivate the student to use their new skills?

Natural supports: Family and community members are a vital link to the child’s life outside the school setting and can help provide the connection and consistency needed for the student to “generalize” newly learned skills, that is, to take their new strategies and apply them widely across different settings in the school, home, and community.

A safety plan: How will staff organize to keep this student safe, and how will staff respond in the moment to known dangerous behaviors such as aggression and elopement? In addition to the general campus safety plan, an individualized behavior plan should have a plan for both preventing and responding to specific student behaviors, including de-escalation and emergency procedures to keep the student, peers, and staff safe.

An action plan: Who, what, where, when…HOW? It’s the details and the follow-up that will make or break the plan. Include information about specifics in the written plan itself, or if available, make use of your district’s MTSS software. An MTSS platform makes it far easier to have plans accessible, assign tasks, and track both plan implementation and student progress. In my case, the Branching Minds platform allowed me to monitor Tier 3 plans at a glance and quickly see where plans were either missing or not being monitored.

A Caution With Behavior Staffing

Unskilled or overwhelmed behavior staff may actually make things WORSE unless they are trained and protected in their role as a positive intervention support, not a hallway “heavy.” You can unintentionally escalate student behavior and disciplinary removals if there is a high level of reactive, negative behavior staff interaction with students.

Instead, with appropriate staffing levels and training, behavior staff can move out of a reactive disciplinary mode and focus on what makes a lasting difference for students: a Multi-Tiered System of Supports for Behavior that provides a continuum of proactive behavioral interventions. When professional and paraprofessional staff implement research-based interventions and are on a mission to create a positive and supportive school climate, this is when you see lasting improvement and a change in mindset towards students with behavioral needs.

Many schools do not have adequate behavioral staff or expertise, although this is changing as campus and district leaders recognize and prioritize behavior support as crucial to improving student outcomes, school safety, and staff retention. When there is a pattern of significant misbehavior, and any time that behavior is very disruptive and dangerous, teachers can not and should not be expected to manage on their own. They need the support of a team, and when it comes to intensive intervention, teachers need direct support from someone with the time and expertise to actually help.

Depending on the size and specific needs of a particular school, a full-time interventionist for behavior may or may not be indicated, but intensive behavior intervention should be a part of someone’s job description on every campus so that when the need arises, there is the capacity to provide support. District-level staff can also be extremely helpful in providing an additional set of eyes along with modeling and coaching for staff on how to provide interventions with fidelity.

Behavior & SEL: Supporting the Whole Child With Branching Minds

Educators around the country are using Branching Minds to help address students’ behavioral needs. Our comprehensive platform empowers school leaders, teachers, and interventionists to seamlessly integrate Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and Behavioral Health assessments with academic evaluations, intervention strategies, records of behavioral incidents, progress tracking, and all pertinent correspondence. This integration equips educators with the necessary tools to make informed decisions about students’ requirements, and supports a series of actions that can be taken to ensure students are receiving the type and level of needed support.

Learn more about how you can support your students with Branching Minds. 

Trudy Bender

Trudy Bender is the MTSS Content Manager at Branching Minds. She has extensive experience as a teacher, school psychologist, and district administrator. Most recently, she served as the Coordinator of District Behavior Intervention at Waco ISD, where she facilitated the implementation of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports for behavior along with initiatives to improve school climate and to build teacher capacity in classroom management through peer coaching. She is passionate about helping teachers and administrators to develop systems that reduce disproportionality while improving social-emotional and academic outcomes for all students. Trudy is a Nationally Certified School Psychologist and holds an Ed.S. in School Psychology from Baylor University.