How Did Rewards Ruin PBIS?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses how the overemphasis on reward systems corrupted the original PBIS framework and undermined its effectiveness.
Key Takeaways
- Rewards became the whole system - PBIS was supposed to be a multi-tiered framework, but many schools reduced it to just giving out prizes
- Extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation - When students only behave for rewards, they stop when the rewards stop
- PBIS needs its other tiers - The framework only works when it includes clear expectations, consistent consequences, and targeted interventions alongside positive reinforcement
Transcript
How did PBIS become a bad thing?
I was really shocked as a former principal to hear how many educators are realizing now that PBIS is undermining a discipline in their school.
PBIS is intended to be positive behavior interventions and supports.
It's supposed to be something that makes behavior better, but in a lot of schools, PBIS seems to be making behavior worse.
Let me know if that's the case in your school.
As I've heard from more and more teachers and talked about what exactly is going on in different schools, I've realized that there's a huge emphasis that was not there when I was a principal and when I used PBIS and that emphasis is on rewards.
So many teachers are saying in our school we have to reward students for expected behavior or students misbehave and then as soon as they stop misbehaving then they get a reward for stopping the misbehavior and we're rewarding everything all of a sudden over the last couple of years.
And I realized that there's one company in particular behind this called PBIS Rewards, which is not surprisingly a software platform for giving out those rewards, giving out points and things like that.
And a lot of schools have some sort of school store or reward store where students can cash in points to get little prizes.
But that was actually not an original part of PBIS.
If you go to PBIS.org, that is the authoritative site for the research on PBIS.
And that's the kind of PBIS that my school was trained on, that I was trained on.
I went to an institute in Washington State.
Washington State had some very good stuff on PBIS 10 or 15 years ago.
But what is happening now is not about teaching expectations, reinforcing expectations school-wide, and promoting those positive expectations just in terms of kind of the tier one supports.
What I'm hearing now that's being called PBIS that I think is not really PBIS is all this reward stuff.
When you reward kids for expected behavior and stop having consequences for unacceptable behavior, what happens is everybody just chases the rewards.
Nobody really cares what the rules are because if there are no consequences for breaking them, why bother why not only focus on getting the reward and kids are really really smart here's the thing kids are really really smart at figuring out from our behavior what matters right if we say it's really important that you not disrupt class or hurt people but we give out candy even if you disrupt class and hurt people well kids are going to figure that out very quickly and they're going to engage in whatever behaviors they want to as long as they can get their rewards one way or the other and i think we have to be especially careful about giving kids rewards for expected behavior and giving kids rewards for ultimately what's bad behavior the moment they turn it around.
So let me know what's happening in your school with PBIS.
Is it really a tier one system of teaching behaviors and providing additional supports for students who need them?
Is it this positive foundation or is it this kind of bribery system at scale that is not working?
Let me know what's going on in your school.