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Conclusion
Conclusion
It bears repeating. The purpose of this book is not to criticize PBIS. It is quite the opposite. Our intention is to enhance PBIS in a way that will increase its likelihood of success with underserved students, regardless of their background. Given PBIS’s prevalence, we want it to have a positive impact for the students who need it the most. In effect, we hope to meet a demand and address a need.
How does PBIS look when it is implemented in a culturally and linguistically responsive way? From our knowledge, there is no other book or resource that tackles this question head on and does so unapologetically, while at the same time challenging if cultural and linguistic responsiveness has been infused with depth and fidelity, if at all. We offer a reflective process that comes with concrete examples, specific recommendations, and delineated procedures all throughout the text to engender a “no-excuse” opportunity for alignment of PBIS with CLR. We assume that our goal, albeit simple but ambitious, is the same as yours—successful and equitable outcomes for all students.
© 2022 by Solution Tree Press. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 2
“MY JOURNEY TO CULTURALLY AND LINGUISTICALLY RESPONSIVE PBIS ” D ANIEL RUSSELL JR.
My journey to culturally and linguistically responsive PBIS began in my early years of teaching at my first school. As with most if not all beginning teachers, I was struggling with effective classroom management and sought answers for how to be more successful. I initially was influenced by Lee Canter’s (1992) assertive discipline model and gradually developed better classroom management. However, I began to feel that my discipline approach, which was primarily based on enforcing compliance through rewards and punishment, was increasingly at odds with what I was learning about being a CLR educator. This growing dissatisfaction led to a desire to change my mindset and practices regarding discipline, so I began to explore other approaches.
A colleague introduced me to Marvin Marshall’s (2007) book Discipline Without Stress, Punishments, or Rewards: How Teachers and Parents Promote Responsibility and Learning, which I found to be more aligned with what I understood as CLR. Then, I added what I learned from Fay and Funk’s (1995) Teaching with Love and Logic and Randy Sprick’s (2009) CHAMPS approach, as well as what Lisa Delpit (2012) describes as
being a warm demander. These approaches, along with others, became foundational pieces of the culturally responsive schoolwide discipline approach we co-developed and came to call Ways of Doing, Ways of Being at CLAS. However, I was unaware that we were essentially developing a form of culturally responsive PBIS.
For me, the explicit connection between CLR and PBIS came after a major transition in my career. After twenty-one years as a classroom teacher, I opted to take on the role of dean of students. My first major task was to implement PBIS in the grades K–6 school at which I was working. After receiving training and professional development in PBIS, I asked myself the same questions I had asked of the other approaches to student discipline:
• “Does this approach work for students from historically underserved backgrounds (for example, Black and Latinx)?”
• “Is this approach authentically culturally and linguistically responsive?”
I found, unsurprisingly, that PBIS could be effective for underserved students, but only if it was implemented in a culturally responsive way. Furthermore, I learned that PBIS was not inherently culturally responsive but could be made so.
For the next several years, as the focus of my doctorate, I studied how and why to implement PBIS in a culturally responsive way. Sharroky and I then discovered that we had been on parallel pathways in terms of the need for aligning PBIS with CLR. This revelation led us to combine our efforts in developing a culturally responsive schoolwide discipline approach, as we had done at CLAS. We built on our precursor to CLR-PBIS, what we called Ways of Doing, Ways of Being, to write this book. I know my journey to culturally and linguistically responsive PBIS is not over, as I have embraced the understanding that there is always more to learn.
In our work with educators that we train and coach in CLR through the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, numerous teachers and staff shared their experiences with us regarding the ineffectiveness of PBIS with their underserved students,
despite the implementation of PBIS, often with fidelity. In particular, they shared their continued struggles with the persistent overrepresentation of Black students in office discipline referrals and suspensions at their schools. These most likely were the result of challenges teachers faced with understanding the difference between cultural behaviors and unacceptable ones. For example, in one district with which we worked, Black students were suspended more than four times as often as White students, even though PBIS was in place. Furthermore, they shared with us that this disparity was amplified when considering the intersection of race and special education status. Black students identified with special needs were documented as being removed from the education environment at higher rates than all other demographic groups. Again, this is even with the faithful implementation of PBIS—a clear indicator of a systemic problem.
What teachers shared with us mirrored what the aforementioned literature and research reveal about PBIS’s lack of effectiveness with underserved students, as evidenced by racial disparities in exclusionary discipline (Betters-Bubon, Brunner, & Kansteiner, 2016; Bradshaw, Mitchell, & Leaf, 2010; Kaufman et al., 2010; Vincent & Tobin, 2011). This revelation caused us to wonder why PBIS is not as effective for underserved students. What we learned through the literature was that part of the problem is that PBIS is not authentically culturally and linguistically responsive.
We are not saying PBIS does not have value, as ample empirical research has proven it does (Barrett, Bradshaw, & Lewis, 2008; Bohanon et al., 2006; Bradshaw et al., 2010; Bradshaw, Reinke, Brown, Bevans, & Leaf, 2008; Caldarella, Shatzer, Gray, Young, & Young, 2011; Noltemeyer, Petrasek, Stine, Palmer, Meehan, & Jordan, 2018; Tyre & Feuerborn, 2011). Rather, our intent, in this chapter, is to explain why PBIS is not authentically culturally responsive so you can better understand how to make it so. This perspective also contrasts with what Milaney Leverson, Kent Smith, Kent McIntosh, Jennifer Rose, and Sarah Pinkelman (2019) assert in their PBIS Cultural Responsiveness Field Guide. Although we agree that cultural responsiveness is a core component of PBIS and PBIS is not fully implemented unless done so in a culturally responsive manner, we disagree with their stance that using a term such as culturally responsive PBIS (CR-PBIS) “suggests that CR-PBIS is something distinct from PBIS” (p. 2). For us, because PBIS is not authentically culturally responsive, it is distinct from a culturally and linguistically responsive PBIS. Therefore, unequivocally, school leaders and teachers need clarity on why PBIS is not inherently culturally and linguistically responsive and how they can adapt it to be that way.
In this chapter, we explain the reasons, revealed by literature, why PBIS is not authentically culturally and linguistically responsive. It begins with the emergence of the need for a positive and proactive school discipline framework and a brief history of PBIS’s origin, development, and national diffusion within this context. After the historical context is set, we provide five rationales for why PBIS is not authentically culturally and linguistically responsive.
