When targeted interventions don't improve the behavior you hope to see, what's the next step? Today's guest might tell you to check the function of that behavior. Today, we're talking with Dr. Chris Borgmeier and exploring the myth: Functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is a process only meant for special education.

Chris is a Professor and the Doctoral Program Director in the College of Education at Portland State University. He is co-author of the Basic FBA to BIP training series and developed the Basic FBA to BIP e-learning series. His research focuses on using multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) to support students with challenging behavior. He has been a trainer and consultant for MTSS for Behavior implementation across the North America and internationally.

During our conversation, we talk about where this myth comes from and how schools can use the elements of FBA to make function-based thinking a schoolwide practice.

For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• ABC Tracker
• Practice Brief: When to Use Functional Behavioral Assessment? Best Practice vs. Legal Guidance

When we talk about Tier 2 support, we usually talk about the support we offer students. Today, we're talking about the ways we support the adults in our building to implement Tier 2 with fidelity...and maybe even a little enthusiasm. Back with us again are our colleagues Dr. Billie Jo Rodriguez and Noah Van Horn.

• Billie Jo is an Associate Teaching Professor and the School Psychology director of clinical training at the University of Oregon, a nationally certified school psychologist, and a doctoral board-certified behavior analyst. She has over 20 years of experience supporting students with diverse needs and helping schools implement increasingly intensive function-based supports.
• Noah is a nationally certified school psychologist and PBIS coach for Springfield Public Schools in Springfield, OR. He is also a trainer and PBIS coach for the NWPBIS Network. In addition to his work leading district initiatives to support PBIS, he is a lead trainer for district professional development on topics ranging from Tier 1 practices to more intensive, individualized support.

For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• Expert Instruction - Ep. 54: Mythbusters - Student Behavior is More Significant Now Than Ever
• Tiered Fidelity Inventory
• Overview of Tier 2 Support
• Cooking with Fidelity: How Smart Adaptations Improve Tier 2 Outcomes
• Tier 2: A District-Level Systems Guide

In this episode, we're sharing some of our favorite things from past lists...including one of our favorite episodes. This month, we're revisiting a conversation from 2021 with Drs. Erin Chaparro and Ginny Joseph about Tier 2 teams and the foundations of decision making at the Tier 2 level.

Dr. Chaparro is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon and the Principal Investigator for the TIPS project. For more than a decade, Erin has worked with districts and schools to implement multi-tiered systems of support for literacy as well as PBIS. She is also the co-author of the book Assessment in Special and Inclusive Education.

Dr. Ginny Joseph is the Coordinator of PBIS and Mental Health at Orange County Department of Education. She trains and supports school teams implementing a multi-tiered framework for behavior supports. Her experience ranges from function-based support planning, to using data to drive decisions, to planning behavioral support for small groups of students.

For more information about some of the resources mentioned in this episode, check out these links:

• Favorite Things 2025
• PBISApps Community
• Ep. 16: Adding Student Voice to Leadership Teams
• Ep. 43: Mythbusters - Rewards Don't Work to Improve Student Outcomes
• An overview of the TIPS model
• TIPS Meeting Minutes Template
• Tiered Fidelity Inventory

We're continuing our year-long series exploring the way data play a crucial role in our PBIS implementation. In this episode, we’re going to put those data to use as we look to address the myth that student behavior is more significant now than ever before. Joining us are Dr. Billie Jo Rodriguez and Noah Van Horn.

• Billie Jo is an Associate Teaching Professor and the School Psychology director of clinical training at the University of Oregon, a nationally certified school psychologist, and a doctoral board-certified behavior analyst. She has over 20 years of experience supporting students with diverse needs and helping schools implement increasingly intensive function-based supports.
• Noah is a nationally certified school psychologist and PBIS coach for Springfield Public Schools in Springfield, OR. He is also a trainer and PBIS coach for the NWPBIS Network. In addition to his work leading district initiatives to support PBIS, he is a lead trainer for district professional development on topics ranging from Tier1 practices to more intensive, individualized support.

This episode doesn't start the same way our other mythbuster episodes start. Where we typically look to bust the myth, this myth isn't so easily busted. If student behavior truly is on the rise, we ought to look for ways we can reverse the trend. One way is to lean into our multi-tiered systems and start layering on Tier 2 support for groups of students who might benefit. Listen in as we hear from these coaches how their schools have started small, implementing efficient, practical strategies, to improve student outcomes and make every classrooms feel just a little calmer.

For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• Schoolwide Information System (SWIS)
• Check-In Check-Out SWIS (CICO-SWIS)
• SWIS Data Summary 2024-25
• PBISApps Community
• Your Data Story Doesn't End Here: Tier 2 Can Flip the Script
• Webinar: CICO in Practice: A Proven Tier 2 Behavior Intervention That Builds Connections

All this month we’re looking at the ways we can use data to guide our decisions on how to get students the additional support they need sooner. There are some common decision rules your team can follow, but what does that look like in practice? Our guests today will share their experience.

Joining us in conversation are Dr. Lisa Friesen from North Kansas City Schools and Jamie Ferguson from Oak Park High School, both in Kansas City, MO.

• Lisa has been with North Kansas City Schools for 22 years. She is a former elementary and high school special education teacher and currently serves as a District Instructional Coordinator for MTSS, organizing and supporting academic and behavior interventions and systems K-12.
• Jamie has been part of the North Kansas City School District for the past 16 years. She spent 11 years at Linden West Elementary co-leading Tier 1 interventions and served on the Tier 2 and Tier 3 support teams. At Oak Park High School, Jamie focuses her time on academic intervention and student success through programs like Missouri Options and Check-In/Check-Out.

Listen in as they share how they learned the value of Tier 1 systems to support their efforts at the Tier 2 level and how getting students the support they need involves both personal relationships and consistent data.

For more information on the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• Missouri PBIS
• CICO in Practice: A Proven Tier 2 Behavior Intervention That Builds Connections (Free PBISApps Webinar)
• An Overview of Targeted Interventions

In this episode, we continue the conversation around our year-long theme: Data in PBIS. Collecting data is an important step in your PBIS implementation. Using data to drive decisions is how those data truly come alive. How do you do that? Well, the Team Initiated Problem Solving (TIPS) framework is the only scientifically-based data-based decision making practice available to schools. Joining us today to talk about the fundamentals of the TIPS framework is Dr. Erin Chaparro.

Dr. Chaparro is a Research Associate Professor at the University of Oregon and the Principal Investigator for the TIPS project. For more than a decade, Erin has worked with districts and schools to implement multi-tiered systems of support for literacy as well as PBIS. She is also the co-author of the book Assessment in Special and Inclusive Education.

Listen in as we share how to get more out of your team meeting time, make more informed decisions, and get students the support they need faster than ever.

Don’t forget to check out the TIPS website and click “Submit Inquiry” at the bottom of the page to learn more about participating in their upcoming study!

For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• TIPS Fidelity Checklist
• Upcoming SWIS Drill Down Webinars
• Teach by Design “Start With Why: How to Put Purpose Back in Your Work”
• *NEW* TIPS meeting minutes template

This episode kicks off PBISApps’ 2025–26 school year theme: data in PBIS. Our guest today is a true PBIS pioneer: Dr. Rob Horner. Dr. Horner is an emeritus professor at the University of Oregon and a key figure in developing PBIS. He brings with him a 40-year history of research, grant management, and systems change efforts related to school reform and PBIS. He has published over 390 professional papers and directed over $200 million dollars in federal grants. Among many past national awards, in 2020 he won the Association of Positive Behavior Support Leadership Award. During our conversation, we talk about the early days of PBIS, when Rob and colleagues worked directly with schools to address challenging behaviors. They discovered that individual behavior plans could help—but lasting change required schoolwide systems and a preventative culture. PBIS emerged as a framework with core features that could adapt to local cultures, from rural schools to Native communities. Data always played a key role in this work. Listen in and learn how collecting and analyzing data can help your team see what’s really happening, ask better questions, and identify the smallest changes that make the biggest impact.  

In this episode, we’re looking back at the podcast over the past school year and sharing our favorite episodes and lessons learned. We’ve interviewed 16 guests across nine episodes. Every conversation gave us something to think about and find ways to infuse it in our work moving forward. Today, we wanted to highlight just five of those episodes and encourage you to take another listen over these summer months.

To travel back in time to any of these episodes mentioned today, check out the following links:

• Ep. 43: Mythbusters - Rewards Don't Work to Improve Outcomes
• Ep. 45: Mythbusters - Students Today Don't Care About School Like They Used to
• Ep. 46: Creating Equitable PBIS Solutions that Work for All Students
• Ep. 47: Cultivating a Culture of Belonging in Your Classroom
• Ep. 48: All Means All - Inclusive Practices in Tier 1 PBIS

...and don't forget to sign up for more information about our PBISApps Community. We've got some great topics coming next year. You won't want to miss out of these conversations. Sign up for our email list!

In a perfect world, there would be a mental health professional embedded in every school across the country. Students would have immediate access to the support they need and the resources they deserve. The reality is, there is a workforce shortage among mental health providers and community resources are overwhelmed by the need. More students need support than we can serve efficiently. If we could change that outcome, shouldn’t we?

That’s exactly what our friends and colleagues at The Ballmer Institute are trying to do! The Ballmer Institute offers an ground breaking undergraduates an opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree in child behavioral health. Graduates will enter the workforce with specialized training to:

• Identify youth who can benefit from early intervention or referral to mental health services
• Teach youth to label and regulate emotions and develop other skills to support well-being
• Deliver evidence-based prevention and intervention programs to prevent or disrupt the progression of youth mental health concerns
• Collaborate with other professionals (like teachers, psychologists, and social workers) to support health and wellness among young people

Joining us today is Dr. Miriam White-Pedeaux, an assistant clinical professor at the Ballmer Institute. In her work, Miriam supervises undergraduates completing their bachelor’s degree and she mentors youth-serving professionals earning a graduate-level microcredential in evidence-based mental health practices. Miriam has supported K-12 students at various school districts in Southern California, Oregon, Ghana and Ecuador. She is deeply passionate about increasing access to high-quality care and improving healthy literacy in youth and families.

Listen in as we talk about the current mental health realities facing schools today and the low-level, high-impact strategies you can use right now to support all students in your building. For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following links:

• What Works Clearinghouse  
• National Center for School Mental Health
• Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration ‍
• Resources about mental health and social-emotional well-being from The Center on PBIS

As we explore what inclusive education means, we need to talk about what it means to create truly inclusive schoolwide systems, data, and practices. If schoolwide means all students have access to the same foundational features, how do you ensure “all” really means “all” in your Tier 1 PBIS implementation?

Joining us to help answer this question is Dr. Sheldon Loman from Portland State University (PSU).

Sheldon is a Professor in the Special Education Department at PSU. He has a passion for researching and teaching about inclusive practices to support students with extensive support needs. Most recently, his research explores universal design and how to make schoolwide PBIS more inclusive of students with extensive support needs. Before his work at PSU, Sheldon was a special education teacher and positive behavior support coordinator in a diverse, urban school district in California. 

For more information about the resources shared in this episode, check out the following resources and links:

• Research Findings: Walker, V. L., & Loman, S. L. (2021). Strategies for Including Students With Extensive Support Needs in SWPBIS. Inclusive Practices, 1(1), 23-32. https://doi.org/10.1177/27324745211000307
• Research Findings: Walker, V. L., Loman, S. L., Mickelson, A. M., & Lyon, K. J. (2022). Participation of students with extensive support needs in SWPBIS: Administrator and educator perspectives. Psychology in the Schools, 59(8), 1623-1642.
• The TIES Center. This center works with states, districts, and schools to support moving students with disabilities from less inclusive to more inclusive environments.
• The TIES Center resources on PBIS
• The TIES Center PBIS video series on how to make PBIS more inclusive