How is FBA Connected to Positive Behavior Support?
The overall purpose of PBIS is to develop collaborative systems within the school that prevent predictable student failure across all students. Functional behavior assessment is a strategy for identifying those situations that predict individual student failure. The outcome of a functional assessment is an effective intervention plan that prevents failure and facilitates student success. Naturally, this is more effective when done early, before the student has acquired a long history of failure and the challenging behaviors they use to cope with failure. Therefore, we recommend that FBA be used early in a pattern of problem behavior; that is, with students who are exhibiting less serious problem behaviors. To do this, FBA must be institutionalized as part of a school-wide system of PBIS. One way to achieve this goal is to rely on an identified “expert” to conduct FBAs on a regular basis. However, many schools are not likely to have access to an “expert” in FBA until challenging behavio
