USED Resource: Using Functional Behavioral Assessments to Create Supportive Learning Environments

The U.S. Department of Education released Using Functional Behavioral Assessments to Create Supportive Learning Environments, guidance to help schools and early childhood programs better support students’ behavioral needs. This guidance focuses on evidence-based practices to support students, with or without disabilities, whose behavior interferes with learning, and is part of the Department’s effort to reduce exclusionary discipline.   

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, school discipline is an urgent public health problem. Students who are removed from the classroom through suspensions, expulsions, or informal removals due to behaviors that interfere with learning may experience long-lasting negative effects for both the student and their parents, such as decreased academic achievement, absenteeism, not finishing high school, increased involvement in the juvenile justice system, and family stress. These practices disproportionately affect Black students, white boys, boys of two or more races, and students with disabilities.   

 

An FBA can help with understanding the function and purpose of a child’s specific, interfering behavior and factors that contribute to the behavior’s occurrence and non-occurrence for the purpose of developing effective positive behavioral interventions, supports, and other strategies to mitigate or eliminate the interfering behavior.  

 

The guidance, developed by the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), provides educators and families with information, tools, and resources to support the broader use of FBAs and behavioral plans for students with and without disabilities. 

 

The Department will host a webinar on December 3 at 1 p.m. ET to share information about the guidance.  Register here.