| dc.description.abstract |
The academic achievement and behavior of students are deeply intertwined. Forsome students, academic struggle precipitates problem behavior; for other students thereverse is true. Recently, schools have turned to School-Wide Positive BehaviorSupports (SW-PBS) to provide the structure necessary to promote school success forstudents. This study examined the relationship between implementation of SW-PBS andchange in student behavior and academic achievement. The study examined the cohort ofstudents who attended each of two target middle schools as seventh graders the year priorto implementation of SW-PBS and as eighth graders during the first year of SW-PBS.Problem behavior was measured by in-school and out-of-school suspension rates.Academic achievement was measured by grade point average (GPA) in each subject areaand overall. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test for differences in eachmeasure between the two years. Pearson correlation coefficients analyzed therelationship between change in suspension days and change in GPA. The findings of thestudy indicate that there was not a significant change in student behavior but there wassome change in academic achievement from the year prior to SW-PBS implementation tothe first year of SW-PBS implementation. Considered in the context provided by theprior cohort of students at each of the target schools, for whom behavior and academicachievement worsened between seventh and eighth grades, the lack of change in thesemeasures for the target cohorts suggests that SW-PBS implementation coincides with achange in student behavior and academic achievement. The findings also suggest thatthere is a potential relationship between change in student behavior and change in studentacademic achievement. |
en_US |