In state and federal school improvement work, “evidence-based” means something quite precise, and getting the definition right is the difference between a funded intervention and a returned grant application, District L-CAP, or School Improvement Plan (SIP).
First, the definition
|
Tier |
Level |
What it requires |
|
1 |
Strong evidence |
At least one well-designed, well-implemented experimental study — random assignment |
|
2 |
Moderate evidence |
At least one well-designed, well-implemented quasi-experimental study |
|
3 |
Promising evidence |
At least one well-designed, well-implemented correlational study with statistical controls for selection bias |
|
4 |
Demonstrates a rationale |
A logic model based on rigorous research, with an effort underway to study effects. Not fundable with 1003 dollars. |
When the School Improvement Plan template asks you to “include the level of evidence for the intervention,” it is asking which of those tiers your intervention sits in and where that determination comes from. An intervention with a strong professional reputation and no citation is a tier four intervention until someone produces the study.
What follows is a survey of the practices with the strongest support in special education, and what each one actually asks of a school.
1. Access to general education is itself an intervention
This reframes the question a leadership team should be asking. It is not only “what intervention should this student receive,” but “is this student present for the instruction the assessment measures.” A student pulled from core mathematics for service minutes is receiving an intervention whose cost is core mathematics.
In Washington State, guidance from the state is direct on the underlying principle: services and accommodations in a student’s IEP or 504 plan should supplement — not replace — the tiered support available to every student. Every student, including every student with a disability, should have access to Tier 1 learning & supports regardless of placement. That includes students who receive all of their services in separate programs or classrooms.
Those spaces, and the students in them, should have the same Tier 1 resources as general education classrooms.
|
Three questions worth asking about every student with an IEP 1. Does this student experience belonging as a member of their school and their general education classroom? 2. Does this student actively participate at school across the school day? 3. Is this student engaged in learning the grade-level general education curriculum? These three questions come from Washington’s inclusionary practices guidance. They are simple, they are answerable by observation, and a team that cannot answer yes to all three has located its root cause. |
2. Universal Design for Learning (UDL): Design out the barrier
UDL is a research-based framework (CAST, 2024) for designing instruction that anticipates learner variability rather than retrofitting for it. Its premise is that neurodivergence and differences in how students learn are natural human variation, not exceptions to a norm — and that most access barriers are properties of the design, not of the student.
The UDL Guidelines organize instructional design around three questions:
• Engagement — how are interests and identities welcomed, effort and persistence sustained, and emotional
capacity supported?
• Representation — how is perception supported, how are language and symbols handled, and how is
knowledge built?
• Action and expression — what options exist for interaction, for expression and communication, and for
developing strategy?
For students who engage in interfering behavior, one part of that third principle carries disproportionate weight. Within action and expression, UDL asks educators to offer multiple options for expression and communication – and interfering behavior is itself, very often, a communication of need. When students have several reliable ways to communicate learning, emotions, preferences, needs, and distress, a substantial share of that behavior does not need to occur in the first place. Universal communication supports are, in practice, among the most effective behavior prevention strategies available to a building and they cost very little.
3. Function-based behavior supports
The strongest evidence base in special education behavior practice is the applied behavior analytic finding that behavior serves a function, and that interventions matched to function outperform generic behavior management (Iwata et al., 1994; O’Neill et al., 2015; Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2020).
All behavior can be understood through one or more of four functions:
Function | What the student is seeking | Common presentation |
Escape / avoidance | To get away from an unwanted activity, demand, person, or setting | Leaving the room during reading; refusing a worksheet; escalating until a task is withdrawn |
Attention | Attention from adults or peers | Calling out, clowning, arguing, disrupting peers to produce a response |
Access to tangibles | A desired item, activity, or outcome | Taking a peer’s object; refusing to leave a preferred activity; distress at transitions |
Sensory / automatic | To obtain or avoid sensory input; the behavior is self-reinforcing | Rocking, hand-flapping, chewing, skin-picking |
A functional behavioral assessment (FBA) identifies which function is operating. IDEA requires a FBA whenever a student with a disability faces a change of placement due to behavior — under §300.530(d)(1)(ii), when a student has been removed for more than ten school days and the behavior is a manifestation of the disability, the IEP team must conduct an FBA and implement a behavior intervention plan (BIP).
Without a quality FBA, a behavior intervention plan is guesswork. And a BIP built on the wrong function will fail in a way that looks like the student’s fault.
The replacement behavior is the whole plan
The core of every behavior intervention plan is the replacement behavior: a positive, skill-building alternative that serves the same function as the problem behavior. If a student hits peers to gain attention, the replacement behavior must also produce attention. Eliminating the hitting is not the intervention; giving the student a faster and more reliable route to the same outcome is.
It helps to think of behavior change as two lanes running in parallel. Lane one is the behavior you are trying to decrease. Lane two is the behavior you are building to take its place. The plan works when lane two is faster, easier, and more rewarding than lane one. If the replacement behavior does not meet the same need, the student has no reason to use it — and the team will conclude, wrongly, that the plan did not work.
This follows from Bandura’s foundational finding that behavior is learned. If a behavior was set in motion by identifiable conditions, an equal and opposite behavior can be set in motion the same way.
4. Strategies that match the function
Behavior and academics are not separate opportunities. Students academically successful in a setting show fewer behavioral difficulties there, and many behavioral challenges appear when a task requires more effort — or risks more embarrassment — than its perceived value justifies. The strategies below are drawn from the positive behavior support literature and are organized by when they act.
Antecedent strategies - Prevent escalation before it starts
Antecedent strategies modify the environment and the task demand before behavior occurs. They are the most powerful tools available because they address the conditions that set behavior in motion rather than responding after the fact.
• Behavior momentum — present three to five easy, high-probability requests before a difficult task. Compliance builds momentum that carries into the harder demand. Strongly indicated for escape-motivated behavior.
• Interspersed requests — alternate easy and difficult items rather than presenting a solid block of challenging work. Keeps success rate and engagement high.
• Structured choice — offer a choice between two acceptable options, not between doing and not doing. Reduces escape behavior driven by a need for control.
• Interest-based tasks — embed student interests in academic work. Increases engagement intrinsically and reduces avoidance.
• Sensory-based strategies — movement breaks, flexible seating, noise reduction, and scheduled sensory input, designed with occupational therapy input. Indicated for sensory and automatic functions.
Reinforcement strategies - Build and maintain new behavior
• Behavior-specific praise — name the exact behavior. “I noticed you came in from recess and started your work immediately” does work that “good job” does not.
• Differential reinforcement (DRI, DRA, DRO) — reinforce a behavior incompatible with, alternative to, or occurring in the absence of the problem behavior, and withhold reinforcement when it occurs.
• Fading — begin with maximum support and systematically reduce prompting and reinforcement frequency. Prevents the learned dependence that a well-implemented plan can otherwise create.
• Response cards and collective responding — all students respond simultaneously, which removes the performance risk of being called on individually and raises participation rates.
Self-regulation strategies - Build the capacity that outlasts the plan
• Student self-monitoring — teach students to track their own behavior. Self-monitoring produces sustained improvement even when adult monitoring is inconsistent, which it always eventually is.
• Strength-based planning — interview the student before writing the plan. What are you good at? When do you feel successful at school? Use the answers to shape reinforcement and task design (Hammond, 2015; Tuck, 2009).
• Effort attribution — students who attribute success to effort rather than fixed ability show greater persistence. Name the attribution explicitly: “You got that because you worked at it” (Dweck, 2011).
Match the strategy to the function, then collect data Not every strategy works for every student, and the strategy selection is only as good as the FBA behind it. Confirm function first. Collect data to determine whether the strategy is producing change. When a strategy is not working, troubleshoot before abandoning it — return to the FBA and confirm the function before switching approaches. Teams that cycle rapidly through strategies usually have a function problem, not a strategy problem. |
5. Classroom management is an evidence-base, not a personality trait
Simonsen and colleagues (2008) identified classroom management practices with empirical support — maximizing structure, posting and teaching expectations, actively engaging students in observable ways, using a continuum of strategies to acknowledge appropriate behavior, and using a continuum of strategies to respond to inappropriate behavior. These are teachable, coachable, and observable, which means they belong in professional learning plans rather than in performance conversations about disposition.
6. Watch the disproportionality
Any practice discussion in special education is incomplete without attention to who receives which response. Skiba and colleagues (2011) documented that disproportionality in school discipline is not explained by differences in student behavior, and Losen and Martinez (2013) traced the academic cost of exclusionary discipline. Students with disabilities and students of color are disproportionately subject to punitive response for the same behaviors as their peers.
Practically, this means a school reviewing its behavior data should always disaggregate — by race, disability status, multilingual learner status, and sex — and should treat a disproportionate pattern as a systems finding rather than a student finding.
Putting it into your District L-CAP or School Improvement Plan (SIP)
If you are writing a School Improvement Plan or an L-CAP goal around any of the above, three things make the difference between an intervention that is approved and one that is questioned:
1. Name the specific practice, not the category. “Function-based behavior intervention planning following FBA” is an intervention. “Improve behavior supports” is not.
2. Cite the evidence level and the source. Say which of the first three ESSA tiers the practice sits in and what study or clearinghouse determination supports it.
3. Name the data measure that will tell you whether it worked, and the cadence on which you will look. An intervention without a measure cannot be reported on in January, which is when the state will ask.
DECS offers a free 30-minute consultation to any Washington school or district working on its 2026–27 School Improvement Plan or L-CAP. Schedule time with Dr. Sue Ann Bube, who is experienced partnering with schools and district around continuous improvement. |
Sources Cited
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Bandura, A. (1976). Social learning theory. Prentice Hall.
CAST. (2024). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 3.0. Lynnfield, MA: Author.
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.
Dweck, C. S. (2011). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Ballantine Books.
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Iwata, B. A., Dorsey, M. F., Slifer, K. J., Bauman, K. E., & Richman, G. S. (1994). Toward a functional analysis of self-injury. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 27(2), 197–209.
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Losen, D. J., & Martinez, T. E. (2013). Out of school and off track: The overuse of suspensions in American middle and high schools. UCLA Civil Rights Project.
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Simonsen, B., Fairbanks, S., Briesch, A., Myers, D., & Sugai, G. (2008). Evidence-based practices in classroom management: Considerations for research to practice. Education and Treatment of Children, 31(3), 351–380.
Skiba, R. J., Horner, R. H., Chung, C. G., Rausch, M. K., May, S. L., & Tobin, T. (2011). Race is notneutral: A national investigation of African American and Latino disproportionality in school discipline. School Psychology Review, 40(1), 85–107.
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