Understanding and Estimating the True Costs Associated with PBIS Implementation and Scale-up

Introduction: Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a non-curricular, school-wide, multi-tiered prevention system widely disseminated as a strategy for improving school climate and preventing disruptive behavior problems (Sugai & Horner, 2006). The school- and student-level benefits of PBIS implementation are well documented; however, a formal assessment of the cost of implementation has not yet been conducted. Cost analyses are complex and rely on certain assumptions for calculations. For example, the cost to implement a school initiative includes both new costs (i.e., additional expenses that are related to adoption, such as the cost of a curriculum or materials), and opportunity costs (i.e., existing resources “given up” or rededicated to the new endeavor, such as redirecting existing school resources from existing efforts (or ongoing resources) to PBIS implementation (Blonigen et al., 2008). Additionally important to understand to support scale-up is the differential burden of cost among stakeholders.

Methods: The “Ingredients Method” (Levin, 1988) was used to calculate costs for schools and districts implementing PBIS in Spring of 2016. Specifically, 77 school administrators provided data about school costs including training time costs, money spent for PBIS incentives and rewards, referral time costs, and PBIS team meeting time costs. In depth interviews were conducted with a key point of contact in 8 corresponding districts. Using a standardized interview, we gathered data on personnel, direct funding to schools, training, data-management systems, and funding for evaluation efforts.

Results: Findings from this large-scale study suggest a conservative estimate of the school costs of PBIS to be $33,794, or approximately $50 per student. Roughly 70 percent of total school cost comes from the combined staffing time associated training ($9,019), coaching teachers ($3,467), and monitoring implementation ($11,039). Districts expenditure on PBIS activities is on average $45,000 per district and varies significantly by district ($11,000 to $70,000). Most of the district cost is wages for a PBIS district coordinator (DC). While PBIS DCs support schools’ team leader, coach and teacher trainings at the national, state, and district level as well as program evaluation efforts, staff professional development, data-management systems, coach incentives and other program materials there is no district budget for these activities. A minimum of $1,000-$3,000 per school per year would be needed for PBIS DCs to invest exclusively in PBIS school staff professional development and maintain a high quality of staff skills level on PBIS services.

Conclusion: Results suggests that relative to other educational support interventions, the cost of PBIS appears to be low and could be used to “sell” PBIS as a longer-term initiative worthy of sustained investment. It is likely that this additional investment should be at the district level and support efforts to institutionalize the program.