Date of Award

12-2012

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Executive Leadership

Abstract

The responsibility for school administrators to provide a safe school environment demonstrates institutional accountability under the regulations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Students who violate the safety component of the public school discipline code face suspensions and expulsions. On average, students spend more than 16 million hours a year serving suspensions. This quantitative study examined the effect of Sugai’s three-tiered Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (PBIS) framework on co-located urban high schools. The study analyzed the relationship of the PBIS framework on the number of infractions, number of suspensions, school progress grade, and the safety and respect component of the school environment as measured by One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). This research furthers previous research on school infractions based on violence and safe school indicators (i.e. robbery with or without weapons, assaults with or without weapons, arson, altercations with or without weapons, drug or alcohol possession and sex offenses). The sample of the co-located urban high schools implementing PBIS was 15 out of 18. Each co-located urban high school hosted five to nine schools with a combined student population of 36,906. The mean of each participating co-located high school’s number of infraction, number of suspensions, school progress grade, and school environment were analyzed. The study indicated no significant difference between the independent variable PBIS and the dependent variables of co-located urban high schools.

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