How can educators know if interventions are effective?
Page 9: Reviewing and Adjusting the BIP
An effective BIP is not a static document. Rather, it is a living plan that requires ongoing attention and refinement. Once the BIP is in place, the team (including the family and the student when appropriate) should plan a time to meet and evaluate the student’s progress. This initial review should occur after enough time has passed for the intervention to have reasonably led to a change in behavior, typically within two to four weeks. Then a review schedule (e.g., monthly, quarterly) should be established to ensure the student’s progress is communicated regularly and to ensure any decisions about changes to the plan are made by the team as a whole.
At each review point, the team examines the progress monitoring data to determine whether the interventions require any adjustments. Any changes to the interventions or their procedures should be documented in a revised BIP with a rationale and the date the change will go into effect. The chart below outlines next steps for BIP teams based on the student’s response to the interventions.
| If… | Then… |
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Data indicate that interventions have been successful, as evidenced by both:
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The team should consider fading one or more aspects of the intervention to increase the student’s independence. Fading might take different forms such as:
x
self-monitoring DEFINITION_DEFINITION_DEFINITION_DEFINITION x
self-reinforcement DEFINITION_DEFINITION_DEFINITION_DEFINITION All forms of fading should be implemented gradually, and teams must continue to carefully monitor the data to ensure the student remains successful. |
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Data indicate that interventions have been inconsistently successful, as evidenced by:
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The team should continue implementing the BIP as designed and should consider additional ways to support generalization of the replacement behavior. For example, the team might:
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Data indicate that interventions have not been successful, as evidenced by either:
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The team should examine the BIP and determine which aspects need to be changed or strengthened. In doing so, they should consider:
The team should also seek the student’s input. If an intervention is not working, the student might be able to contribute valuable information as to why. |
Activity
After about a month of implementation, Tasha’s and Isaiah’s BIP teams reconvene to review each student’s progress. Review the information below and consider each team’s next steps.
During the review meeting, the school counselor shares Tasha’s progress monitoring data. He notes that Tasha’s use of the replacement behavior has shown an increase overall, but there is still a lot of inconsistency. Specifically, he points out the graph from English class, which shows that Tasha is only using the replacement behavior 10% to 20% of the time in that setting.
Based on this data and discussion, record your thoughts about what Tasha’s team should do next.
Note: The text field is provided for reflection purposes only; your answers will not be saved and will not be available for downloading or printing.
As a team, we recognized that there is a lot to celebrate and that Tasha clearly now knows how to take a break appropriately when she needs to. However, it is concerning that there has been little to no improvement in her behavior in English class. The school counselor is going to work with Tasha to role-play some specific scenarios that relate to the structure of the English classroom. He is also going to follow up with the English teacher to provide some tools to help her implement academic adaptations, like allowing Tasha to dictate her written work. We will keep monitoring Tasha’s progress with these adjustments and will reconvene in a month to review.
During the review meeting, the special education teacher shares Isaiah’s progress monitoring data. The team discusses the reduction in Isaiah’s target behavior since beginning implementation of the BIP and notes the consistency of this reduction across settings. The paraeducator adds that Isaiah is also using his communication card often and only occasionally requires additional prompting to do so.
Based on this data and discussion, record your thoughts about what Isaiah’s team should do next.
Note: Note: The text field is provided for reflection purposes only; your answers will not be saved and will not be available for downloading or printing.
Based on Isaiah’s progress, we can tell that the intervention plan is working well. The team doesn’t want to make any major changes and undo his progress, but it is a good time to think about how we could fade parts of the interventions to help Isaiah become more independent. In particular, we would like to start reducing the amount of prompting provided by the paraeducator and to increase the number of tokens Isaiah needs to earn to cash in for reinforcement. We will continue recording scatterplot data as we fade these supports and come back together in 60 days to review.
