A student who forgets homework, blurts out in class, or struggles to begin assignments may be seen as careless or disruptive. These behaviors often reflect executive functioning (EF) challenges, the mental skills that help us plan, organize, focus, and regulate emotions.
Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a popular framework in schools that promotes positive behavior by teaching clear expectations, reinforcing successes, and providing consistent supports. PBIS aims to create safe, predictable environments where students can learn and participate.
Yet, while PBIS emphasizes behavior, it doesn’t always address the skills behind the behavior. Students building EF skills often need explicit instruction, practice, and scaffolding to use the skills PBIS expects.
This article will explore how PBIS works, its limitations for students with EF challenges, and practical ways to adapt supports within the PBIS framework.
Click here to jump down to the TL;DR summary.
What is PBIS?
PBIS is an acronym that stands for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. PBIS is a framework that emphasizes teaching, modeling and reinforcing positive, prosocial behaviors across all school settings. PBIS sets clear expectations, teaches and models expected behaviors, and uses consistent responses across school settings. Schools often ask themselves the following questions when identifying the expectations to teach for their school:
- What difficulties are most common (e.g., disruptions in class)?
- Where do they occur (e.g., recess, hallways)?
- When they occur (e.g., late mornings, before lunch)?
- Who is struggling most (e.g., a particular grade level)?
- How often do they occur and whether patterns shift over time?
PBIS includes tiered levels of support, including universal, targeted, and individualized supports that meet student needs.
Review of Executive Functioning
Executive functioning (EF) is a set of mental skills that allow us to manage our thoughts, actions, and emotions to reach our goals. Executive functioning skills include skills like working memory, planning, organization, time management, task initiation, self-monitoring, and emotional regulation. These skills begin developing early on in childhood and continue through early adulthood. These skills are critical for success in class and in social relationships.
When teachers reframe executive functioning struggles as skills to teach rather than behaviors to manage, they can shift from asking, “Why won’t this student do it?” to “What skill does this student need help developing?”
Tiered Support and PBIS
PBIS uses a tiered system of support, ranging from strategies for all students to more individualized interventions for those who need them. Below is an overview of the three tiers and what each means in terms of support intensity.
Tier 1: Universal Supports
Universal supports are instructional strategies that are part of school-wide expectations. These strategies are explicitly taught to the whole class and often embedded into the curriculum. Tier 1 is considered effective when about 80% of students are doing well with universal supports alone.
Examples can include consistent routines, visual schedules, and whole-class self-regulation breaks. Sometimes, supports typically considered “targeted” become universal when many students need them.
Tier 2: Targeted Supports
Targeted supports often include small group interventions that students receive in the classroom, by the classroom teacher or other student service personnel. Examples include daily check-ins with a trusted adult, small-group skills instruction, or “lunch bunch” sessions where students practice social and organizational skills. Typically, about 5–15% of students need Tier 2 support in some area of their daily school performance.
Tier 3: Intensive, Individualized Supports
Individualized supports include any instruction that is not provided in the classroom. Students who participate in group counseling sessions in a different setting to work on specific skill(s) receive Tier 3 support. Typically, about 3–5% of students need Tier 3 support in some area of their daily school performance.
Sometimes, individualized support is best understood by further assessing the area(s) of concern. Functional Behavior Assessments (FBAs) and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs) are often used to identify root causes and tailor interventions. This helps the adults know what learners are trying to communicate through their behavior.
In addition to these levels of support, students may also receive direct instruction in a particular skill or consult with other professionals like a speech pathologist, occupational therapist, physical therapist, school counselor, or school psychologist. In addition to having people in these roles, many schools have people in different positions that might be a part of teaching this intensity of instruction, such as a behavioral specialist or an interventionist.
Limitations of PBIS
While PBIS is a helpful framework for educators, it doesn’t always account for the underlying skills learners need to succeed. EF skills should be viewed as a skill for teachers to teach, rather than a behavior to manage.
Compliance vs. Skill Building
Rewards and consequences can reinforce desired behaviors, but they do not by themselves teach specific executive function strategies (for example, organization or memory aids). Many implementations focus on observable behavior unless teams also provide explicit instruction in the underlying skills students need.
Example: A learner may earn a ‘token’ for turning in homework, but if they struggle with organization or working memory, they may forget the assignment the very next day. In this example, the student is being rewarded for a skill that they are not consistently able to achieve. This can then be frustrating for the educator, who believes the forgetful behavior is intentional since it is inconsistent.
One-Size Doesn’t Always Fit All
Students with executive functioning challenges may need individualized support that is not accurately captured by the universal expectations of PBIS. Universal expectations often are presented as “Be Responsible” or “Stay on Task,” which sound clear, but may not capture the scaffolds necessary to achieve this expectation.
Example: A learner may appear to be off-task or disengaged, but is struggling to know how to start on a task. Scaffolds could be the one support necessary to help the learner meet expectations, but they cannot do it with the expectation alone.
When Behavior is Misread Without Executive Function Context
When PBIS is implemented without attention to neurodivergent students’ needs, staff may misread behavior as intentional, even when it reflects executive function skill gaps. Students with ADHD, autism, or other learning differences may receive more disciplinary referrals if the PBIS framework is implemented without additional supports or scaffolds.
Example: A learner with ADHD who blurts out in class may be disciplined for “blurting” even though they continue to work on developing impulse control. Instead of disciplining this EF need, the student could be taught alternative ways to monitor their behavior in class, or get their thoughts out and to the teacher without disrupting others.
Need for Additional Research
Additional research is needed to understand PBIS impacts for neurodivergent students. Students with higher support needs should be included in all tiers of PBIS. Students who spend less time in the general education classroom may be missing out on crucial universal and targeted supports that they would benefit from in addition to their individualized support (p. 4). In addition, PBIS expectations or activities may not always be accessible to students with cognitive or physical needs requiring more support.
Positively, when PBIS is implemented with fidelity, schools see a drop in suspension rates overall. However, learners with learning differences continue to be at a greater risk for discipline than their peers. This means that results have been promising to support students, but more work must be done to address disparities.
How to Make Executive Function Needs a Teaching Opportunity, Within PBIS
As an educator, you already likely have many systems in place to organize your classroom, workspaces, and expectations. Based on the needs of your classroom, you can teach executive functioning strategies for all students and provide more targeted support for a handful of your students. Depending on your class’s needs, you may make those targeted supports universal!
Educators can adapt PBIS strategies to focus on EF skills directly. For example:
Check-In/Check Out
Check-in/Check-out (CICO) is a popular strategy used for targeted, or Tier 2, intervention. This intervention is when a student meets with a trusted, supportive adult at the very beginning and very end of the school day. Students make a daily goal to meet with the mentor at the beginning of the day and often also review expectations to meet that goal. In the afternoon, students meet with their mentor again and review teacher feedback from the day.
This intervention is often based on behavior during the school day. Rather than focusing on behavior, which can become focusing on negative behaviors, try focusing on the use of executive functioning strategies.
Universal Token Strategies
A popular PBIS technique is implementing a universal token system, such as earning some kind of made-up currency in exchange for demonstrating the expected behavior during the school day. Revising this system could include rewarding students in the same way for practicing their executive functioning strategies.
By embedding EF coaching into familiar PBIS systems, schools can teach the skills students need rather than just managing surface behaviors.
Additional Resources
Supporting executive functioning within PBIS often requires going beyond classroom strategies. Life Skills Advocate (LSA) offers one-on-one coaching that helps students build executive function skills for school and daily living, while also matching them with coaches who understand the neurodivergent experience.
TL;DR – (Too Long; Didn’t Read)
PBIS helps schools create consistent expectations and reduce disciplinary issues, but it often emphasizes behavior compliance rather than teaching the executive functioning skills students need to thrive. For learners with EF challenges, support must go beyond rewards and consequences to include explicit instruction (e.g., organization) and scaffolding.
The following tiers are created in schools to support students across areas of academic and functional skills, including executive functioning:
- Tier 1 (Universal)–School-wide supports for all students, such as routines, visual schedules, and regulation breaks.
- Tier 2 (Targeted)–Small-group supports like check-ins, lunch bunch, or skill-building groups, which can be adapted to focus on EF skills.
- Tier 3 (Individualized)–Intensive support, often with specialists, sometimes guided by FBAs or BIPs to address root needs.
Though PBIS provides a helpful framework for educators, this system also needs intentional executive functioning adaptations. Executive functioning needs should be viewed as a skill for teachers, rather than a behavior to manage.
Further Reading
- Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (2025) – What is PBIS?
- How to ABA (2024) – The Power of Token Economies: A Comprehensive Guide to Effective Behavior Reinforcement
- Junod, DuPaul, Jitendra, Volpe, & Cleary (2005) – Classroom observations of students with and without ADHD: Differences across types of engagement
- McIntosh (2023) – Schoolwide positive behavioural interventions and supports and human rights: transforming our educational systems into levers for social justice
- Life Skills Advocate (2021) – Self-Monitoring: Long-Term Strategies & Supports
- Life Skills Advocate (2022) – What is Executive Functioning?