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Tool 57: Reading a BIP: Replacement Behaviors, Not Just Punishments

THE RULE

A behavior intervention plan (BIP) is the plan built from the FBA. It is what the school will do with what the assessment found.

Here is the thing most parents are never told. Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), 34 C.F.R. Part 300 requires a behavior intervention plan in exactly one situation: after a manifestation determination review finds the behavior was a manifestation of the disability, the team must conduct an FBA and implement a plan, or review and modify the plan that already exists (34 C.F.R. § 300.530(f)(1)). Outside that discipline context, no federal regulation orders a district to write a BIP, and no federal regulation says what a BIP must contain. What the regulations require instead is that the team, for a child whose behavior impedes learning, consider the use of positive behavioral interventions and supports and other strategies to address that behavior (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(a)(2)(i)).

So the law’s demands on a behavior plan come from somewhere else: from the parts of the IEP the plan has to live inside.

• Measurable annual goals, including functional goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(2)(i)). The replacement behavior belongs here.

• Special education, related services, supplementary aids and services, and program modifications or supports for school personnel (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(4)). The adult actions belong here - including staff training.

• How progress will be measured, and when it will be reported to you (34 C.F.R. § 300.320(a)(3)). The data belongs here.

• Access and notice for staff. The IEP must be accessible to each regular education teacher, special education teacher, and provider responsible for carrying it out. Each of them must be informed of their specific responsibilities and of the specific accommodations, modifications, and supports that must be provided (34 C.F.R. § 300.323(d)).

• Revision when progress does not come. The team must revise the IEP to address any lack of expected progress toward the annual goals (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(b)(1)(ii)(A)).

• The general education teacher participates. To the extent appropriate, your child’s regular education teacher must take part in determining appropriate positive behavioral interventions and supports (34 C.F.R. § 300.324(a)(3)(i)).

A behavior plan that sits in a drawer, mentioned nowhere in the IEP, has none of those hooks. A behavior plan written into the IEP has all of them. That is the move this tool teaches.

WHY IT MATTERS

A punishment tells a child to stop. It never tells the child what to do instead.

If a child yells to escape a writing task, and the answer is a lost recess, then on Tuesday the child still cannot do the writing task and still needs to get out of it. So Tuesday looks like Monday. The plan has changed nothing about the problem the child was solving by yelling.

The replacement behavior is the whole point of the plan. A replacement behavior is something the child can actually do that gets the same result as the behavior - serves the same function - faster, more reliably, and at less cost to the child. If the function is escape, the replacement is a way to ask for a break, and the break has to be given, every time, at first. If the function is attention, the replacement is a way to ask for the teacher, and the teacher has to come.

A replacement behavior that works less well than the behavior it replaces will not get used. That is not defiance. That is a child being efficient. A break card that gets ignored 3 times out of 4 teaches the child that yelling is the reliable option.

The plan also has to say what the adults will do before the behavior. Those are antecedent strategies: change the seat, shorten the task, give the warning, pre-teach the transition, offer a choice between 2 acceptable options. Most of the work of a good plan happens here, before anything goes wrong.

The Supreme Court has held that an IEP must be reasonably calculated to enable a child to make progress appropriate in light of the child’s circumstances (Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District RE-1, 580 U.S. 386 (2017); Tool 33). A behavior plan that never changes, for behavior that never changes, is worth measuring against that standard out loud, at the table.