Page 61 - Volume 6 - Issue 1 - DBU Journal for K-12 Educational Leadership

Journal of K-12 Educational Research 59 mistreatment increased. However, there was a decrease in the mean referral rates for safety transgressions. Figure 1 displays the differences in the mean referral rates from 2015-2016 to Year 1 implementation. The researcher did not reject the null hypotheses using the results of the dependent samples t-test. The results indicate that there is not a significant difference in the mean referral rates for the three identified discipline infractions from the 2015-2016 school year compared to the year of implementation. While there is no statistical significance between the mean referrals rates for fighting, mistreatment of others, or safety transgressions from 2015-2016 to Year 1 implementation, the researcher notes that there was a 15% decrease in discipline referrals for safety transgressions from 2015-2016 to Year 1 implementation of SWPBIS. Research Question 2 (RQ2) Is there a statistically significant relationship between the overall campus scores on the Benchmark of Quality and student referral rates for fighting, mistreatment of others, and safety transgressions at each elementary campus? The current study found that there was a relationship between campus scores on the BoQ and discipline referrals. The researcher did reject the null hypotheses for fighting and mistreatment of others using the results of the Pearson r correlation coefficient analysis, but the researcher did not reject the null hypothesis for safety transgressions. There was a significant negative correlation between campus BoQ scores for both fighting and mistreatment of others, which suggests that higher scores on the BoQ in the year of implementation is related to lower percentages of referrals for these two areas. There was also a negative correlation for safety transgressions. Although the results were not significant, they still suggest that in the first year of SWPBIS implementation, the higher that campuses score on the BoQ, the lower the percentage of safety transgression referrals. Research Question 3 (RQ3) Is there a statistically significant relationship between campus teacher retention rates before the implementation of School- wide Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports and Year 1 implementation? The findings of the current study did suggest that there was a difference between campus teacher retention rates before and after Year 1 implementation, however the results indicate that the teacher retention rates were significantly lower in the year of implementation compared to the teacher retention rates from 2015-2016. The dependent samples t-test that was performed did not lead to a rejection of the null hypothesis. Teacher retention rates decreased from the 2015-2016 to Year 1 implementation. Implications The researcher of the current study sought to determine if the implementation of SWPBIS would result in an increase of teacher retention rates. The data from the current study was to serve as an initial step to determining causation between implementation of SWPBIS and increases in teacher retention rates. Furthermore, the researcher was interested in determining if discipline referral rates would decrease following implementation of SWPBIS. If student behavior is a major cause for teacher turnover, then the researcher sought to analyze whether teacher retention would increase if discipline referrals decreased. Additionally, since a program or process is only as good as the implementation, the researcher analyzed whether schools with higher rates of fidelity of implementation had lower mean percentages of discipline referrals. The findings of the current study show that there is an association between implementation fidelity of SWPBIS and student behavior outcomes. The BoQ tool was developed to assess the fidelity of implementation of SWPBIS. The findings of the current study support research conducted by Childs et al. (2016) along with research conducted by Freeman et al. (2016) which noted that higher scores on the BoQ were significantly related to lower rates of discipline referrals. The outcomes from the current study provided strong evidence to principals, district supervisors, and other stakeholders of the district of the current study that there is a potentially positive association between fidelity of SWPBIS implementation and discipline referrals. Despite a lack of evidence that teacher retention rates increased in the District of the current study from the year prior to implementation to the year of implementation,

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