Behavior Plan Not Working? Here's How to Move MTSS for Behavior from Paper to Practice

Every school leader knows the feeling: after hours of team meetings, careful observation, and thoughtful discussion, you finally have a behavior support plan in hand for a student who is really struggling. The strategies are research-based, the replacement behavior is clearly defined, and everyone leaves the meeting feeling hopeful. The plan is shared with the student’s family and teachers, goes into their file, and the team breathes a collective sigh of relief.  The hard work is done.  But is it?

We all know that even if a team has a perfect plan, if it isn’t able to be implemented with fidelity, it won’t change behavior. So how can we make sure everyone is able to bring the plan to life and actually deliver the support students need? 

Why Implementation Fidelity Matters

Consider this scenario: A team develops a comprehensive, aligned behavior plan. Three weeks later, the student's behavior has shown no signs of improvement.  The team feels defeated and begins to consider whether the student needs a more restrictive setting.  

But when someone finally asks the hard questions – Do we have any documentation to show that we’re implementing these strategies? – the team discovers that the morning check-in hasn't happened in over a week, the replacement behavior was taught once but never practiced, and the consequence strategy only gets used by two of the student's four teachers.

The plan didn't fail. It was never really in place to begin with. The student’s lack of progress is not only reasonable, it’s predictable. 

Research consistently shows that implementation fidelity – whether a plan is executed as designed – is one of the strongest predictors of intervention success. Yet it's also one of the most overlooked aspects of behavior support in schools.

The Leader's Role: Creating Systems for Success

As a school leader, you have the power to create conditions that enable teams to deliver on the promise of their plans. Not through micromanaging or catching people not following plans, but rather by ensuring these conversations happen, that they're grounded in data rather than impressions, and that they lead to clear next steps:

An important element of ensuring implementation fidelity is regular review meetings – scheduled at the outset, not arranged reactively when things feel urgent.  These conversations center on two issues:

1. How well are we implementing the plan? (Fidelity)
2. How is the student responding? (Impact)

These questions work together. High fidelity with no impact means the hypothesis may be wrong or the strategies need adjustment. Low fidelity with no impact means we need to solve the implementation problem before we can evaluate the plan itself.

What this looks like in practice: 

• At the end of the final plan development meeting, schedule the first review date on the calendar – typically two weeks from the start of implementation. 
• At plan meetings, quickly rate each strategy (2=fully implemented, 1=partial, 0=not). Example: "5-minute transition warning" gets a 1 because it's not happening before lunch due to a tight schedule. 
• Now you've identified the barrier.  You're not judging – you're diagnosing. This quick inventory tells you immediately where the gaps are before you even look at student data.
  
  

When implementation fidelity is low, teams must resist the urge to toss plans out the window and move to more restrictive supports.  Instead, ask: 

• What's getting in the way? 
• What support do we need to implement this plan as intended? 

Maybe the strategy requires materials no one has time to prepare. Maybe it relies on staff whose schedules need adjusting. Maybe it's too complicated or there’s confusion. A leader helps teams answer these questions, then clears the barriers by allocating resources to stay the course. 

What this looks like in practice: 

• Ask, "What's getting in the way?" when discussing implementation.
• Often the answers are concrete and solvable. For example, the paraprofessional who's supposed to do the afternoon check-in has cafeteria duty – you can adjust the schedule or reassign the task. Your leadership matters here because you have the positional authority to move resources, adjust schedules, and make decisions that teachers can't make on their own.

Teachers and staff are already overwhelmed - especially when it comes to student behavior. If your data collection system requires 20 minutes of charting per day, it won't happen consistently. Work with your team to design simple, sustainable data collection methods that capture what matters most without adding workload.

What this looks like in practice: 

• Simple, sustainable data collection matches the behavior and the function. 
• For example, for a student who's refusing tasks, the classroom teacher might keep a clipboard with the daily schedule and simply put a checkmark next to activities where the student participated without refusal – this takes 30 seconds at the end of the day.
• Help your team identify what question they're trying to answer – usually frequency and intensity – and then design the absolute simplest data collection method that can answer those questions (tally incidents, daily 1-5 rating, yes/no checks) . The best data system is the one that actually gets used.

ABC’s Plan Implementation & Analysis Tool was designed to support this exact moment in the work. It provides teams with a practical framework for moving from plan creation to sustained implementation by helping leaders and educators make the shifts described above. 

The Bottom Line

Students with intensive behavior needs deserve more than plans that look good on paper. They deserve plans that are actually implemented, monitored continuously, and adjusted based on data.

Your leadership makes this possible. Establish expectations for implementation monitoring, create systems for data-based decisions, and support teams in solving barriers. This transforms behavior support from documentation into real problem-solving.

Model this by asking about implementation before outcomes, dedicating meeting time to barriers, providing data collection resources, celebrating continuous improvement, and making it safe to admit when something isn't working.

The next time you celebrate having a plan, ensure it makes a difference: give your team the support they need for consistent, monitored, data-driven action that leads to real change for students.

Not sure how to start monitoring the fidelity of a complex student behavior plan?  

Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with one of our experts to proactively plan your approach!