Missouri SW-PBS Consultants Guidance Regarding Confidentiality
11.06.2012
Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) educational consultants can have access to
student information IF the consultant was identified as a school official in the school’s and/or district’s
FERPA policy and the release of information is to further legitimate educational purpose. Given that MO
SW-PBS consultants are not hired by school districts, they would not be considered a school official.
Decisions about confidentiality related to any aspect of students, staff and families are determined by
school districts and are reflected in their formal policies.
The job description for MO SW-PBS Consultants positions does not include personal and individual
student advice and therefore addressing concerns about individual students exceeds the scope of the
job. However, the school does not need parental consent to provide information minus personally
identifiable information to anyone. So if a school wants to create a scenario without any personal
information and provide it to the consultant for general discussion that would be permitted. The
consultant would not know if it is an actual case, a compilation of several students or speculation by the
staff. Consultants should follow the guidelines about how schools seek advice and their district’s policy.
Personally identifiable information includes, but is not limited to student name, parent name, family
member names, address, personal identifier (Social Security number, student number or biometric
record), date of birth, place of birth and mother’s maiden name, or other information that alone or in
combination is linkable to a specific student).
MO SW-PBS General Guidance:
It has been our policy to never provide individual student consults for a number of reasons related to
liability, best practice and building sustainability. We teach a process that schools can then learn how to
continue to implement on their own.
If a school provides a student example of their own with no personally identifiable information, we can
teach them to assess it and problem-solve by asking guiding questions, and then follow up through
reviewing it with them for clarity, relation to function of the identified behavior and practicality of the
plan they develop. In this way we are not directly giving advice or suggestions, nor are we consulting on
an individual student. Rather we are building their capacity to correctly identify the function of
behavior; consider the information they have to support a behavior intervention plan; and then plan for
implementation, fidelity checks, progress monitoring and generalization/maintenance.
In summary:
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Teams can be asked to bring example FBA-BIP from their school/district to use during training
sessions (e.g., apply evaluation rubric / Adapted FACTS to cases they know) if their district policy
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allows it. However, no student names or personally identifiable student information should be
shared in any manner – verbally or written.
Our role as SWPBS consultants allows us to give advice on process and/or to offer guiding
questions if teams ask about a particular student situation.
We do not provide advice or consultation on any individual students. We do not receive any
verbal or written information that is personally identifiable.
As consultants we may attend school/district meetings where information about an individual is
shared. If that is the case, we do not read or accept personally identifiable information, and we
refrain from discussing that student per se. Rather we take the team back to guiding questions
and/or reflection to support them in coming to decisions as to how to proceed. We maintain
confidentiality of any information we may be privy to as a result of attending school/district
meetings.
Some ideas of how to incorporate teaching of FBA/BIP that provides participants with more relevant
examples:
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Practice during training – pair each with one person they will observe on a specific behavior and
share results during training session.
Practice during training – videos to watch and critique, possibly take own data and then check
with results from others observing the video. SSD PBIS consultants reported an activity led by
Dr. Kathleen Lane that included watching You Tube videos with instructions for a specific
behavior to observe and do frequency counts.
Practices during training – teams bring information regarding a specific student with all
identifiable information blacked out or removed. They then work through the process with
guidance of consultant and questions from another team with which they are paired.
Consultant comes on-site and reviews observation information (student ID info. removed) and
problem solves with team or an individual.
Follow-up exercise after teams are trained regarding process of completing FBA/BIP - Once back
in their school, the team will complete an FBA/BIP on a student. They will electronically send a
copy, (changing names for confidentiality) to the consultant for feedback. The consultant will
assess the completed FBA/BIP highlighting correct steps and proving informative feedback
where needed. A copy of the FBA/BIP is then sent back to team for review/revision.
a. A second possible step in the follow-up exercise - Several weeks later, all teams will
meet online. The consultant will put the original FBA/BIP on the screen and together will
discuss the highlighted area and the areas of concern. Only the team that sent in the
FBA/BIP will dialog with consultant about their document. Other teams will be observers
only. Each FAB/BIP will go through this process. Often, building administrators or district
administrators are asked to sit in on this meeting. It gives them a good sense of the
knowledge level their staff has for finding function of behavior and providing necessary
behavior plans.
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Considerations Related to Screening Processes:
Screening is recognized through a variety of research-based studies to be an important process to build
into systems for identifying students early on who may be struggling with issues associated with
academics, social/behavioral progress, or both. The policies and procedures related to screening are
determined by school districts.
In our current training curriculum, we teach that screening is a process that can incorporate both formal
and informal information gathering.
Regarding screening instruments, we should remind participants to:
 Check with school/district administrators to assure formal screening with specified instruments
is allowed through district policy before going forward. If allowed,
o assure monies available to pay for protocols and scoring of them
o assure system for any permissions, notifications, etc. are in place
 Review the different instruments, their costs and capabilities before making a decision (MO
SWPBS document attached).
 Collaborate with district special education representatives to determine where/how screening
will align with special education identification processes and policy.
 Establish procedures so that staff uses student numbers rather than names when filling out the
screening instruments, or use both if allowed by district administration.
 Review technology capacity to:
o complete instruments online if applicable
o collate information into a spreadsheet with columns so that
 reports can be run that only show information by randomly assigned student
numbers
 Reports with student names and/or ID numbers can also be run for in-district
use
 Determine if internalizing and externalizing behavior can be identified with the instrument(s)
 Create system for supporting utilizing screening results
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