EUGENE–Teachers can’t teach and students can’t learn in rowdy and unsafe schools. But researchers at the University of Oregon’s Institute on Violence and Destructive Behavior say punitive measures such as detention and expulsion are as likely to increase negative behavior as to stop it.

"You don’t improve discipline by dealing with one student or class at a time but by making widespread and fundamental changes in how schools function as systems," says Rob Horner, director of the Special Training Program at the UO College of Education.

Their research shows that, in many cases, kids want the attention and peer admiration that can go along with expulsion and detention.

As an alternative approach, Horner and colleague George Sugai designed a school-wide approach called Effective Behavior Support or EBS, which prevents many discipline problems before they occur. The program is designed to define, teach and encourage appropriate student behavior in kindergarten through eighth grade. It’s one of a number of safe school programs to come out of the institute¾ programs such as First Steps, which targets potentially violent children before they start school and helps them learn non-violent ways to get along.

Fern Ridge Middle School was experiencing serious discipline problems when administrators learned about the EBS program in 1993. Principal Susan Taylor-Greene and key staff members decided to ask the UO for help. Within weeks, school officials were working with Horner to custom design a program for the school.

They were so successful that in the first year of the project, office discipline referrals dropped 42 percent. This is the fourth year that Fern Ridge Middle School has used the program, and discipline reports have remained low.

"This program helped save our school," says Greene. "Our students are much clearer now about how we expect them to behave. And because we’re spending less time just reacting to discipline problems, we can concentrate on teaching."

The Fern Ridge version of EBS is the "Give Me Five" Program. It focuses on five basic behaviors. Students are expected to be respectful, be responsible, keep their hands and feet to themselves, and to come to class on time, prepared to do the assigned work.

"A key element of this strategy is to make sure students understand the rules," says UO graduate student Rob March, who has been tracking the program for the last year.

To make sure that happens, students don’t attend regular classes on the first day of school. Instead, they spend the day learning about the "Give Me Five" Program. The Fern Ridge staff leads small-group tours through the building, where the kids get concrete descriptions¾ in the form of skits and demonstrations–about which behavior is okay and which isn’t. Students move through a variety of school settings including the office, classrooms and even the restrooms. Colorful posters that list the "Give Me Five" expectations are posted all over the school to remind students to take the program seriously.

A key part of the EBS approach is to match the intensity of the intervention to the intensity of the problem. Research shows that the 10 percent of students who have the most problem behaviors respond well to increased amounts of adult supervision and contact.

Horner and Sugai carefully track the results of EBS programs in 67 schools, mostly in Oregon¾ including Tigard, Tualatin, Eugene, Roseburg and Bend¾ but also in Hawaii, Texas and British Columbia.

Because of the success of the EBS approach, the U.S. Department of Education is considering the UO as the main site for a National Center for Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. With the establishment of the center, Sugai and Horner will be able to share their successes at Fern Ridge and other sites with schools across the nation.

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