Doing BTAM Right

School BTAM efforts generally reflect a commitment to using supportive measures that address root causes of concerning behaviors rather than relying primarily on exclusionary discipline practices or referrals to law enforcement.

This pattern demonstrates that BTAM teams function as intended—as a preventative approach focused on early intervention and support rather than punishment that helps students address underlying issues while keeping them connected to school.

This approach aligns with best practices and supports positive student outcomes.

Is BTAM working as intended?

Chapter 11 is unique insofar as we examine principals’ responses to a set of hypothetical scenarios about student behaviors; the goal of these scenarios is to understand whether schools’ BTAM programs are working as intended and whether principals’ reports of what their BTAM team does matches with how they respond to hypothetical scenarios.

The intent of BTAM is to use information about the student and their behavior to determine the right types of interventions that will simultaneously benefit the student (address the concerning behavior to decrease the risk of harm) and also ensure the safety of the school community.

Overall, our data demonstrate that BTAM teams do not commonly rely on exclusionary practices as the means of intervening with students who display behaviors that elicit concerns for the safety of themselves and others.

our survey sought to understand whether BTAM is working as intended at schools around the country

Third, schools appear to be focused on more supportive interventions, as opposed to restrictive measures, including exclusionary discipline, at least as the most frequently chosen steps in responding to incidents.

Schools are responding to low-level incidents with support-focused intervention options and reserving restrictive practices for more severe incidents.

In essence, a BTAM program that is leading to the increased use of exclusionary discipline or more student arrests is “doing BTAM wrong.”

Definitively answering questions about such outcomes and determining whether BTAM is achieving its dual goals of keeping schools safe while also using supportive intervention to change student behavior and reducing the need for suspension, expulsion, and criminal justice action requires hard data (on both student outcomes post-BTAM and what response would have looked like in the absence of a BTAM at school).

Therefore, it is worthwhile to consider what our national-level survey data can say about whether schools are “doing BTAM right” as a complementary approach.

Results from our scenario analyses suggest that K–12 schools are generally using BTAM as intended.

However, the answer to the key question of whether schools are “doing BTAM right” appears in the previous two sections.

Although the balance between support-focused and restrictive interventions is encouraging, the number of scenarios in which at least some principals selected law enforcement involvement is likely cause for concern (Figure 11.7).

Taken together, our results suggest schools are successfully focusing BTAM on situations most likely to affect student and school safety while relying on other behavioral teams or processes for less severe cases—a critical balance that helps maintain the integrity of the behavioral threat assessment process.

School BTAM efforts generally reflect a commitment to using supportive measures that address root causes of concerning behaviors, rather than relying primarily on exclusionary discipline practices or referrals to law enforcement.

This pattern demonstrates that BTAM teams function as intended—as a preventative approach focused on early intervention and support rather than punishment, helping students address underlying issues while keeping them connected to school.