From Punishment to Problem-Solving: The CPS Model Explained by Dr. Ross Greene ~ 1004

Tim Villegas
Dr. Ross Greene wants schools to rethink how they are supporting learners with challenging behavior.

Ross Greene
Unfortunately, a lot of schools, despite their emphasis on relationships, are still relying very heavily on consequences and still very focused on the behavior of their students. Now, that might sound like an interesting statement—what would you be focused on if not the behavior? You’d be focused on the problems that are causing that behavior.

Tim Villegas
And what about the framework that many schools across the country have been using—Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support?

Ross Greene
You know, the tiers are an attempt to organize the effort. The effort should be aimed at making sure every kid gets what they need. That is also the definition of equity. So interestingly enough, we should be asking ourselves the question: Are the three tiers helping us ensure that every kid gets what they need?

Tim Villegas
But how would it look different if we supported learners with your model?

Ross Greene
Solving a problem collaboratively involves three steps. First step is called the empathy step. Second step is called the define adult concerns step. Third step is called the invitation.

Tim Villegas
My name is Tim Villegas, and you’re listening to Think Inclusive, presented by MCIE. This podcast exists to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education, and what inclusion looks like in the real world. For this episode, I talk with Dr. Ross Greene, author of the books Lost at School and Raising Human Beings. We discuss what schools are getting right and wrong about supporting learners with challenging behavior, and an alternative lens for educators to view behavior in all learners. Thank you so much for listening. And now my interview with Dr. Ross Greene.

Tim Villegas
Today on the podcast, we have Dr. Ross Greene, who is the New York Times bestselling author of Lost at School and Raising Human Beings. He is the originator of the model of care described in those books, now called Collaborative and Proactive Solutions. Dr. Greene was on the faculty at Harvard Medical School for over 20 years and is now the founding director of the nonprofit Lives in the Balance, which provides a vast array of free web-based resources on the CPS model. Dr. Greene, welcome to the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Ross Greene
Thanks for inviting me to do this.

Tim Villegas
I’d like to jump right in and ask: What are schools getting right about supporting students with behavioral challenges? And what are they getting wrong?

Ross Greene
There are a lot of very caring people in schools who care a lot about establishing relationships with kids and are working under very difficult circumstances. Unfortunately, a lot of schools, despite their emphasis on relationships, are still relying very heavily on consequences and still very focused on the behavior of their students. That might sound like an interesting statement—what would you be focused on if not the behavior? You’d be focused on the problems that are causing that behavior. So I think that a lot of schools are still way too focused on modifying behavior. And I think of concerning behavior as merely the means by which a kid is communicating that there are expectations they’re having difficulty meeting. Still too much focus on behavior and modifying it, and not enough focus on and expertise in identifying and solving the problems that are causing those behaviors. So I think schools are getting a lot right. And I think that schools got a lot right during the pandemic, when they were working under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. And I’m, quite frankly, not saying anything differently now than I was pre-pandemic. This is all about identifying the expectations students are having difficulty meeting—what we call unsolved problems—and solving those problems, rather than relying so heavily on strategies that are merely aimed at modifying kids’ behaviors.

Tim Villegas
How did we get to this point in education? It seems like the emphasis on using behaviorist ideas to solve challenging behavior in students is a relatively newer phenomenon. I started teaching in 2004, and by the time I left, it seems like that’s all we were talking about—PBIS, the function of behavior, interventions.

Ross Greene
Well, B. F. Skinner was around a long time ago; applied behavior analysis has been around for a very long time. There are many applied behavior analysts in schools, but I do think that, believe it or not, things took an interesting turn with Columbine.

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Ross Greene
Columbine prompted the rise of zero tolerance policies, allegedly to keep us safer in schools. So, although B. F. Skinner and applied behavior analysis have been around for a very long time, I think that fears about school safety actually prompted us to create school environments that were less user-friendly for kids, less focused on social-emotional learning, less focused on relationships, and more focused on coming down hard and having zero tolerance for inappropriate behaviors.

Tim Villegas
We have a lot of educators listening—mostly educators—and they are steeped in this behaviorist thinking and framework. What are educators supposed to do when they want to do what’s best for kids? They hear you and think, “That’s good. I want that. I want relationships. I want to believe that children do well if they can.” Yet they’re trying to reconcile what they’ve been taught, and maybe they’re at a PBIS school with rewards and a framework. Do we need to separate from that framework, or is there middle ground?

Ross Greene
Many schools are implementing Collaborative and Proactive Solutions within their structures of PBIS. So clearly, they do not have to be separated. PBIS flows from the applied behavior analytic tradition, so it’s no accident that schools implementing PBIS—given the “B” word of PBIS—have a traditional definition of function, the function of a kid’s behavior, and are primarily focused on teaching and re-teaching appropriate behaviors. So while there are schools implementing CPS within the three structures of PBIS, when you get to the interventions that are often applied as part of PBIS, that’s where life can get particularly interesting in the fact that PBIS is still primarily focused on the “B” word—behavior. And in Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, we are focused on the problems that are causing those behaviors and solving them. So there are definitely differences in approach and lenses of those two ways of doing things. But that doesn’t mean we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Many schools, as I’ve said, are implementing CPS within the structures of PBIS. If that’s all PBIS is, easy-peasy. That’s not all PBIS is. PBIS has certain lenses that flow from the applied behavior analytic tradition and is primarily focused on behavior. In the CPS model, we view behavior as simply the signal. It’s not something we focus on. So I think the biggest issue is that it can be confusing for people in terms of what we’re focused on and what interventions we are applying to help our most vulnerable students.

Tim Villegas
Let’s say a school administrator is listening and thinking, “What is CPS, anyway?”

Ross Greene
The CPS model draws upon 40 to 50 years of research telling us that kids who are responding poorly to problems and frustrations are lacking skills, not motivation. That’s huge. Skills like flexibility, adaptability, frustration tolerance, problem solving, emotion regulation. The research tells us that is so. There’s actually no research telling us that kids who are responding poorly to problems and frustrations are unmotivated—zero. That study does not exist. Therefore, in the CPS model, we are not applying motivational strategies to try to help these kids. We are helping adults and kids solve problems proactively and collaboratively—meaning together and outside the heat of the moment.

And what we find—and I was trained as a behaviorist too—so changing lenses is something I know a little bit about, because my own lens has changed. That said, I think the CPS model fits well under the social learning theory umbrella, under which other behavioral approaches sit as well. So we’re not necessarily talking about different universes.

There’s the Reader’s Digest version of the CPS model. We find that if people are focused on behavior, they are missing the forest for the trees; they’re not focused on the problems that are causing those behaviors. You can reward and punish a kid till the cows come home for their behavior and still not solve a single one of the problems that are causing those behaviors. And in the kids I’ve worked with—thousands at this point, many of them in prison, inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, kids who are being suspended perpetually, kids still being hit at school, kids being restrained and secluded—one thing’s certain in my mind: focusing primarily on their behavior, rather than on the problems causing those behaviors, is a big part of how we’ve been failing these kids.

Tim Villegas
I don’t mean to put words in your mouth, Dr. Greene, but PBIS is referenced in IDEA, and the last time it was reauthorized was 2004. Would you say—we need a realignment in education, specifically around special education and general education. It’s not working; our audience knows it’s not working. We need a unified system. In your view, does CPS fall within that? It’s not just for special education students; it’s for all students, right?

Ross Greene
That would certainly be my view. And I am aware, because I’m in contact with legislators and their aides, that PBIS is often the go-to in legislation. But I think that there are many people pondering the best ways to fix things who are aware that PBIS has had a very long run; the results are before us. If PBIS was all we needed, we’d be in good shape right now. So I think there are people beginning to question whether PBIS is all we need, whether those three tiers are as useful as people feel they are, and whether focusing on a kid’s behavior is really the best way to help them create better relationships and communication. In answer to your first question—would I love to see CPS written into legislation? Heck, yeah.

Tim Villegas
Let’s say an administrator is listening and says, “Okay, Dr. Greene said CPS fits within a PBIS structure or a three-tiered structure or even a Multi-Tiered System of Support. Can you conceptualize that? How would CPS fit within that structure?”

Ross Greene
The bad news is, I don’t think about the structure. I don’t think about the tiers at all.

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Ross Greene
I think you’re doing CPS at all three tiers. You’re doing it for everybody. You’re doing it at Tier 2. You’re doing it at Tier 3. Also, tiers are not waystations. The same kid could look like they are different tiers even within the same hour of the day. So you’re asking somebody who really doesn’t have a lot of use for the tiers to talk about how you would implement CPS within the tiers—which I don’t have a lot of use for. What I always say is that I’m very aware there are schools implementing CPS within the three tiers of PBIS or Multi-Tiered Systems of Support. More power to them. It’s not something I give a lot of thought to. My answer is you’re doing CPS at all three tiers. And, by the way, if you’re doing CPS at all three tiers, then the tiers start to lose their meaning.

You know, the tiers are an attempt to organize the effort. The effort should be aimed at making sure every kid gets what they need. That is also the definition of equity. So we should be asking: Are the three tiers helping us ensure that every kid gets what they need? And if we were instead focused on making sure that every kid got what they need, are the three tiers helping us or getting in the way? Different people might have different answers. I don’t want people focused on the tiers. This is not a religion. The “religion” for me is making sure every kid gets what they need—the definition of equity. Are the three tiers helping us with that, or getting in the way? Those are the questions we should be asking.

Tim Villegas
And to be clear, you’re not just talking about behavior—you’re talking about education in general. MTSS isn’t just about behavior; it’s academics and social skills and behavior and other things. If our goal is equity, do we really need the tiers?

Ross Greene
Everybody has to answer that for themselves. My answer is—and I know people who I respect greatly who have found those three tiers very useful to help organize the effort—great. I’m not anti-tier. Tiers are a benign thing—sort of. But if people are thinking more about the tiers than they are about making sure every kid gets what they need, that’s a problem. “What tier is this?” is the wrong question. “How do we make sure every kid gets what they need?” is the right question.

Tim Villegas
For educators who have students with significant or complex support needs—students with autism, students with intellectual disabilities—historically those students don’t even have access to general education classrooms. Academics aren’t necessarily the focus; behavior and social skills are. How do you see CPS helping with including students who have been historically marginalized or segregated?

Ross Greene
First of all, the diagnoses mean nothing to me. The special ed labels mean nothing to me. What tells me about a kid is the information we get from the instrument we use in this model, called the Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems. It gives us the information that’s been missing: What are this kid’s lagging skills? What expectations is the kid having difficulty reliably meeting?

I’ve worked with probably a thousand kids diagnosed with autism—they were all completely different. They all had different capacities to access general education. Some were special ed, some were not. Some were in segregated settings; many were accessing general education classrooms when they were able to. The categories we use—not just diagnoses but also special ed categories—leave me cold; they don’t move the ball forward when it comes to equity—making sure that every kid gets what they need.

Here’s my level of analysis: Are we focused on solving the problems that are causing these kids to not be able to access general education settings? For some kids it’s not going to be in the cards for a while; in extremely rare circumstances it may not be in the cards at all—keywords, extremely rare. But if we are not solving the problems that are causing a kid to not be able to access general education, the kid will never be able to access general education because we’re not doing what we need to improve the possibility of that happening.

Now I’m freeing myself of the labels and categories, trying to meet this kid where they’re at and make sure this kid gets what they need. For me, that means solving the problems that are making it difficult for the kid to access general education, be safe at school—those are the problems we’re trying to solve. The more problems we solve, the more collaborative and proactive we are, the more optimistic I am that this individual kid is eventually going to be able to access the most they are able to access. That’s the goal.

If you’re suspending a lot of kindergarteners in your school system, you are depriving kids of their education—probably because of their behavior. But remember, that behavior is being caused by unsolved problems. If we do this from the get-go and don’t look back, and keep doing it, we’re no longer focused on the kid’s concerning behavior. We’re no longer worried about three tiers. We’re no longer primarily thinking about the kid’s psychiatric diagnosis. We’re focused on solving problems with this kid.

The biggest hurdle in some schools just beginning to use this model is that they are dealing with massive piles of unsolved problems, because they’re just getting started and no one’s done it before. That’s the biggest challenge of all—coming in and getting this going from scratch, in kids who’ve been struggling for a really long time. That’s a big lift. We do it, but it’s a big lift. I’d much rather start this the minute the kid walks in the building on day one: Let’s figure out what’s making it hard for this kid; let’s start solving those problems collaboratively and proactively; then let’s see what things look like.

Tim Villegas
Let me see if I can reflect back what you’ve been saying—what I’ve been learning about CPS. This model is done at a school level. It could be done at a district level, but most likely at a school level.

Ross Greene
And sometimes, even at an individual classroom level.

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Ross Greene
There are schools I work with that are trying to get rid of restraint and seclusion. But it’s not the whole building that’s using restraint and seclusion; it’s special ed classrooms. If that’s the goal, we’re going to be focused on those classrooms. It might bleed out to the rest of the building, but some schools are just focused on the individual classrooms where practices need to be adjusted.

Tim Villegas
So where it starts is an assessment. Is that correct?

Ross Greene
Correct. Well, actually, let me say this: It starts with lenses.

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Ross Greene
Lagging skills, not lagging motivation. Problems, not the behaviors that are being caused by those problems. Then we’re ready for the assessment tool. Keep going.

Tim Villegas
And then—I feel like I’m being tested now. And then it’s—

Ross Greene
It’s always interesting for me to hear what people are hearing.

Tim Villegas
Okay. So: lenses, then assessment. Then I would assume some sort of procedure or teaching is involved.

Ross Greene
There’s training involved in how to solve problems with kids and how to use the assessment tool.

Tim Villegas
Okay, but it’s not just the assessment tool—there are intervals. So let’s say we redo this assessment every couple of weeks—30 days, 60 days.

Ross Greene
We do the assessment once—

Tim Villegas
Okay.

Ross Greene
Then you prioritize the unsolved problems that you’re going to be working on with the kid.

Tim Villegas
Gotcha. Okay.

Ross Greene
A lot of these kids who’ve been struggling for a long time have 30, 40, 50 expectations they’re having difficulty meeting reliably. First of all, can you imagine being that kid? I always say: Can you imagine that kid waking up on a school day, knowing there are 30, 40, 50 expectations they’re having difficulty meeting that day? I’m not sure I’d show up—many don’t. I’m not sure I’d get out of bed—many don’t. We’re going to have to prioritize—something, by the way, that IEPs are not very good at doing. IEPs tell us everything that’s the matter and everything we’re going to be working on, often all at once. Good luck. We have to prioritize. We have to take a close look at our expectations and ask: Does this kid even have a snowball’s chance of meeting a lot of these? Why are we putting expectations on kids and pushing hard on those expectations when we already know they can’t meet them—and when we know that by pushing them, we are going to cause the concerning behaviors that cause us to restrain, seclude, suspend, expel, hit? Why are we doing that? The Assessment of Lagging Skills and Unsolved Problems is a huge piece because it forces caregivers to ask questions we frequently don’t ask: Can the kid even meet the expectation? If not, why are we putting the expectation on that kid?

Tim Villegas
Sure.

Ross Greene
Keep going.

Tim Villegas
Alright, there’s training and prioritization of what we’re going to be working on.

Ross Greene
Correct.

Tim Villegas
And then—an educator or whoever is supporting the students, they have to do something. What is the thing that they do?

Ross Greene
First, they figure out lagging skills and unsolved problems. Then they prioritize—

Tim Villegas
Right.

Ross Greene
—and then they take the prioritized unsolved problems. The top priority is safety—any unsolved problems causing safety issues are a high priority. Now we start solving those problems collaboratively and proactively.

Tim Villegas
Is there a structure to that?

Ross Greene
Solving a problem collaboratively involves three steps. I’m happy to go through them if you’d like me to. If that’s not our focal point, I’m happy not to as well.

Tim Villegas
I’m interested. I think people want to hear this.

Ross Greene
Solving problems consists of three steps. The first step is called the empathy step. The second step is called the define adult concerns step. The third step is called the invitation.

The main ingredient of the empathy step is information gathering—gathering information from a student about what’s making it hard for them to meet a particular expectation. The empathy step is where we learn that what we thought was getting in the kid’s way is not what’s getting in the kid’s way. Yes, we do this with kids who are nonspeaking. Yes, we do this with kids who haven’t talked to a caregiver for eight years. We do this with reluctant participants. What we find is that once caregivers stop trying to talk with kids about their concerning behaviors—the signal—and start talking with them about the problems that are causing those signals, they talk. Some of them—good luck getting them to stop. And these are kids who haven’t talked in forever.

The second step is the define adult concerns step. This is where the caregiver enters their concern into consideration—why they think it’s important for the expectation to be met. I’m always saying to caregivers: If you don’t know why it’s important that the expectation be met, then I don’t know why you have that expectation.

The third step—the invitation—is where kid and caregiver collaborate on a solution that addresses the concerns of both parties. All of this is done proactively, because we’ve already identified the unsolved problems, decided priorities, know what we’re working on, and know what we’re not working on.

Believe it or not, the main response I get is that it’s going to take a lot of time. People are worried about time when we first start working with them; they’re not talking about time three months in. This is more an issue of commitment. Is our school committed to carving out the time to solve problems with our students? If the answer is no, okay—you’re going to keep spending an enormous amount of time on what happens because those problems are unsolved. In which case, the answer is eventually going to be yes. If the answer is yes, how do we make slight modifications to our structures, schedules, how we use our time, to make sure we have time to solve problems with kids?

That is why this model has a strong track record for dramatically reducing discipline referrals and the punitive, exclusionary things that happen after discipline referrals. There aren’t really discipline referrals, because we are not sending behaviors to principal/assistant principal to deal with; we are solving problems in the environments in which they are recurring, with the people with whom they are occurring. That’s a much better system than sending kids to somebody else for justice to be administered.

We’ve done that in a lot of schools. The big issue is one of scaling. We are very confident about what this looks like and what it accomplishes in the schools we’ve worked with—in the hundreds at this point, maybe thousands; we don’t keep count. How do we scale this so that it finds its way into policy and practices? How do we make this as easy as possible for schools to adopt? Now you know what I spend all of my waking hours doing.

Tim Villegas
This seems flexible enough to be implemented anywhere.

Ross Greene
We have implemented this everywhere kids hang out: families, schools (general and special ed), inpatient psychiatry units, residential facilities, prisons, group homes, adult facilities. We still have to figure out the individual’s lagging skills and unsolved problems, get rid of a lot of the debris that distracts us, and get people good at solving problems collaboratively and proactively. I hate to make it sound so simple, but that’s kind of what it comes down to.

Tim Villegas
Is there anything that you wanted to say that I didn’t bring up?

Ross Greene
We have covered an enormous amount of territory.

Tim Villegas
We have!

Ross Greene
You’re an excellent facilitator, and I cannot think of anything offhand that we haven’t talked about.

Tim Villegas
You’re making my heart feel so happy, Dr. Greene. I hope you’re not just saying that. I don’t think you are.

Ross Greene
Believe me, I’ve had not-wonderful facilitators, and it’s a lot easier for me to talk about what we’re trying to do when I’ve got a good facilitator, so I’m not just saying it.

Tim Villegas
I appreciate it. To close this out: Let’s say you were advising Dr. Cardona on education policy—what would be your advice?

Ross Greene
Let’s pull together educators, unions, administrators, law enforcement (to the degree that they are present in schools), and mental health staff. Let’s have a really honest conversation about how we want to make sure that every kid gets what they need—how we achieve equity; what structures, systems, and lenses are getting in our way; and how we embark on a long-term plan for fixing all of that. And Mr. Secretary, I’m delighted to participate in that conversation.

Tim Villegas
Dr. Greene, it has been a pleasure to speak with you on the Think Inclusive Podcast. We appreciate your time and knowledge and wisdom.

Ross Greene
Thank you very much for inviting me to do this.

Tim Villegas
Think Inclusive is written, edited, and sound designed by Tim Villegas and is a production of MCIE. Original music by Miles Kredich. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, here are some ways to help us grow the podcast: share it with your friends, family, and colleagues, and if you haven’t already, give us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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