Aligned but Not Absorbed: The Conceptual Risks of Integrating MTSS, PBIS, and Behavioral Threat Assessment Frameworks: Implications for School Safety and Prevention.
By Garry McGiboney, Ph.D.
Health Security Dynamics
Across the nation, schools are searching for ways to improve student outcomes while simultaneously addressing increasing concerns about mental health, school climate, student behavior, and school safety. In response to these challenges, educational leaders in collaboration with emergency management leaders have increasingly embraced Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS), and Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) as essential components of a comprehensive approach to student well-being and especially school safety.
Recently, however, a new idea has emerged. Rather than viewing these frameworks as complementary systems, some advocates have proposed combining them into a single integrated model. At first glance, the idea appears logical. All three frameworks involve teams, data, interventions, and efforts to support students. All three seek to prevent negative outcomes. All three emphasize early identification and proactive response. If each system is valuable independently, it may seem reasonable to assume that bringing them together would create a stronger and more efficient approach.
Yet history repeatedly demonstrates that combining systems designed for different purposes can create unintended consequences. In many cases, the greatest risks emerge not from what organizations intentionally do, but from the assumptions they make when they believe different processes are more similar than they actually are.
The growing movement to combine MTSS, PBIS, and BTAM deserves careful examination because these frameworks were created to solve fundamentally different problems. While they should certainly communicate and coordinate with one another, there is growing concern among school safety professionals that merging them into a single process may weaken the effectiveness of all three.
To understand why, it is important to examine the origins of each framework.
MTSS emerged from educational efforts to provide increasingly intensive levels of academic, behavioral, and social-emotional support based on student need. The central purpose of MTSS is to help students succeed. It is fundamentally a prevention and intervention framework. The guiding question within MTSS is simple: What support does this student need to achieve better outcomes?
PBIS evolved from similar principles. Its primary focus is not violence prevention but the creation of positive school climates through the establishment of behavioral expectations, reinforcement systems, data analysis, and proactive supports. PBIS seeks to improve conditions for all students while providing additional interventions for those requiring greater assistance. The central question of PBIS is: What systems can we create that encourage positive behavior and reduce behavioral difficulties?
Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management emerged from an entirely different body of work. It developed from research conducted by the United States Secret Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and violence prevention experts who studied acts of targeted violence. BTAM was never intended to function as a behavioral support system. Nor was it designed as a mental health intervention model. Its purpose is the prevention of violence through the identification, assessment, and management of individuals who may be moving toward harmful actions.
The central question of BTAM is fundamentally different from the questions asked by MTSS and PBIS. BTAM asks: Is this individual moving toward violence, and what actions are necessary to prevent harm?
This distinction may appear subtle, but it represents one of the most important differences among the three frameworks.
When schools begin to merge these systems, they risk creating confusion regarding mission and purpose. A student receiving Tier 3 behavioral supports within an MTSS framework may present significant behavioral challenges while posing little or no risk of targeted violence. Conversely, a student exhibiting behavior associated with targeted violence may have no history of disciplinary problems, no prior interventions, and no involvement in Tier 2 or Tier 3 supports. The assumption that threat concerns fit neatly within traditional intervention tiers is not supported by the research on targeted violence.
This creates one of the most significant dangers associated with combining these systems: the false belief that support intensity and threat level are the same thing.
They are not.
A student may require extensive behavioral supports and present minimal risk. Another student may present substantial risk while appearing academically successful, socially connected, and behaviorally compliant. The pathways leading to violence do not necessarily correspond to the tiers of intervention commonly used in educational support systems.
The difference becomes even more apparent when examining timelines.
MTSS and PBIS are intentionally designed to operate over time. Teams collect data, implement interventions, monitor progress, and make adjustments. Improvement is expected to occur gradually. Patience is built into the model.
Threat assessment operates differently. The emergence of concerning behaviors, threats, leakage, planning activities, or access to weapons may require action within hours rather than weeks. Information gathering may need to begin immediately. Safety measures may need to be implemented before all questions have been answered. The pace of BTAM reflects the reality that targeted violence is often preceded by accelerating behaviors that require timely intervention.
Attempting to fit threat assessment into traditional MTSS timelines risks delaying critical decisions.
Perhaps more importantly, combining these systems can create significant opportunities for human error. Over the past several decades, human error research has demonstrated that accidents and failures rarely result from a single mistake. Instead, they emerge when systems create conditions that make mistakes more likely. The same principle applies within schools.
When responsibilities become blurred, critical information may not be reported because staff assume someone else is addressing the concern. When processes overlap, individuals may misunderstand which procedures apply to a particular situation. When teams attempt to accomplish multiple objectives simultaneously, attention may drift from the primary purpose of the process.
In schools that combine MTSS, PBIS, and BTAM without clearly defining their separate functions, several predictable forms of error may emerge.
Warning signs may be overlooked because they are interpreted solely through the lens of behavioral support. Threat-related concerns may remain within intervention systems longer than appropriate because teams believe additional supports should be attempted before conducting a formal threat assessment. Information relevant to safety may remain siloed within counseling, special education, or intervention teams because staff assume the concern does not yet warrant BTAM involvement.
These are not theoretical concerns. They represent predictable consequences of combining systems that were designed to accomplish different objectives.
This does not mean that MTSS, PBIS, and BTAM should operate in isolation.
In fact, the opposite is true.
The most effective schools create strong connections among these frameworks. Information should move freely between systems. Teams should communicate regularly. Intervention plans developed through MTSS may become part of a threat management strategy. PBIS data may identify emerging concerns that warrant further inquiry. Threat assessment teams may recommend supports delivered through existing MTSS structures.
Coordination is essential.
Confusion is not.
The challenge facing schools today is not whether these systems should work together. They absolutely should. The challenge is ensuring that collaboration does not become conflation.
Experts in threat assessment consistently emphasize that BTAM should remain a distinct, multidisciplinary process with its own training requirements, procedures, documentation standards, and decision-making authority. Likewise, experts in MTSS and PBIS emphasize fidelity to the core purposes of those frameworks. When schools preserve the unique mission of each system while creating deliberate points of coordination, they maximize the effectiveness of all three.
Ultimately, the goal should not be to absorb BTAM into MTSS or PBIS. Nor should schools attempt to transform MTSS and PBIS into threat assessment systems. Instead, educational leaders should focus on building a comprehensive framework in which prevention, intervention, support, and safety operate as interconnected but distinct functions.
The future of school safety depends not on merging every initiative into a single process, but on understanding the unique value each framework brings to the larger mission of protecting and supporting students.
The greatest danger is not that schools will fail to integrate these systems. The greatest danger is that they will assume these systems will become one system.
They cannot.
And understanding that difference may be one of the most important school safety decisions educational and school safety leaders make in the coming decade.
