From Guesswork to Guidance: My Journey Helping Develop the PENT FBA Compass
When a school team begins talking about conducting a Functional Behavior Assessment, it is usually not because everything is going great.
It is often quite the opposite.
There is typically a student engaging in behavior that is unsafe or significantly interfering with their own learning or the learning of others. The student may be struggling to communicate what they need. Educators may feel exhausted, worried, frustrated, or completely unsure of what to do next. Families may be concerned that their child is being misunderstood. Administrators may be responding to repeated incidents while trying to keep everyone safe.
By the time someone says, “We need an FBA,” the student and the adults supporting them have often already been struggling for quite some time.
That is what makes an FBA such an emotional assessment.
The Professional Game of 20 Questions
When you enter the situation as the assessor, you begin what I sometimes describe as a professional game of 20 questions:
What happened immediately before the behavior?
When is it happening?
Where is it happening?
Why might it be happening?
Who is involved?
What does the behavior actually look like?
How often does it occur?
How long does it last?
What happens immediately afterward?
When does the behavior not happen?
What has already been tried?
What skills might the student still need to learn?
What is present—or missing—in the environment?
You are trying to understand a complex student within an equally complex environment.
At the same time, you are asking educators to collect data while they are already stretched thin. They are teaching, supporting other students, managing transitions, maintaining safety, communicating with families, responding to challenging behavior, and completing everything else expected of them during the school day.
Then we come in and ask them to do one more thing.
We ask them to document antecedents, behaviors, and consequences. We ask them to count behavior, time behavior, observe patterns, complete interviews, and remember what happened before and after an incident that may have been incredibly stressful.
That is a big ask.
If we want meaningful data, we have to acknowledge the reality of the people we are asking to collect it. Our systems need to be clear, realistic, and usable. Teams need to understand what they are tracking, why they are tracking it, and how the information will eventually help them support the student.
Otherwise, data collection becomes one more form to complete rather than a tool for understanding.
And Then an Advocate Gets Involved
Sometimes, after you have spent weeks gathering information, observing the student, interviewing team members, analyzing data, and writing the report, an advocate becomes involved.
Then they begin questioning every part of your assessment:
Why did you choose that target behavior?
How many observations did you conduct?
Why did you use that data-collection method?
How did you rule out another function?
Is that definition really measurable?
What evidence supports your hypothesis?
Suddenly, you are looking at an assessment you have spent weeks completing and wondering, Do I even know how to do my job?
I say that with some humor, but the feeling is very real.
An FBA may be reviewed during an emotional IEP meeting, challenged by an advocate or attorney, or examined long after it was written by someone who was not present for the assessment process. Practitioners are expected to explain not only what they concluded, but how the data led them there.
That pressure can make even experienced professionals question themselves.
The goal should never be to create an FBA that no one can question. Questions are part of collaborative decision-making, and teams should be able to explain their reasoning.
The goal is to develop an assessment you can confidently stand behind—one with clear definitions, multiple sources of information, observable patterns, a defensible hypothesis, and recommendations that logically connect to what the team learned.
Before walking into that meeting, we should be able to ask ourselves:
Can I explain how I got here?
If the answer is yes—if the referral question, data, analysis, hypothesis, and recommendations form one connected story—then we are no longer relying on guesswork.
We have a professional rationale grounded in evidence.
That may not make every difficult meeting easy. But when someone begins pulling apart the assessment, we have something solid to return to:
Here is what we observed. Here is the pattern we identified. Here is what we believe the student is communicating. And here is how the proposed support responds to that need.
Why the FBA Is So Powerful
Although the process can feel overwhelming, an FBA is also one of the most powerful assessments we can conduct.
Once we begin to understand the why behind a behavior, we unlock an entirely different way of supporting the student.
Behavior is communication. A student may not yet have an effective, efficient, and socially appropriate way to say:
“This work is too difficult.”
“I need a break.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I need help.”
“I want more time.”
“I am overwhelmed.”
“I don’t know how to wait.”
“I need connection.”
“I need predictability.”
“Something in this environment is not working for me.”
When a team fully understands when, where, why, and under what conditions a behavior occurs, the conversation begins to change.
Instead of asking, “How do we stop this behavior?” we can ask:
What is the student communicating, and what do we need to teach or change?
A strong FBA tells us more than why behavior may be occurring. It helps us determine what to do next.
It guides us in teaching the student a more effective way to communicate their needs. It helps us plan for predictable challenges, strengthen reinforcement, adjust adult responses, and look at the classroom environment differently. It allows us to identify what the student needs from us in order to be more successful.
That is when an assessment becomes transformational.
The One-Day Workgroup That Definitely Did Not Take One Day
When we first talked about developing a guidance document for school-based FBAs, I remember thinking, Oh my gosh, this is going to be so easy. We are going to knock this out in one day.
We all knew FBAs. We understood the ins and outs of the assessment process.
Four of us from the PENT Leadership Team planned a one-day workgroup, reserved a shared office space, and arrived ready to create the document.
And then, before we knew it, the day was over—and we had gotten almost nowhere.
Not because we did not know what we were doing, but because behavior is incredibly nuanced and complex.
Each of us brought extensive professional experience, but we also brought different perspectives shaped by our roles, our districts, our local procedures, and the legal counsel guiding our respective agencies.
Something that initially seemed straightforward quickly led us down one rabbit hole after another.
Should we include this?
What about that?
Is this always required, or is it best practice?
How much explanation does a practitioner need?
What would make this legally defensible?
Would this apply across different districts and SELPAs?
If we leave this out, are we missing something important?
If we include everything, will anyone actually use the document?
Every answer seemed to create three more questions.
We had side conversations within side conversations as we tried to distinguish legal requirements, professional recommendations, local practices, and the realities of implementation in schools.
We could have included everything we discussed, but the result would have been an enormous document that overwhelmed the very practitioners we were trying to support.
That became one of our greatest challenges: determining how to be comprehensive without becoming unusable.
The guidance needed enough depth to honor the complexity of behavior and help practitioners develop meaningful, defensible assessments. At the same time, it needed to be organized and practical enough that someone could actually pick it up, understand it, and use it while completing an FBA.
What I thought would be a quick one-day project became a much longer process of discussion, research, writing, revising, trialing, and sometimes circling back to conversations we thought we had already resolved.
Looking back, that first workday captured exactly why the guidance was needed.
If four experienced behavior professionals could sit together in one room and discover how many different interpretations, considerations, and decision points existed within the FBA process, it made complete sense that practitioners across California were asking for clearer guidance.
The complexity was not evidence that we were failing to create the document.
The complexity was the reason we needed to create it.
Developing the PENT FBA Compass
Serving on the Positive Environments, Network of Trainers—or PENT—Leadership Team has been one of the most meaningful professional experiences of my career.
The PENT Leadership Team brings together educational leaders from across California with expertise in positive behavior supports. Leadership members collaborate with PENT directors and content experts to design resources, develop training materials, and support practitioners throughout the state.
The FBA Compass began with a shared recognition that school-based practitioners needed clearer guidance.
We did not want to create another form that simply told people where to type information.
We wanted to develop a tool that helped practitioners understand what information mattered, why it mattered, and how the different components of an FBA should connect.
The Compass was ultimately organized around ten components of a comprehensive school-based FBA:
Student information and reason for referral
Assessment procedures
Background information and review of records
Interviews and rating scales
Operationally defined target behaviors
Direct assessment and data collection
Ecological and environmental factors
Data summary and analysis
Hypothesized function of behavior
Conclusions and recommendations
Each component should build on the one before it.
The referral question guides the assessment. Interviews and records tell us where to look.
Operational definitions ensure everyone is measuring the same behavior. Direct observations reveal patterns. The environmental analysis helps us identify what may need to change. The data supports the hypothesis, and the hypothesis guides the recommendations.
The goal is not simply to complete ten sections.
The goal is to create a logical and defensible story about what the student may be communicating through their behavior—and what the adults need to do differently as a result.
Why a Compass and Not a Map?
One of my favorite ideas behind the resource is the difference between a map and a compass.
A map gives you a fixed route. A compass gives you direction while allowing you to respond to the terrain in front of you.
We knew the resource could not be overly rigid. Districts and SELPAs have their own forms, policies, procedures, and reporting systems. More importantly, no two students, teams, classrooms, or school environments are exactly alike.
The Compass was designed to guide professional thinking—not replace it.
It can be used as a reference guide, report-writing support, training tool, coaching framework, or resource that districts adapt to strengthen their existing FBA processes.
Trialing and Refining the Resource
The Compass did not emerge fully developed from one meeting or one person.
It was built through collaboration, discussion, disagreement, revision, and feedback.
Members of the PENT Leadership Team and other practitioners brought different experiences and perspectives to the work.
Once we had an initial version, we needed to trial it.
A document can make perfect sense to the people who created it and still be confusing to the people expected to use it. We needed practitioners to interact with the Compass and tell us where it was helpful, where it was unclear, and where additional guidance was needed.
We asked:
Does the organization make sense?
Are the examples realistic?
Does the guidance clarify what belongs in each section?
Can practitioners use it alongside their existing district forms?
Does it improve the analysis, or does it simply create a longer report?
Does it help teams move from data to meaningful recommendations?
Can it promote consistency without taking away professional judgment?
The feedback mattered. It helped us refine the language, improve the examples, and think more carefully about how the Compass would be used by actual school teams.
This process reinforced something I believe deeply about systems leadership: implementation is part of development.
A resource is not finished simply because the writing is complete.
It has to work for the people being asked to use it.
From Development to Training
After helping develop and trial the Compass, I had the opportunity to begin training others to use it.
Training the Compass was different from simply presenting the document. Practitioners needed opportunities to apply it—to examine examples and non-examples, analyze data, identify missing information, develop hypotheses, and determine whether recommendations were truly connected to function.
I began to see how the Compass could create a shared language for teams.
Instead of saying, “This FBA doesn’t feel complete,” practitioners could identify what was missing:
The behavior was not observable or measurable.
The team had not collected data across enough settings.
The report listed information without analyzing patterns.
Environmental variables had not been fully considered.
The function was based primarily on a rating scale.
The recommendations were generic and disconnected from the hypothesis.
The plan did not clearly identify what the student needed to be taught.
That shift matters.
It moves teams away from subjective impressions and toward specific, actionable feedback.
It also gives assessors a structure they can use to review their own work before presenting it to an IEP team—or before that advocate begins asking questions.
Bringing the Compass to the Keynote Stage
One of the most meaningful moments in this journey was co-delivering a PENT keynote focused on strengthening school-based FBAs and BIPs.
Standing front and center represented so much more than presenting a finished resource.
It represented the entire process: recognizing a statewide need, developing an idea, working collaboratively, trialing the resource, listening to feedback, revising it, and then sharing it with the broader PENT community.
It was also an opportunity to reinforce that an FBA is not just another compliance document.
A strong FBA should help a team understand a student differently.
It should move the conversation from blame to curiosity, from reaction to prevention, and from controlling behavior to teaching communication.
Sharing the Work Statewide
The journey continued when I had the opportunity to co-deliver a statewide presentation with PENT Director Martin Miramontes for the SELPA Administrators of California.
Our presentation, From Guesswork to Guidance: Strengthening Functional Behavior Assessments and Behavior Intervention Plans, allowed us to share the purpose of the Compass and examine how it could be used to improve assessment and intervention practices across California.
Presenting alongside the director of PENT was both an honor and a full-circle leadership moment for me.
What began as a one-day workgroup that definitely did not get the work done in one day had developed into a statewide resource and professional-learning opportunity.
We were no longer only discussing how to improve individual FBAs. We were helping district and SELPA leaders consider how to strengthen the systems used to train practitioners, review reports, coach teams, and connect assessment results to meaningful student support.
That is the kind of systems change I am most passionate about.
What This Journey Taught Me About Leadership
Helping develop the FBA Compass changed the way I understand leadership.
Leadership is not always creating something independently and attaching your name to it. Some of the most meaningful leadership happens when people bring different experiences to the table, challenge one another’s thinking, listen to feedback, and continue refining an idea until it becomes something others can use.
I have now experienced almost every stage of the Compass’s journey:
Recognizing the need
Helping conceptualize the resource
Participating in its development
Trialing and refining it
Training practitioners to use it
Co-delivering a keynote about it
Sharing it through a statewide SELPA presentation
Each stage stretched a different part of my leadership.
The experience helped me grow from someone using strong behavior-assessment practices within my own district to someone helping develop and disseminate those practices across California.
I am incredibly proud of my contribution to the FBA Compass. I am equally proud that it reflects the collective expertise of a larger professional community committed to improving outcomes for students.
Explore the PENT FBA Compass
The PENT FBA Compass is designed to increase practitioner knowledge, reduce barriers to conducting meaningful assessments, strengthen consistency, and improve the connection between assessment and intervention.
To watch our statewide webinar, From Guesswork to Guidance: Strengthening Functional Behavior Assessments and Behavior Intervention Plans, and access the presentation materials and accompanying resources, visit:
An FBA begins during a difficult moment. It asks a lot of educators who may already feel overwhelmed, and it requires us to slow down when everyone may be asking for an immediate solution.
But when it is done well, it gives a team something incredibly valuable: direction.
It helps us understand what a student is communicating, identify what needs to change, and determine what skills we need to teach. It allows us to design an environment in which the student no longer has to rely on unsafe behavior to have their needs understood.
That is what makes an FBA so powerful.
And that is exactly what a compass is meant to do.
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