Well, it’s a fact now: tardiness has decreased since PBIS came to D.C. Everest High School. But the question now is what exactly caused the decrease?

   There are several factors that could have contributed to the lack of tardiness at Everest. The “official” explanation is that tardy central has acted as negative reinforcement against being late, due to its more direct punishment to the students compared to the simple teacher-marks-you-down-tardy routine in the past.

   The official theory has its strong points, to be sure, but it leaves out another important feature in the school’s fight against lateness-- the one-minute bell.

   Could it be that a simple sound contributed more in the fight against tardiness than an involved, drastic overhaul of the old tardy policy? Perhaps. It would be nice to have an experiment test this, with one week without the one-minute bell and another with the bell but without tardy central. But until then, there is only speculation.

   The knee-jerk reaction to think that tardy central was the major player in the tardy reductions shows that most people believe students are motivated by fear of immediate, noticeable, confrontational punishment. While possibly a factor in this instance, basing policies on the idea that students are mainly motivated by stricter discipline is counter to the theme of most of the rest of the PBIS program, besides being a dangerous precedent against the student body.

   However, that perception may not be true; if the one minute bell played the biggest part in reducing tardiness, it would show students weren’t motivated by increased punishment, but by simply not wanting to be late. For the more absent-minded people, hallway time without a one-minute bell hits five minutes all too abruptly.

   Finding which feature caused the tardy reduction gets even tougher with the change last year to the amount of tardies needed for a detention. While it used to be that a student would need to be tardy for the same class three times in a semester before they received a detention, now students can only be tardy for any three classes in the semester before they are given a detention.

Regardless of which variables are cause or correlation, it’s important for both the students and the staff to be weary of any attempts to expand on this program with more programs designed to be more stick and less carrot; after all, we’re not horses, we are people.