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MTSS provides educators with a powerful opportunity to help all students achieve grade-level proficiency. From lack of fidelity in collecting data to difficulties with middle and high school implementation, administrators still face barriers concerning the effective use of MTSS. Experts on the edLeader Panel “Overcoming MTSS Challenges to Better Serve All Students” discussed five main obstacles and their strategies to overcome them.

Before examining the challenges, the panelists asked educators to rethink how they view MTSS. Typically, MTSS is viewed as a pyramid, with the bottom representing Tier 1 students, the middle Tier 2, and the top Tier 3. The goal is to have about 80% of students in Tier 1, 15% in Tier 2, and the last 5% in Tier 3. The panelists agreed with the percentages—when intervention systems try to serve too many students in the upper tiers, it gets bogged down, and the students don’t experience accelerated growth. 

However, instead of viewing the students as the percentages in the pyramid’s tiers, they see the tiers as levels for the resources. This perspective helps administrators think about the number of resources they need at Tier 1 for overall student growth. After all, Tier 1 can include some interventions and additional assessments. That keeps the number of students using Tier 2 and 3 resources to a manageable level. Often, administrators overlook what additional resources could be used in Tier 1 to keep students from needing Tier 2 interventions.

MTSS Challenges

1. Not integrating the Science of Reading into all resources.

When schools don’t focus on developing strong reading skills, they create barriers to long-term learning. As students move up, reading shifts from learning to read to reading to learn. From that point forward, every content area depends on their ability to read, interpret, and make meaning of the text. That’s why the reading foundation is so important. Having all materials, including intervention tools, grounded in the Science of Reading means that the learning resources contain instructional strategies that support comprehension and analysis. Students work on phonological awareness and encoding at the same time as language comprehension, allowing them to access their grade-level texts across their subjects.

2. Serving the upside-down triangle.

Again, schools typically can’t serve more than 20% of their students with Tier 2 and 3 resources, yet when administrators see assessment scores and progress reports that show larger groups of students off target, the immediate reaction is often to put more of them into intervention. The data shows, though, that interventions are most effective when they are given in consistent, high dosages, which isn’t possible with larger cohorts. Instead of stretching Tier 2 and 3 resources, schools should look at how to make Tier 1 more intense. The panelists advocated for whole-group interventions. Here, the teachers provide daily, guided practice, in addition to regular lessons, with evidence-based resources to support students, leaving the higher-level interventions for those who truly need them.

3. Data lives in silos.

A key component of MTSS is focusing on the whole child, but too often, educators are required to become detectives and data analysts to get a clear picture of student needs. Fragmented profiles and inconsistent data collection could mean delayed decision making, or worse, incorrect interventions. What strong systems do is make sure data is in one place to make high-impact, systemic changes, and where leaders can watch for fidelity of implementation as well as the impact of the intervention, learning when they need to be scaled up or scaled down.

4. Difficulties tracking effectiveness.

Many times, there is a lack of clear linkages between instruction and outcomes, inconsistent progress monitoring, and minimal visibility into how well Tier 1 is working. Schools and districts need data collection and reporting tools that track individual and group progress, provide administrators and educators with easy data visualization, and allow everyone to work collaboratively toward the same goal.

5. Obstacles at the middle and high school levels.

There are numerous challenges at these levels (e.g., more students, larger skills gaps, departmentalization, teachers not trained in interventions, graduation requirements, etc.). First, the panelists suggested training subject teachers on some key aspects of the interventions so they are modeling in class what students are using. Second, intervention classes should count towards graduation, giving students more incentives to progress. Lastly, an especially difficult hurdle is the lack of student motivation—students who have felt “less than” in previous grade levels have often checked out in high school. This is why the social-emotional aspects of a student’s education are just as important as the academic ones.

Remember, MTSS uses data to drive decision making, and it’s important for administrators to track and make sure that the majority of students are responding to the Tier 1 resources. This allows educators to concentrate Tier 2 and 3 interventions on the students who need them the most, and helps administrators make high-impact decisions to help all students reach their potential.

Learn more about this edWeb broadcast, Overcoming MTSS Challenges to Better Serve All Students, sponsored by Renaissance.

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Article by Stacey Pusey, based on this edLeader Panel