 Hi, I'm Kathy Fiala. I'm one of our ESU 8 school psychologists and our webinar today is about multi-tiered systems of support. Today we're going to talk about what is MTSS and where does it fit in your school system. Multi-tiered systems of support in Nebraska has been defined as a service delivery system based on the concept that some students require early and powerful general education interventions of increasing intensity. It does fall under the umbrella of the school improvement process. So if we look at our graphic here on the screen, multi-tiered systems of support for both academic and behavior is a system to support all students, again in both the academic and the behavior areas. It's a layered continuum of support. We look at tier one. Tier one is considered to be our core program. That's where we really work to meet the needs of most of the students in our district, again both academically and behaviorally. When we do a good job there, we can meet the needs of 80 to 90 percent of our students and then that allows us to have the resources to meet the needs of students in tier two and tier three. So tier two is our targeted tier where we're going to provide more intensive instruction at the first sign that a student is lagging behind and we're hoping that that's about 10 to 15 percent of students. And then tier three our intensive level is where we provide the most intensive level of support to students based on their need, hopefully only about one to five percent of students. As we move up the pyramid, the supports get more intensive. How do these models support each other? So if we think about the continuous improvement cycle where we plan and we implement and we evaluate and we improve, but then we continue going, we don't stop, the same is true with our problem solving model for multi-tier systems of support. We're going to identify a problem. We're going to analyze that problem by collecting data and then we're going to make a plan. We're going to implement the plan and then we're going to reflect and again collect some more data to evaluate what how did our plan do and we're going to continue problem solving. So again those those problem solving cycles just continue. We're going to talk about next the key components of multi-tier systems of support. One of the very key components is instruction and intervention. We would be implementing evidence based programs and instructional delivery practices and those programs and practices are going to increase in intensity as students needs increase. We're going to also have a comprehensive assessment system so that we can make decisions. We're going to have technically adequate assessments for screening for progress monitoring for diagnostics and for outcomes and we're going to not just use one piece of information. We're going to have multiple data sources to help us make decisions about how students are doing and to help inform our instruction. We're also going to have some pre-established decision rules so that when we're looking at the data we know what decisions to make for students to increase support, decrease support or change the plan. Another key component is fidelity and having a support system so we're going to make sure that we're gathering instructional data through fidelity observations and then we're going to use that data to inform our professional development and support needs for our teachers and our instructional staff. Also as we alluded to already it is a continuous improvement process so even at a systems level we're going to be looking at student data and MTSS implementation fidelity data to evaluate how we're doing and make changes as needed. Another key component of MTSS is teaming. We're all going to work together to meet the needs of students. MTSS multi-tier systems of support is based on the public health model and so this season for influenza we're going to we're going to talk about influenza prevention in the health model so even in the public health model for influenza prevention they have tiers of support also and it's it's a layered approach as well and so if we look at tier one in the public health model, tier one what what is told for all of us to do to prevent influenza is to do things like wash our hands and to cough and sneeze into our elbow so that we prevent that particular condition influenza from it from occurring and that tier one hand washing and those basic good health practices that's for everyone then we have tier two for influenza prevention is the flu shot. The goal of the flu shot is to reduce the chances of at-risk individuals contracting that condition so it's for those people who don't have the condition but who are at an increased risk like maybe really young children people who work around a lot of germs like those of us in schools, doctors, nurses and then also the elderly, elderly patients or elderly people who would also be at an increased risk for getting the flu and for having complications from the flu. There might be other people with compromised immune systems or things like that so it's for those who who don't yet have the flu but are at an increased risk for getting the flu. Then we have tier three which would be things like bed rest, medication, medical supervision so this is for people who unfortunately have the flu and the goal at tier three is to lessen the effect or the symptoms of the flu or even cure it if possible and it's for those who have already contracted the condition. The key aspect here is that all three of the tiers work together it's a layered approach so we use all three of these all together. We would never tell an elderly patient that once you get the flu shot well gosh you don't need to wash your hands anymore of course not you know we still continue to use tier one even when we've already had the flu shot. Another important aspect is that you don't go through each tier in succession before getting the needed level of support so if a patient already has the flu there's little reason to give a flu shot okay so they've already been washing their hands but they didn't get a flu shot now they've gotten the flu the doctor won't say well you know you didn't have your flu shot yet so we're going to do that first before we do anything else to help you get over the flu. In the same way it would be foolish for us in education to insist that a student would have to fail at a lower level of support than what's needed before allowing them to get the level of support they need so also in in education our multi-tier systems of support is a layered approach where we have all three of the tiers working together. Now we're going to talk a little bit more about each tier so our core instruction is tier one the goal the the key components of tier one is to provide rich learning opportunities for all students that are aligned to the standards we're going to have differentiation within our core instruction also based on multiple sources of data we're going to provide a scaffolded model of grade level rigor aligned to all the standards and scaffolded means scaffolded for different students who just to meet their needs within tier one we know not all students in your classroom learn at exactly the same level in the same rate and also all of our instructional practices that we use in tier one need to be supported by evidence and research we need to make sure that that tier one instruction is very strong we're going to have both whole group and differentiate its small group instruction in tier one we're also going to include both skill and knowledge based competencies we would also need a way to measure the mastery of the skills and knowledge that we've taught and the time recommendations for language art should include a hundred and fifty minutes daily for k through two and a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty minutes daily for grades three through five the instruction at this level is going to reflect the fidelity of standards based instruction there's going to be data driven goals and we're going to use research based practices and support for teachers we talked before about needing to measure fidelity and so how would we do that well it could be walk through observations could have teachers video record themselves and you know send it to someone who could look at their fidelity they could do some self-assessment as well will review students academic data their work and their outcomes for student proficiency with all those things in place we should be able to meet the needs of 80 to 85 percent to 90 percent of students as evidenced by students meeting grade level standards tier two would be that targeted instruction tier and we identify students for needing tier two by the fact that they haven't met the cut scores on the universal screening we're going to provide tier two supports in addition to tier one and we're hoping to meet the needs of 10 to 15 percent of students at this level tier two interventions it's really important that they're systematic and research based and our focus here is on specific skills rather than on standards so we're looking to shore up those gaps that students have at this level we want to make sure we have a clear description available of the intervention being used and how fidelity to it will be monitored we're also going to look at that we have the most highly trained individuals implementing our interventions and we're making sure that those interventions are implemented with fidelity that is confirmed with measurement so we're going to have direct measures of fidelity for teachers teaching intervention just like we talked about for tier one as well and our progress monitoring data is going to help us see that student outcomes are being met the time requirements for tier two it's recommended a minimum intervention time of at least 30 minutes daily in grades k through five it's best to provide these interventions in small groups with no more than five students per group as students have more intensive needs we're going to maybe make those groups smaller or if they're not responding to intervention and special education students should not be excluded from receiving tier two interventions if they are identified as having that need so even though you have a special education student that doesn't automatically mean that that student has to be at that tier three level of support if they need tier three great but if they need tier two we want to put them at tier two we're going to put the student where they need based on our decision rules and our universal screening data and also our intervention placement test students who receive tier two interventions are going to be progress monitored weekly and we're going to look at their data when we have a minimum of eight data points we're going to look at their data more frequently than that but but we won't make any any major decisions until we have eight data points and at that time we could look at if they're not making adequate adequate progress and maybe we need to strengthen the current intervention or do some additional problem solving we're going to monitor fidelity a minimum of three times before we make decisions to intensify instruction and if we were going to look at increasing the intensity of tier two it could include things like increasing the duration like how long the intervention is we could increase the frequency we could add some additional interventions or we could decrease the group size adding additional interventions could be something like if we've gathered some additional data and we see that the student is really struggling with with one key component we could add additional intervention for that one key component for example maybe it would be phonemic awareness or or some basic phonics skills or gosh this student is really struggling with sight words we could add some additional intervention in those areas to kind of layer on to that tier two intervention then we look at tier three are in most intensive level students are identified as needing tier three intervention if they're not making adequate progress in tier two and or by scoring very low on the universal screening so a guideline that could be followed would be students scoring below the tenth percentile rank tier three intervention is provided in addition to tier one instruction and we're going to be meeting the needs of hopefully only three to five percent of students at this level or less tier three interventions need to be very systematic research based and target the identified area again just like in tier two we're going to have a clear description of the intervention and how fidelity is going to be monitored and again we have effective intervention that is implemented by highly trained personnel implemented with fidelity and we're going to measure that fidelity just to make sure recommended minimum intervention times should be 45 to 60 minutes daily in grades k through five and it is hard to find that time um but sometimes we just have to be really creative with that we're going to have interventions occurring in small groups with no more than three students and we research is really showing that at tier three tier three effective group size really is two to three students um you know we have talked in the past about maybe one on one but the research shows that students really do better in small groups even than individually for most students um and here we're going to say again special education students are not excluded from receiving tier three interventions if they've been identified as needing that intervention we're going to progress monitor these students at least weekly maybe more often if it's recommended by the team and again once we have eight data points we're going to you know and we're going to evaluate how things are going we're going to monitor the fidelity of the intervention so that we can make sure that fidelity is not an issue for the student and that it really may if the student's not making progress we want to rule that out as an issue next we're going to talk about some core beliefs for mtss implementation so these are just i'm just going to hit some highlights i know you can you can read the screen um but some core beliefs that all staff needs to have to implement multi-tier systems of support these are just some real core things that we must all believe and one real important one is that you know what we've been doing has been working for all of the students that we serve um we really want to shift our focus to prevention we want to prevent academic and behavioral concerns for students um we we need to all believe that the student's performance is most influenced by the quality of the interventions and instruction we deliver and much less affected by individual student variables um research supports that um we all need to believe that all staff benefit from training and coaching supports quality of the instruction is directly related to the quality of the support provided for the staff um and we all need to believe that we're willing to make necessary changes to what we're doing as the data shows us even if what we've done we've been doing for the past many many years and it's worked for most students if the data shows that it's not working now then we all need to be willing to make changes and another core belief is that um we have high expectations for all students and for all staff we believe that all students can learn and achieve and that all staff can provide quality instruction and here's just a little bit of information about integrating school wide behavior and academic supports both are critical for school success both use the three tiered prevention model um both academics and behavior we utilize database decision making we're going to incorporate a team approach for both at the school the grade and the individual level and we're seeing that models that integrate both behavior and reading supports produce large the largest gains in literacy skills than when we only look at reading so just that behavior and and academics are so closely um related that if we just work on one we don't get the full benefit but when we work on both we see great outcomes and implementation of school wide positive behavior supports leads to increased academic engaged time and enhanced academic outcomes also um I will say that most districts um have been working if they've been working on anything it's been probably working on reading and um you know research continues to support that we really see the greatest gains for academics in general if we focus on reading I'm not saying that we shouldn't build supports for math and for other areas um yes we'll get outcomes from that too but it does make sense to focus on reading research is showing that that when we start in the reading area and build a good model with reading we do see carryover of those skills to other academic areas so we've talked in the past about response to intervention RTI and now we're talking about multi-tier systems of support and I think sometimes that that just really gets confusing um and sometimes we use those those acronyms interchangeably and we're going to stop doing that so in Nebraska um we're definitely having a shift in approach we're going to define these acronyms we are going to use both of them but they are different things so RTI is response to intervention MTSS is multi-tier systems of supports and here is how Nebraska is defining these systems as we already talked about multi-tier systems of support is a service delivery system based on the concept that some students require early and powerful general education interventions of increasing intensity MTSS has a broader focus a district and school-wide approach building system of supports for all students RTI is defined as practices used to determine eligibility for special education services in the category of specific learning disability so our state is is defining these these um acronyms for us differently and I think that's really going to help us to all have common language differences between RTI and MTSS so MTSS focuses on improving skills of teachers to more effectively address academic and behavioral development and we've talked about that already today how we yes we are focusing on student data but we're also focusing on our instructional data because when we have strong instruction we are going to meet the needs of more students and we're going to prevent academic difficulties and behavior difficulties MTSS provides multiple levels of support for all learners struggling through advanced including students who are receiving special education supports MTSS also includes a focus on intervention but it has a stronger goal of prevention than a response to intervention does and that's really a key key aspect multi-tier systems of support has a very strong goal of prevention just like that public health model we want to prevent the condition from occurring MTSS requires that teachers administrators district personnel and student support specialists change the way that we have traditionally worked together we're going to have a greater focus on collaboration to provide support to all students regardless of the students label more differences between RTI and MTSS data are used in MTSS to inform and improve the quality of instruction the RTI process most often focuses on student data and evaluating student progress so there's a big difference mostly in RTI we're going to be looking at student data with MTSS we are going to be looking at instructional data as well as student outcome data MTSS is a system that needs to be able to allocate resources and support for students receiving instruction and for teachers and other support staff who are responsible for instruction so we need to be able to allocate resources for professional development and coaching support for teachers there's a strong emphasis on differentiated coaching and training support for teachers to reach the highest level of implementation possible so MTSS also is not these things it's not simply revamping the student assistance team process it's not what we've already been doing just with a different name across the state of Nebraska there are very few schools who have been doing all levels of multi-tier systems of support really well so we don't want to say we've already been doing that because probably we haven't we probably don't have all components in place we might be building a great system but we're still working toward a better system so MTSS is not what we've already been doing if we think that it is then we're just going to keep doing what we've been doing just with a different name we really need to focus on change MTSS is not just pulling kids for some extra help is not something that you do to children it's not about just finding those kids who are not responding for a special education evaluation we're going to next go through a case example and this is just you know a possible situation that could arise in any district so we have Hannah Hannah is a new second grade student to the district after one day of the general education instruction it is clear that Hannah is struggling she is significantly behind the peers in her new school in reading what can we do for Hannah so if we have Hannah in a school with a traditional model does not have multi-tier systems of support a traditional model this is what it might look like the teacher would refer Hannah to the school student assistance team the sat meeting would be scheduled for the following week and then at that sat meeting when it's when it's scheduled it's decided that the teacher should read material allowed to Hannah in the classroom and it's also recommended to have the teacher talk to the title one teacher to see if Hannah could receive some title one help the dibbles assessment is given with Hannah performing in the at-risk range and the second lowest in the second grade across all students general and special education students in that district she's the second lowest weekly progress monitoring is initiated the title one teacher begins seeing Hannah for 20 minutes each day they work on sight words and reading the weekly story from the classroom because they're just supporting the classroom instruction after six weeks the sat team meets again and reviews Hannah's progress her dibbles progress monitoring scores remain in a similar range with little progress noted she's just not growing at the sat meeting will classroom teacher noted that when reviewing Hannah's Q file she has had significant absences throughout her schooling in kindergarten she missed 30 days in first grade she missed 45 days also she has changed schools three times since beginning kindergarten the sat team decided to refer Hannah for a special education evaluation unfortunately the school psychologist had other referrals prior to getting to Hannah's so she didn't begin Hannah's evaluation for two weeks so again we've had a lot of weeks that have gone on for Hannah at the MDT needing the testing results were shared Hannah's IQ was 80 and her reading scores ranged from 63 to 69 there was not a significant discrepancy of 20 points between her measured IQ and her achievement also the number of absences would have been an exclusionary factor for verification of specific learning disability so Hannah did not qualify for special education services she continued with general education support and continued to perform at a low level getting further behind behind her peers despite good attendance at her new school now let's look at how things might be different for Hannah in a school with multi-tier systems of support so within a few days of entry to the district screening is conducted Hannah scores indicate that she is at risk in performing well below the other second graders at the school again she's the second lowest student in the district in second grade our decision rules based on that data indicate that placement testing is warranted to determine Hannah's correct intervention and placement weekly progress monitoring is initiated further assessment is conducted to determine Hannah's placement within the established intervention programs in the district and her placement testing indicates that she is placed into the early intervention in reading program EIR at lesson one for Hannah this will be tier three intervention this will be in addition to tier one reading and behavior intervention there is not a group at this exact level in the school so the MTSS team makes a plan for Hannah to fast track through the initial lessons so she can join the group that is at lesson 20 in two weeks time intervention begins the next day Hannah has group intervention for 45 minutes an individual intervention for 20 minutes each day this is in addition to her strong core reading instruction the classroom teacher continues to work with her in the classroom to help her be successful when she cannot read the material her teacher also provides differentiated small group intervention in the classroom for Hannah Hannah's progress is monitored and reviewed weekly the goal is for Hannah to be at benchmark by the end of second grade at the eight week data check-in Hannah is showing slow progress the gap is not increasing but it's not decreasing either and the other members of the intervention group are performing at a higher level than Hannah and I should also say here that at this point fidelity data would show that it's not a fidelity issue the teacher is teaching with great fidelity the instruction is strong so additional data are gathered through the individual student problem solving process Hannah has some phonemic awareness gaps and motivation is also determined to be an issue based on the data phonemic awareness instruction and practice is built into her 20 minute individual intervention time and a behavior incentive is also added throughout Hannah's day Hannah's progress continues to be monitored closely and her progress is improving at the next next eight week check-in Hannah's performance is at a level with her intervention group members her data indicate that she is closing the gap and is on track to reach benchmark at the end of second grade mission accomplished maybe we have to remember though that problem solving is continuous we would continue to monitor Hannah and the rest of her group members continue to monitor them closely at the earliest sign that her progress or any of the group members progress is not at the level where we would expect it to be or Hannah's not on track if she starts falling off of her aim line to meet that end of your goal then again we would we would conduct problem solving so why make this why make this shift to multi-tier systems of support and response to intervention well one reason is to challenge the status quo let's not just keep doing what we've been doing let's let's change things for the better so here are some concerns about the IQ achievement discrepancy model for verification for students for special education first of all assessments do not always discriminate between disabilities and the results of inadequate teaching so a student who has received poor instruction for a couple years looks very similar to a student with an actual disability students can be misidentified due to teacher or testing bias typically students have to fail in order to qualify for special education services so we really don't get a get to address student needs right at the moment where they start falling behind we have to wait they have to fail for quite a while before they'll qualify and meet the criteria just like Hannah results from assessments don't usually real specifically inform what that student needs instructionally and many students do not meet the discrepancy criteria but definitely those students would benefit from early identification and support to remedy their skills there are some advantage of the IQ achievement discrepancy model although many professionals are frustrated with this model the model does possess a few advantages that might appeal to some schools so it's an established practice it's what we've been doing it's pretty easy to do a teacher doesn't have to spend a great amount of time in identifying what the student needs because a certified dice diagnostician or a school psychologist conducts the IQ and the achievement testing and the identification procedure only requires a one-time assessment it really isn't ongoing problem solving it's just kind of that one one-time assessment doesn't mean that those are good reasons to continue using that model it just means that there could be some advantages for some for some who might want to continue with that model there are some observations from schools that suggest lower expectations so when students are not making progress in a school that has lower expectations oftentimes the focus is not on what the adults are doing we don't we don't think about what could we do to change things we don't think about examining the fidelity to the excuse of the instruction we don't really look at dosage of the intervention so is the student actually getting the intervention for the whole time that it's planned is the student actively participating those kinds of things we don't usually look at the group size we don't look at the precision of the instructor and the fidelity we don't usually look at the special education system infrastructure instead we just decide that well that student isn't making progress because that student can't because they have a family history of learning issues because they have a low IQ because oh that's a special education student we can't expect them to make progress it's those kinds of things so the focus and sense of urgency is all is often on getting a different program or getting the student into a more restrictive special education placement or getting accommodations for testing here's what rule 51 says about multi-tier systems of support and student assistance teams so multi-tier systems of support would fall under that comparable problem solving team and so you can see that there has to be a team used prior to referral for an evaluation it says here that the problem solving team should utilize and document problem solving and intervention strategies to assist the teacher in the provision of general education and then it just talks about how after the team feels that all alternatives have been explored then a referral for an evaluation should be completed so there isn't really a lot said about exactly what that should look like just a little bit of information in our special education law so a comparable problem solving team process this is this is a way that it might be used within MTSS so following the benchmark the data would be reviewed and students are placed in intervention by the MTSS team or comparable problem solving team the data both progress monitoring and intervention mastery data are collected and reviewed regularly by the team if the student is not showing adequate progress the team meets to determine the need for a multi-disciplinary team evaluation again that could be you know changing to the student assistance team or it could be that your MTSS team just encompasses that role if the student is very discrepant from peers and other factors have been ruled out for example other factors could be student attendance student engagement fidelity issues teaching fidelity issues those kinds of things so if we've ruled out all other possible causes then the student may be considered for special education at any time if schools are thinking about using RTI for verification instead of the IQ achievement discrepancy model these are some prerequisites that that our team has has decided would be necessary so if we look at just what would need to be in place well there would need to be systematic core reading system which would include a minimum of a 90-minute uninterrupted reading block that includes both whole group instruction and small group instruction with differentiation explicit instruction a high student response rate students engaged in real reading during their reading instruction and measures of student learning based on skills and knowledge taught for that weaker unit also use of a universal screener for all students in an established system of using that universal screening data to determine students who need additional support so there would be some decision rules and also systematically looking at data annually to determine how effective is the core reading system for all students are we meeting the needs of 80 to 90 percent of students if you were considering building your your system of supports here are just we came up with some possible timelines again this does not mean this is what you would have to do but these are just some ideas to get you started thinking so during the rest of this school year if you don't already have research-based interventions in place you could work on selecting research-based interventions for implementation maybe the rest of this school year if you can get training or for next school year determine who needs to be trained for implementing those interventions you might have some staff that are already trained and then you would have staff that would need to be trained established an intervention schedule for the 2018-2019 school year use the end of year universal screening data to place students into intervention groups for the following year so that right away at the beginning of the year those intervention groups are established and ready to go also establish a system of matching the student to the correct intervention most interventions that are comprehensive and good interventions should have a placement test and so you'd want a system for determining who receives that placement test it's probably going to be anybody who does not meet the benchmark would be would you would flag those students for possible placement testing for intervention and other things you could do gather intervention documentation so if you already have interventions going on your school psychologist can provide you with an intervention documentation form where where we would actually where the interventionist would record the actual minutes of intervention yes it's scheduled from 1020 to 1040 every day however most days the students don't come right away and then we end up leaving early because they have to get to recess or whatever but we're going to record actual minutes in intervention actual start time actual stop time student attendance data student engagement data student error data and documentation of missed intervention sessions it really is important to look at that I know in schools that I've been in we've had some group issues and when we looked at the documentation we've seen that oh gosh the interventionist was sick a lot and nobody really knew about it well of course people knew about it but people who were looking at the data we weren't aware of that and and so because we weren't aware of it things hadn't been changed to get someone to fill in for that interventionist so anyway it is important to gather that data and then to be able to look at it and to do some problem solving address issues with the intervention documentation data just like what I was talking about sometimes there's some scheduling issues like oh gosh we plan this intervention to go right up until you know lunch but actually the students need to have time to do the you know use the restroom and wash their hands before lunch so that means our intervention is cut short every day so we have to do some problem solving around those issues you could also list all students receiving intervention on an intervention tracking form again your school psychologist could provide you with that review data of students receiving intervention quarterly see how they're doing and you could contact our support team our school psychologist and our professional development team to help you determine your level of implementation and determine next steps within our within our state there is definitely a push toward a multi-tier system of support and developing those systems for schools and they're working on a self-assessment for districts to use and it's kind of in the in the tryout phase and so we will definitely keep districts posted on that and and advocate for you to use that when it's ready for districts to use and we will be bringing that to you as soon as possible. Another thing that I want to mention as we think about timelines is that we have partnered with some surrounding ESUs ESU-1 and ESU-7 I believe to have some training this summer for interventions and the interventions that are being trained on this summer are early interventions in reading EIR and also corrective reading and you should have your district should have received notification of that training and a flyer has been sent out to administrators and probably title reading teachers if you need more information on that you can contact your school psychologist or anyone in the professional development department at the ESU or look on our website we love to have you register for that as soon as possible. Thinking about next year things that you could plan for would be gather fidelity data on your core and intervention delivery address needs established by the fidelity data so plan for coaching professional development support again attend training on interventions access coaching for your district's next steps again that coaching could be provided through your school psychologist and the professional development department at ESU-8 learn how to intensify interventions for individual students that's something that we can work with you on and move your district's MTSS process beyond reading so looking maybe at that behavior area and work toward creating a process for using RTI for SLD verification and that completes our presentation today thank you very much for participating in this webinar and for listening if you have questions please don't hesitate to shoot me an email you can find my email on our ESU website if you don't know it but it is cfiella8 at esu8.org also contact your school psychologist or anyone in the professional development department at ESU-8 thanks for your time and have a great rest of your day