Many schools employ a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS), a comprehensive framework that centers individual student needs within the wider scope of instruction, differentiation, behavioral support, and intervention. However, the MTSS framework can be challenging to use effectively. In Navigating Data for Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, we share a collection of best practices for leveraging data to respond to student academic and social-emotional needs, with a particular focus on Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty.
This collection includes three best practices essential to the work of improving the use of data to devise tiered levels of support for schools, students, and families on behalf of improving learning outcomes for all students. There are also two case studies, one focusing on STRIVE Prep’s approach to improving family engagement and another on how network leaders at Green Dot Public Schools use data effectively at the network level. Finally, the collection includes a guidance document for developing a data dashboard.
The collection also includes a literature review synthesizing research on the benefits and challenges of MTSS, common implementation strategies, and efficacy.
In addition, our work highlights several cross-cutting findings about how the participating schools improved their existing MTSS structures:
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Educators need dedicated opportunities to review classroom-level data regularly, identify student needs, and drive instructional decision-making and interventions. In addition, educators benefit from accessible data systems that allow them to sort student data in meaningful ways and disaggregate data by subgroups. This practice details the steps a school can take to design data routines so educators can respond in a timely manner to students’ needs and includes a routine data cycle protocol tool. It also describes how data systems and professional development can help strengthen these data routines for schools.
STEM Preparatory Schools used routine data cycles to increase the percentage of students with disabilities who earned an A or B in math from 25% to 81%.
School-based teams need to gather and use data to coordinate timely, targeted support for students across grade-, department-, or other site-level teams. This practice describes different types of school-based teams and their purposes, and explores how teams can create useful structures to ensure efficient meetings and foster accountability for resulting action items. Strong data routines used by teams of educators can help supplement the individual and regular use of data for decision-making in schools.
At Rosenwald Collegiate Academy (RCA), a Collegiate Academies high school in New Orleans, a new data teaming structure helped 92% of RCA’s students with disabilities achieve mastery on their LEAP and/or April Dunn projects in 2022–23, up from 44% at the end of the school year 2020–21.
Student conferencing is a consistent time for teachers to coach students 1:1 on how to set goals, make plans to achieve their goals, enact their plans, and reflect on their progress. This practice explains how 1:1 student conferencing can be implemented in a variety of configurations based on individual school capacity and student needs. The steps outline the skills students need in order to begin conferencing, as well as those they can gain by participating in conferencing.
At KIPP Navigate College Prep, biweekly student conferences led to all of the participating students increasing the number of classes they were passing during the school year and to over 75% of students passing all their classes.
The use of MTSS is not confined within the walls of a school building. It can also be used at a system level when network leaders consider how to best support each of their schools. This case study explores how Green Dot Public Schools California built a team of network-level leaders who meet monthly to analyze data and identify tiered supports for schools based on their needs.
“It helped me broaden my understanding of MTSS at the systems level, not just assigning and removing interventions to kids at the local level.” — Leilani Abulon, Chief Programs Officer
The COVID-19 pandemic physically disconnected students and families from their schools, forcing schools to consider new ways to engage families in the education system. STRIVE Prep developed a routine of using a text-messaging intervention to keep families informed about their students’ academic progress. This case study details how STRIVE Prep piloted text messaging with families of students with disabilities and includes steps a school can take to implement a similar text messaging intervention.
“It’s been great to know grades as they’re happening, not just get a progress report at the end of six weeks.” — Parent, STRIVE Prep SMART
When existing data tools do not meet current needs and a school or network chooses to design a custom data tool, it is important to invest the necessary time and effort to ensure the tool is useful, usable, and utilized. The iterative process necessary to develop an effective data tool can be time-intensive. This guidance document provides school and network leaders with helpful recommendations for the planning process.
Tested practices for schools to identify gaps and implement interventions for secondary readers
Interdisciplinary practices for building collaboration between general and special education teams
Proven school-based practices to empower students to transition into meaningful college, career, and community postsecondary pathways
One school’s skill-based practices for supporting students with emotional-based disabilities
Evidence-based practices to improve outcomes for Black and Latinx students with disabilities experiencing poverty