In this chapter, we define MTSS and discuss how critical it is to ensure that all learners have access to Tier 1 instruction that challenges them, supports them, and affirms their identity while ensuring supplemental supports are also available when students need them. We also discuss the components, or ingredients, of a comprehensive MTSS system that can create the conditions necessary for inclusive, equitable, and deeper learning for all students.

Baking, Not Caking

MTSS is a noun, not a verb. We can't even count how many times we have said that in the last year, often in response to “We are already doing MTSS.” But MTSS is not something to do; rather, it is a system you build to ensure that all learners have equitable access to Tier 1 instruction that meets their needs while also getting additional support when necessary. Thinking about MTSS in this way is a significant shift for many educators.

Let's share an analogy. Neither of us is a particularly talented baker, but we can certainly follow a recipe. If you gave us a recipe to make a layered carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, we could definitely present you with a finished product, although it might be more reminiscent of the cooking show Nailed It, where home bakers with a terrible track record try to re‐create edible masterpieces. The results are hilarious.

In this scenario, we would be baking a cake but not “caking.” The same is true with MTSS. We do not “do” it, but rather, we look to build it by ensuring we have the necessary ingredients, or drivers, as well as the strategies to put those ingredients into place. This recipe, or blueprint, can guide us in building a multi‐tiered system. And yes, as you build it, you may experience some Nailed It fails, but by creating feedback loops and aligning your work to improvement science, you will be able to course‐correct quickly and efficiently.

Defining MTSS

MTSS is a system designed to meet the needs of all students by ensuring that schools optimize data‐driven decision‐making, progress monitoring, and evidence‐based supports and strategies with increasing intensity to sustain student growth academically, behaviorally, and social emotionally. MTSS is recommended in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) as a “comprehensive continuum of evidence‐based, systemic practices to support a rapid response to students' needs, with regular observation to facilitate data‐based instructional decision making.”

At its heart, according to the Council of Great City Schools (2012), MTSS is a self‐repeating, self‐correcting, ongoing methodology for effective decision‐making at all levels of the system and across all three tiers. We need MTSS in our schools so that we can minimize or eliminate barriers and improve student outcomes by designing equitable, tiered, universally designed systems of support that address needs in ways that are culturally sustaining. It is a system for educating all of our students and educating each of them completely as a “whole” person. To realize this success, multi‐tiered systems must be supported by drivers to ensure that all district resources are focused on supporting our students, who can and will learn and succeed with our support. Harlacher et al. (2014) described six key tenets of the MTSS framework:

• All students are capable of grade‐level learning with adequate support.
• MTSS is rooted in proactivity and prevention.
• The system utilizes evidence‐based practices.
• Decisions and procedures are driven by school and student data.
• The degree of support given to each student is based on their needs.
• Implementation occurs schoolwide and requires stakeholder collaboration.

Given the importance of evidence‐based practices and data culture in MTSS, it may be valuable to pause to reflect on your district's current focus on evidence‐based practice. We offered the following prompts in our book Universally Designed Leadership (Novak and Rodriguez, 2016, p. 21). It may be valuable to share these questions with your team as you build MTSS:

• What are your current feelings about how this district uses data to impact instruction? Please be candid in your response.
• What specific steps would we need to take to make data conversations more meaningful in your school or department?
• What barriers do we face if we want all stakeholders to have important conversations about data and how that data impacts instruction?
• Please describe the culture of your school or department. What would need to change in your culture in order for all parties to embrace evidence‐based decision‐making?
• What ongoing professional development would we need to support a culture of evidence‐based decision‐making in our district?
• What would all leaders need to understand in order to support evidence‐based decision‐making in our district?

In our own work as district leaders, these questions yielded valuable evidence about our district's data culture, which helped us better understand MTSS. Research suggests the result of full MTSS implementation when districts are committed to evidence‐based practices and a culture of data is that every student engages in the general education curriculum with a flexible master schedule, flexible staffing, and three tiers of intensity of instruction directed to academics, behavior, and social emotional learning and significantly greater percentages of students achieve at grade level (Choi, McCart, and Sailor, 2020; Council of Great City Schools, 2012. MTSS is not just about tiered interventions but how all the school or district systems fit together to ensure a high‐quality education for all students. That said, students have access to a continuum of tiered supports based on needs.

Baking a cake is also a helpful analogy when thinking about MTSS because of its multiple tiers or continuum of tiered supports. What makes a layered cake so darn impressive is how the layers build on each other. When you have three sponge cakes cooling in round pans on the stovetop, they are simply three different cakes. Building them on top of each other makes the real showstopper; the same is true in our schools and districts.

Multi‐tiered support systems are intended to meet the needs of all learners, including students with disabilities and those who need additional challenges. All students should receive Tier 1 support. Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports are not intended to replace Tier 1 supports. At different points in their educational journey, any one student may need the support in Tiers 2 and 3 and should have equitable access to these. For example, if a student needs a service and they do not “qualify” due to predetermined constructs, we must examine whether our structures are effectively designed to foster student success. If students cannot access the support they need, as soon as they need it, and instead have to fail to make progress before getting additional assistance, our system has not produced its intended results.

Before diving into additional tiers, let's unpack a case study of what inclusive Tier 1 looks like in practice. In the MTSS Blueprint we created in partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, we shared a “Case in Point” to describe how Tier 1 can be designed to better meet the needs of all learners (Massachusetts Department of Education, Novak Educational Consulting, Commonwealth Consulting Agency, 2019).

In many classrooms, teachers design a “one‐size‐fits‐all” academic curriculum for learners. For example, when designing instruction, many teachers expect students to read printed text like novels, primary source documents, and/or textbooks to learn content and then answer questions about the content using textual evidence in predictable formats, like the five‐paragraph essay. Printed materials result in barriers for some students, who may not be able to access the text because they cannot decode at that level, have visual impairments, or are English learners. In a universally designed high school classroom, students may have options about which texts to read, or they may be encouraged to choose a novel based on interest, that is relevant, authentic, and meaningful as they work to meet the standard. If reading the same text, students may have the option to read the hard copy or access the text online, where they can customize the display of information, listen to the text, or use translation tools. When eliciting students’ understanding of the text, teachers may ask questions at different depths of knowledge and encourage students to answer in writing or through a short presentation, in an infographic, or through video or audio mediums. As they are working, students may have access to multiple materials such as exemplars, sentence stems, graphic organizers, highlighters, peer‐editing, and writing conferences with the teacher. When students have options and choices to access texts and express what they have learned in more flexible ways, they can be educated together in an inclusive classroom, regardless of variability.

When Tier 1 is designed with inclusive and equitable practices, all students can access instruction in Tier 1 classrooms. Student assessments such as universal screeners, statewide assessments, curriculum‐based assessments, and diagnostic assessments can be jointly analyzed to help provide information that schools can use to determine the level of support a student needs, whether that is Tier 1 only, or additional supports from Tier 2 or 3.

Tier 2 provides more intensive, targeted, and supplemental support to students. We cannot overstate how important it is that this support occurs in addition to Tier 1. We repeatedly say, “Supplement, not supplant” when working with educators. In 2020, the National Center on Educational Outcomes (NCEO) and the TIES Center jointly published a report, “MTSS for All: Including Students with the Most Significant Cognitive Disabilities” (Thurlow et al., 2020). The report notes (p. 1):

[MTSS] is a framework for organizing and providing a tiered instructional continuum to support learning for all students. MTSS has the potential to meet the academic and behavioral needs of all students. Unfortunately, students with the most significant cognitive disabilities often are not included in this framework even though they should be. When a group of students with disabilities is not included in an MTSS framework, the foundational concept of all students being general education students first, with special education services supplementary, is eroded.

Tier 2 interventions are generally done in small groups and include additional opportunities to practice the skills necessary for core instruction or strategies for enrichment. Tier 2 services are defined by student needs drawn from data collection. We generally like to split Tier 2 into Tier 2A and Tier 2B.

Tier 2A is often an intervention offered in the classroom by the teacher using the intervention materials built into the core curriculum. This intervention time is in addition to core instructional time. This may occur during an intervention block or a “What I Need” (WIN) block outside core instruction. For example, in the WIN block, a teacher may work with a small group of students to provide access to grade‐level text using the intervention sections or to focus on standards‐based skill acceleration activities.

Tier 2B interventions are also targeted but less at the curriculum level and more at the individual skill level. They may also occur during an intervention, flex, or What I Need (WIN) block. An interventionist or specialist often provides these interventions. The supports and services provided in Tier 2B use an evidence‐based intervention program where the length, duration, and staffing ratio are programmatically defined.

Tier 3 provides more intensive support. These are often explicit, focused, evidence‐based interventions that occur individually or in very small groups that are often specially designed. Tier 3 is not synonymous with special education. For example, students with disabilities should not be excluded from Tier 1 and 2 services; likewise, students without disabilities should not be excluded from Tier 3 services. At different points in their educational journey, any one student may need the support in Tiers 2 and 3 and should have equitable access to these. We must be conscientious about not labeling or siloing students according to their needs. Similarly, tiers are not placements or designations that follow students throughout their academic careers.

For example, a student may receive Tier 1 support in a classroom, Tier 2 reading support during an intervention block, and Tier 3 counseling services for social emotional support regardless of whether the student has an IEP, a 504, or a behavior plan. A student who receives these supports is not a “Tier 2” or a “Tier 3” student but has access to reading support in Tier 2 and social emotional support in Tier 3, which mitigates barriers that may prevent the student from accessing support in Tier 1.

MTSS is much more than its tiered supports, so it is important to differentiate between MTSS and RTI. Response to Intervention (RTI) was added to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 2004 as an alternative evaluation procedure. The goal of RTI was to provide screening for all students, deliver academic interventions, monitor student progress, and use the student responses to those interventions as a basis for determining special education eligibility (Turse and Albrecht, 2015).

ESSA distinctly references multi‐tiered support systems, but there is no reference to Response to Intervention (RTI); they are two distinct tiered approaches. While RTI focuses on direct services, supports, and interventions for at‐risk students, MTSS is a systematic approach that addresses conditions for creating successful and sustainable system change while supporting students and staff. Whereas RTI systems were built on a foundation of data‐based decision‐making, multi‐tiered systems enhance the one‐dimensional triangle by incorporating six foundational components: problem‐solving, data‐driven decision‐making, instructional strategies, classroom management, curriculum design, and professional development (Dulaney, Hallam, and Wall, 2013). Rather than a reactive model responding to student achievement declines as a rationale for resources and services, MTSS puts the onus on the system, not the student, and is proactive in getting all students what they need.

The California Department of Education (2021) highlights the differences between the two frameworks. They argue that MTSS has a broader scope than an RTI because MTSS also includes:

• Focusing on aligning the entire system of initiatives, supports, and resources
• Promoting district participation in identifying and supporting systems for alignment of resources, as well as site and grade level
• Systematically addressing support for all students, including gifted and high achievers
• Enabling a paradigm shift for providing support and setting higher expectations for all students through intentional design and redesign of integrated services and supports, rather than a selection of a few components of RTI and intensive interventions
• Endorsing Universal Design for Learning instructional strategies so all students have opportunities for learning through differentiated content, processes, and product
• Integrating instructional and intervention support so that systemic changes are sustainable and based on CCSS‐aligned classroom instruction
• Challenging all school staff to change the way in which they have traditionally worked across all school settings

Given the scope of the work, building an equitable MTSS requires multiple ingredients. As you reflect on the following ingredients, consider which are in place in your system already and which are not present yet. Later in the book, we will guide you through an MTSS self‐assessment process. This exercise is simply an opportunity to build a shared understanding of all the components of MTSS. In addition to having a clear vision for MTSS, we categorized the MTSS ingredients into three drivers: instructional design, tiered systems, and systems and structures.

Summary

In this chapter, we unpacked how MTSS is a system designed to meet the needs of all students by ensuring that districts optimize data‐driven decision‐making, progress monitoring, and evidence‐based supports and strategies with increasing intensity to sustain student growth academically, behaviorally, socially, and emotionally. To build an inclusive and equitable MTSS, systems need numerous ingredients, or drivers, to ensure that no barriers exist to prevent all students from reaching their full potential. Later chapters will unpack each of the ingredients so you can better understand the strengths of your district or school as well as areas of need. This will drive an improvement process that creates equitable outcomes for all learners.

Reflection Questions

1. How did the discussion of MTSS in this chapter relate to your current understanding of MTSS in your school or district?
2. Does your school or district embrace “Supplement, not supplant,” or are students pulled from Tier 1 instruction to get additional support? What barriers prevent students from receiving Tier 1 instruction with their peers if this is the case?
3. How is MTSS different from RTI? Why is it important to support educators in understanding similarities and differences?
4. How did the basketball analogy help you to see UDL as a unifying framework that brings all your improvement efforts together?