Appendix B: Sample Action Steps for MTSS Strategy

Coming up with action steps can be daunting. To support you, we have drafted a bank of sample action steps aligned with essential planning components of an inclusive and equitable MTSS.

Vision Action Steps

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Shared Vision: The learning community has a shared understanding of high‐quality instruction, which promotes deeper learning for all students.
  • Draft a vision rooted in deeper learning.
  • Create a plan for the vision to be present in multiple formats and visible to the community (e.g., on the website, embedded in materials such as handbooks, as part of planning agendas, referenced in budgeting documents).
Grounded in Equity: The instructional vision is grounded in equity, communicates high expectations, and advances equitable outcomes for all learners.
  • Vet the vision statement to ensure that it is grounded in equity. If it is not present, update the vision accordingly.
Student Experience: The vision centers around the student experience and creates conditions for student engagement and agency in their own learning.
  • Vet the vision statement to ensure that it centers around the student experience.

Instructional Design Sample Action Steps

Curricular Materials

ComponentsSample Action Steps
High‐Quality Instructional Materials: Materials are bias‐free, have empirical evidence of efficacy (high‐quality instructional materials/HQIM), engaging content, and are inclusive in design.
  • Create a process and form a committee to select high‐quality instructional materials.
Coherence: Materials used across all three tiers exhibit a coherent sequence of target skills and knowledge that advances deeper learning (i.e., vertically and horizontally aligned).
  • Create a schedule for cross‐grade teams to meet to review core instructional materials and supplemental intervention resources.
Vision Alignment: The learning community has a system for reviewing curricular materials and adjusting as needed to align to the instructional vision.
  • Create a process and form a committee to assess current instructional materials to ensure high quality, using existing databases like CuRATE or EdReports.

Equitable Practices

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Equitable Access: All students receive challenging, grade‐appropriate instruction and have equitable access to effective instructional practices.
  • Conduct an annual equity audit and use the findings to inform improvement plan action steps.
ESL: All English learners have access to appropriate ESL services as part of their Tier 1 instruction.
  • Create a committee to review the evidence base of the instructional materials and approaches used in your ESL programming.
EL Support: English learners, at all proficiency levels, are provided equitable access to grade‐level curriculum and have opportunities to develop and practice discipline‐specific language.
  • Conduct an annual internal audit of services for English learners, to ensure appropriate service hours are present.
SWD/504 Support: Instructional practices outlined in the 504 or IEP and used with students with disabilities must be research‐based, provide equitable access to Tier 1 instruction, and be implemented with fidelity.
  • Conduct an annual review of inclusion rates to ensure the least restrictive environment is being employed for all students.
  • Create a committee to review the evidence base of the instructional materials and approaches used in your special education programming.

Pedagogy

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Effective Instructional Practices: The learning community implements effective instructional practices (rooted in deeper learning, universally designed, culturally sustaining, linguistically supportive, and trauma‐informed).
  • Create a multiyear professional learning plan to support the application of effective instructional practices.
Implementation: The organization has identified measures and resources (e.g., observation tools or an instructional guide) to ensure organization‐wide fidelity.
  • Draft an instructional guidebook inclusive of all aspects of effective instructional practice that will be used in ongoing professional learning and coaching sessions.
High Expectations: There are high expectations for all students across all classrooms, including multilingual learners and students with disabilities, such that students are engaging with grade‐level work that advances deeper learning.
  • Conduct a biannual internal audit of EL programming and the tiered supports ELs are provided.

Assessment

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Data‐Informed Practice: Standards‐based and universally designed formative and summative assessments are used to monitor student progress toward learning goals and to inform effective instructional support.
  • Review common assessments to ensure that they are standards‐aligned and universally designed.
  • Create an articulated resource, timeline, and schedule for data meetings to review the use of curriculum‐based formative measures against prerequisite skills to inform classroom acceleration for students below grade level.
Data‐Based Decisions: There is a process for collecting and analyzing student work throughout units to monitor student performance that increases equitable outcomes.
  • Create or select the annual fidelity measures based on our improvement plan's priority areas.
Engagement: Each student's strengths, progress, and next steps are shared with students and families such that students and families know and can track their progress.
  • Design mechanisms for sharing ongoing student progress measures, such as an online student grading portal shared with families.

Learning Environment

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Safety: The learning environment is physically and psychologically safe, supportive, and accessible.
  • Review and revise our safety plans with a lens toward access for students with disabilities and linguistically appropriate design for multilingual learners.
Belonging: Students experience an inclusive learning environment that recognizes the value of all educators and students.
  • Create and administer a student survey and ask questions about their experiences as they relate to how well the organization supports their sense of belonging, agency, and personal value. Use the results to create an action item in the improvement plan.
Feedback: The organization utilizes ongoing feedback cycles from students, families/caregivers, community partners, and educators to build an inclusive, positive school community.
  • Create a communication plan regarding improvement efforts that includes defined feedback loops, a schedule for when those feedback mechanisms will be employed, and how feedback will be used in upcoming cycles of inquiry.

Tiered Systems Planning

Tiered Supports

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Domains: There is a systemic approach to developing a comprehensive set of tiered supports for all learners across all three domains (academic, social/emotional, and behavioral).
  • Conduct a review of tiered programming to ensure it is responsive to all three domains.
Tiered Interventions: The organization creates conditions and systems to provide universal (Tier 1), targeted (Tier 2), and intensive (Tier 3) support to students.
  • Draft an MTSS Handbook that summarizes the available tiers, outlines the supports provided across all three tiers, and includes data‐based criteria for support.
EL: All English learners receive appropriate ESL services, access to Tier 1 instruction, and can access a tiered system of support, as needed.
  • Conduct a biannual internal audit of EL programming and ensure the tiered supports ELs are provided.
SWD: IEPs are designed and implemented to ensure that all SWDs can access scientifically based tiered support as appropriate in the least restrictive environment.
  • Conduct a biannual internal audit of special education programming and the tiered supports SWDs are provided.
Engagement in Student Support: Families/Caregivers and students are actively engaged in student support processes/decisions and regularly informed about progress. Families/caregivers receive the information they need to advocate for their children and are informed of their rights to request a special education evaluation at any time during the tiered support process.
  • Conduct an annual community survey including specific questions targeted to culturally and linguistically appropriate practice.

Data Systems

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Data Systems: All schools have a clear system and process of collecting and distributing universal screening, diagnostic, and progress monitoring to inform placement and progress within their tiered system of support.
  • Conduct a formal review of the components of our data systems inclusive of a review of policies, practices, and procedures.
  • Embed a process for data review to be conducted and articulated in all planning templates.
Assessment Plans: All schools have an assessment plan that defines the purpose, type, and timing of all schoolwide and district‐wide assessments, inclusive of universal screeners, diagnostic assessments, language development, and progress monitoring tools (across all three domains). The map is reviewed regularly to ensure that it is accessible to all and is culturally and linguistically appropriate.
  • Publish an annual assessment map inclusive of universal screeners, diagnostic assessments, language development, and progress monitoring tools (across all three domains).
  • Vet the assessment map for culturally and linguistically appropriate elements upon adoption of any assessments.
Data‐Driven Culture: Leaders and educators create/embrace a culture that centers on the use of triangulated data to assess and address current systems that create barriers for students.
  • Survey staff on the data culture in our organization and create action items to address the areas of challenge.
Student Needs: Administrators, teachers, students, and families/caregivers engage in strategic problem‐solving processes that identify student needs and determine progress monitoring protocols for short‐ and long‐term goals. This includes students with diverse needs such as those with IEPs and 504 plans and English learners.
  • Conduct an annual family/caregiver survey with specific questions focused on assessment information shared.
  • Conduct a biannual internal audit of special education programming and the tiered supports SWDs are provided.
  • Administer the SaSS self‐reflection tool and use it to create associated action plans.

Access to Resources

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Reviews: A regular review of student needs is conducted at least annually to ensure that student needs drive staffing and service structures, as opposed to retrofitting student needs into existing models or assessing positions and/or roles that no longer meet the needs of current students or models that may be contributing to inequity.
  • Conduct an internal review of the services students receive across all three tiers.
  • Review the schedule to ensure flexibility for movement across tiered supports throughout the school year.
Tiered Staffing: The staffing selection, models, and positions are designed to support the implementation of MTSS based on students' needs. Consideration is given to staff titles and duties to foster a positive approach to meeting the needs of all students. Staff is (re)allocated based on student needs annually and during the year.
  • Conduct a staffing audit annually with a lens toward staffing positions and ratios aligned with defined tiered support models and chosen tiered programming.
Tiered Scheduling: The schedule articulates when tiered supports will occur, ensures that intervention services are supplemental and not supplanting core instruction, priorities direct student supports in staff schedules, and provides time to administer and review data to identify and monitor students.
  • Review the schedules to ensure appropriate time is provided for Tier 2 and 3 supports, based on research and recommendations of program efficacy.
  • Conduct a review of the schedules to ensure that all Tier 2 and 3 services supplement and not supplant Tier 1 supports.
  • Review the schedule in alignment with effective instructional practices for appropriate daily core content instructional time. Revise as necessary.
Community Partnerships: Community partners are actively engaged to better support students and families/caregivers and to connect them to social services related to health, social, recreational, and supplemental educational services.
  • Conduct the asset‐mapping protocol to identify key community resources available within the organization that we can use in the future.
Technology: Educational and assistive technology is available for all students and used in alignment with the instructional vision and to increase access to appropriate tiered supports.
  • Tangibly embed MTSS into our capital plans, such as including assistive technology in our technology plan.

Leveraging Systems and Structures

Staff Development and Competency

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Professional Learning Plan: The organization has a sustainable professional learning plan that offers coherent, high‐quality, universally designed professional development informed by and results in movement toward the instructional vision.
  • Create a section in the published professional development plan that speaks to the work's alignment with effective instructional practices.
High‐Quality Professional Learning: Educators engage in data‐based and relevant ongoing, job‐embedded professional learning opportunities including frequent observations and feedback that advance skillful use of high‐quality curricular materials and associated educational technology. Professional learning results in effective instructional practices that advance deeper learning and include tiered coaching models.
  • Create a budget line, job descriptions, and hire coaches across all three tiers.
  • Design a coaching manual and coaching schedule that supports the use of data as a means to determine the tiered coaching model.
Collaborative Planning: There is time in the schedule for educators (including interventionists, ESL instructors, and special educators) with designated opportunities to collaborate, analyze data and student work, assess the effectiveness of instruction, plan, and engage in learning experiences that deepen their understanding and implementation of effective instructional practices and provide access to grade‐appropriate content for all students.
  • Create a schedule that includes collaborative planning time and publish a set of organizational protocols to support the use of data to inform educator practice.
Observation and Feedback: All schools and/or teams have routines and systems for frequent observation and feedback that focus on clearly defined and communicated expectations for effective instructional practices in order to advance deeper learning.
  • Create and publish the dates and purposes of feedback mechanisms inclusive of learning walks, walkthroughs, formal evaluation observations, and coaching observations.
  • Design a schedule of observations and allow for tiered coaching models to occur within the schedule.
Evaluation: There are strategic, unbiased, and transparent systems for evaluation, using student feedback, observation data, and review of artifacts along to make informed decisions about opportunities for educator support and leadership development.
  • Review and revise observations look‐fors to include overt language referencing effective instructional practices.

Structural Support

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Alignment to Vision: Resources are strategically aligned for impact and informed by data, and allocations are vetted with a lens toward access and equity and the alignment between resources and the instructional vision is well articulated.
  • Create a vetting protocol to assess the budget for alignment with the vision.
Fiscal Support: The budget provides appropriate levels of funding for high‐quality instructional and intervention materials and assessments, key positions, professional development, and so on.
  • Create a space in the annual budget narrative to speak to the direct alignment with the vision.
Structural Review: Policies, practices, and procedures are analyzed with an equity lens, such as a review for disproportionality for students of color or accessing the language accessibility of the assessment for ELs.
  • Review our capital planning process to ensure it is reviewed with a lens of access and equity.
Technology: There is a clear and consistent process for selecting and evaluating technology products that is aligned to the instructional vision and responsive to student and staff needs.
  • Draft protocols and policies for technology product selection and evaluation, consistent with the instructional vision.

Continuous Improvement Cycles

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Leadership Commitment: There is an active leadership team that takes responsibility for ensuring that systems meet the needs of all learners. The team has the authority to make resource, scheduling, programmatic, and staffing decisions and has representation from a range of leaders (e.g., academics, student support, special education, and English learner).
  • Create a schedule for the improvement planning process to be integrated into existing district and school leadership team meetings on a consistent basis.
Continuous Improvement: The organization engages in ongoing and inclusive long‐term (multiyear and annual) and short‐term (quarterly and monthly) goal setting and monitoring toward realizing the instructional vision and ensuring each student is making progress, which results in adjustments to the school's structures, programs, and resources (e.g., time, staff, schedules) throughout the year.
  • Draft a three‐year improvement plan.
  • Create the annual feedback measures based on the plan's priority areas.
Representation: Voices from all students, families, and communities are used to drive improvement efforts and obtain perception data on the plan's progress. Representation is assessed to ensure participation and engagement represent the community at large, with a specific lens to remove barriers to participation (e.g., transportation or language barriers).
  • Include specific questions focused on the improvement plan's priority areas in an annual family/caregiver survey.
Equity Focused: Improvement efforts are grounded in concepts of equity and identify clear goals to close the opportunity gap for all students (including ELs, SWDs, newcomers, SLIFE, ELSWDs, etc.).
  • Conduct an annual equity audit and use the findings to inform improvement plan action steps.
Multiyear Planning: A multiyear district strategy process is established and results in a multiyear plan rooted in implementation science. The district plan informs annual district action plans, school improvement plans, and educator goals. Annual action plans include the use of benchmarks to assess progress toward the improvement goals.
  • Publish an annual assessment map that is inclusive of quantitative and qualitative measures.
  • Define the three‐year plan's target benchmarks with data drawn from student outcomes data, instructional data, perspectives data, and systems/structures data.
Midcourse Corrections and Continuous Improvement: Based on the data collected through fidelity measures and feedback loops, decisions are made about how to enhance the effectiveness of the work.
  • Create and share a set of defined data protocols and data points that will be used by the improvement planning team to guide their work.

Human Resources

ComponentsSample Action Steps
Distributive Leadership: The organization has instructional leadership teams or equivalent structures to collaboratively develop and reflect on the effectiveness of professional development, planning, and implementation efforts. Across the organization, team and collaboration structures create shared responsibility and ownership and have an impact on school improvement.
  • Set up a representative improvement planning team and schedule inclusive of time to review data and draft goals.
Hiring: Hiring processes and procedures are bias‐free and ensure that all candidates have the relevant expertise to meet each student's needs and have a mindset and belief that all students can learn at high levels. The organization systematically reviews staff hiring processes and policies to ensure that they are non‐discriminatory, inclusive, and focused on meeting the needs of all learners.
  • Review the hiring policies and procedures and determine specific next steps to better diversify the workforce.
  • Update the hiring manuals to ensure that interview questions reflect our improvement plan's priority areas.
Retention: Hiring and retention policies and procedures include strategies to recruit, mentor, train, and support a diverse educator and administrator workforce that is well‐prepared to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students.
  • Meet with new hires and design a multiyear induction program to support them, including specific attention to the needs of those who are not yet well represented in the staffing community.
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