As busy educators, it’s hard to find time to read, let alone sift through the thousands of different resources available, to get the most out of the reading time we do have. At Branching Minds, we try to stay as current as possible with the literature and best practices in the field, so you don’t have to. We compiled a list of what we believe to be the most useful books for your MTSS practice. What’s even better: all of these books are relatively quick to read, include many case studies or real-life examples, and are easily broken down by chapter. If you can’t read a whole book at once, narrowing it down to one component can be easily done with these resources. We love these books and hope you find one in the list below that will be helpful to you.
For reference to key MTSS terms, check out this blog: Demystifying the MTSS Mystery.
Long before the pandemic shuttered our nation’s schools in mid-March 2020, many districts across the country had been working to transition to MTSS (Multi-Tiered Student Support System). Schools started to let go of traditional models to evaluate students for special education and instead began moving towards a Whole Child approach to consider the needs of all students. Many chose to transition to MTSS because it uses a multi-tiered support foundation that wraps around a school’s entire student body and uses data-driven problem-solving to address academic and non-academic (attendance, social-emotional, etc.) needs. Schools and districts making this shift found that they improved education for all students, gained efficiencies, and prevented students from “slipping through the cracks.”
In a healthy RTI/MTSS practice, a data-driven approach is not only important for guiding decisions for individual student needs, but it’s also critical for evaluating the quality and impact of the practice at the school and district level. We recommend that school and/or district leadership meet three times a year, following the administration of universal screening assessments, to reflect on and evaluate their practice. The goal of this meeting is to understand the health of school-level RTI/MTSS practice by looking at the percent of students who are adequately being served by the core, the equity of instruction across demographics, and improvement in student outcome measures since the last meeting. These metrics are used to evaluate the quality of practice across tier 1, 2, and 3 levels of support and guide school-level improvement plans.
As a former special education teacher/case manager and now a special education university supervisor, I have spent many an hour discussing MTSS (Multi-Tier System of Supports). My university students and I have reviewed the countless interventions and supports they are exposed to during their required observations, practicums, and culminating student teaching experiences. After conducting an informal poll with my most recent cohort, I found that many students felt that MTSS has a confusing reputation in the field. Further, I noticed that some students were using the term MTSS interchangeably with terms such as RTI, PBIS, and even pre-referral screening. As a result, I decided to take a moment to clear up what MTSS is, and what it is not.
How Can Schools and Districts Reduce the Damage of the COVID-19 Slide?
The COVID-19 global pandemic has created many unknowns for our education system. But one certainty is the challenge teachers will be faced with when students do return to the classroom. The good news is there are a number of things school and district leaders can do now to prepare for this new beginning.
While many school districts have made amazing efforts to continue student learning during this time, there is still an extremely large variation in the type of learning going on in students’ homes. Some students may be fortunate enough to have a parent available to work one-on-one with them and ensure they are completing their daily assignments; however, many students do not have this type of at-home support.
During this time, many students have also experienced caregivers losing their jobs, falling into poverty, and their loved ones getting ill, being hospitalized, or passing away. These traumas will undoubtedly affect their emotions, behaviors, and motivation when they return to the classroom. When schools reopen, teachers will be faced with classrooms of students with a vast array of experiences and academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs.
A formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of a student’s status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics (Popham, 2008). To build an effective system, Tier 1 instruction may look different from school to school depending on the predominant needs of their population (e.g., LEP, FRL, Gifted). For example, one school may require intensive ESL support as a part of Tier 1 instruction to meet the 80 percent criterion and another school may require enrichment to ensure progress for high-achieving and/or gifted students as a part of Tier 1 instruction. For those schools that meet the 80 percent criterion, it is still essential to examine the effectiveness of the core and ensure growth of all students.