The goal of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) is to improve student academic and behavior outcomes.
The MTSS team isn’t a pathway to guide students towards special education. We aren’t coaching admin on how to get students into special education. We’re giving them the tools and strategies for identifying students with disabilities. We are also protecting the special education process. Being on the MTSS team means you can control the pace of student referrals and preserve your sanity.
You might be wondering where school psychologists fit into this system. Or it might not be a matter of where but “how” you fit into this process?
I’ve been in schools where the school psych was integral to the team. I’ve been in schools where the school psych was cut out of whole MTSS process. That year our referrals for special education skyrocketed.
One of my coworkers had 5 out of the 24 students she was referred actually qualify. That’s 20 cases worth of time and energy spent. If the average time spent on a case is 8 hours, that is 160 hours of time. Imagine what could be done with 160 hours extra in the school year?
No wonder she left the district.
During the 2023-2024 school year, I had the opportunity to build our MTSS team from the ground up. It wasn’t perfect by any means. There are definitely somethings I would improve moving forward in any district. If your school doesn’t have a referral or MTSS process, this will help you build one. If your school has a process, hopefully this will help you streamline and refine, and fill any gaps.
#1: Creating the team and finding a protected to meet.
We chose a day and time that worked for most people on the team.
The social worker, admin, our intervention teachers, and the school psychologist were all on the team. We didn’t have too many expectations for attendance and we had a zoom option for those who weren’t able to attend. The speech and language pathologist, occupational therapist, and physical therapist attended some meetings. The key players are the “support liasion”, the teachers, and the school psychologist. One thing that we did well was have as many people join as possible. Having that zoom option was helpful, even though most people preferred to meet in person. Most people will opt out of the meeting if its not convenient for them to attend.
One of the things that didn’t work for us was giving ourselves enough time to meet. We only met for half an hour in the morning which wasn’t enough time to discuss students. We had enough time for 2-3. When I was at the middle school, we had an hour. We got through about 8-10 students. We met every week, but we went over the same group of students, so it wasn’t an effective use of our time.
A good balance between these two methods is to determine whether your team needs
- More time, but less frequency
- Less time, but more frequency
Every week, your team is discussing a new group of students and following up on that group of students in 6-8 weeks. At our most efficient, we could cover about 8-10 students. We were able to accomplish this by having a time limit and having our data input the day before. The only thing we didn’t do was rotate through students. Instead of rehashing the same 8-10 students week to week, we could have gotten up to 60 students.
The most efficient way to leverage your time is to have more time and more frequency if you can swing it. If you can commit to at least twice a month for an hour and follow up for 6 weeks, that would be enough.
#2: Adopting a meeting agenda or framework and meeting norms.
It’s so easy for these MTSS meetings to go off the rails. At minimum you need an agenda to keep everyone on track. You can create your own framework, but why reinvent the wheel? Our team use the TIPS framework at it was amazing at keeping people on track. Our timekeeper was very quick to flash that 2 minute warning.
You’ll be surprised how much you can accomplish with a 5 minute discussion.
If you adopt a framework and meeting norms, your meetings will run a lot smoother. I was trying to convince my next district to adopt the TIPS framework and assign roles, but we only got half way there. We assigned a notetaker and data review, but not much else. Our meetings felt tedious and afterwards, nobody had a clue what they needed to do. Our meetings felt scattered and unfocused.
Have enough meetings like that and people will feel like they are wasting their time. Eventually, they’ll stop coming.
Once a problem was solved and solution was agreed upon, we still continued to admire the problem.
Let’s not waste everyone’s time rehashing the same problem over again.
#3: Determining the Support Liasion
The support liasion should be someone who has consistent contact with students. They have some level of authority, and has direct access to administrators. When I worked in the middle school, this job ended up falling on our Dean of Students. This role was a catch all for the things that the principal and assistant principals didn’t want to do. (which was darn near everything).
The problem with this was that it fell on one person to handle all the concerns. That’s not sustainable. If that person leaves, they take the process with them.
Let’s stop building person dependent systems.
In order for MTSS work, you need a protocol on how things are going to run. These would be the steps that any person can pick up and do. There may some be some tweaks to streamline things, but ultimately the process should be the same.
The Support Liasion is the “boots on the ground” person. They are the one who is going into classrooms, talking to teachers, and setting up meetings. We had 3, two for academic support, and our assistant principal was there for behavior. For the most part, it seemed to work out pretty well. Our intervention teachers and admin were doing these jobs anyway, so it was only natural.
Unless you’re at a school full time and don’t have any other responsibilities, it shouldn’t be you. That’s an easy way to get burnt out doing a bunch of unrelated jobs.
Incorporating a well-structured MTSS team is essential to improving student outcomes. without overwhelming the special education process. You can do this by:
- Finding a convenient time for the team to meet with no interruptions.
- Have a meeting agenda.
- Determining the team members who will help with implementation.