Can michigan sustain its multitiered supports?
Can michigan sustain its multitiered supports?"
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN
Play all audios:
Through a statewide initiative, Michigan has launched multitiered systems of supports as a framework to improve academics and behavior in more than half the state’s 900 elementary and
secondary schools. But educators and researchers have found that initial buy-in, financial incentives, and even early success don’t guarantee schools will sustain the model for the long
haul. Multitiered systems of supports, or MTSS, are intended to address all students’ academic progress and behavior in schools by providing research-backed instruction for all students in
academics and social-emotional development. Students who do not progress based only on this core instruction, known as Tier 1, are assessed regularly and provided increasingly intense
interventions, called Tiers 2 and 3. The framework is intended to combine elements of similar models, like response to intervention for academics or positive behavior interventions and
supports for behavior. The model “is a recipe, it’s not a McDonald’s ‘value menu’ where you go, ‘I like this part and this part and this part,’” said Steve Netzel, the executive director of
curriculum and staff development for the Holt public schools, a 5,600-student district south of Lansing. “It takes a while to understand it’s a system and it all interacts with each other.
You can’t pick and choose.” As similar models are tried out in districts nationwide, Michigan’s experience exemplifies the challenges of implementing systems of supports for general
education students across grades, subjects, and schools. More than 500 elementary and middle schools adopted the tiered-support-systems model between 2004, when the program started, and
2013. Schools saw the percentage of students meeting state reading benchmarks rise from 52 percent to more than 60 percent in the first three years, and behavior problems also fell. But
Steve Goodman, the project director of Michigan’s multitiered-systems initiative, found that after that initial strong beginning, implementation dropped off rapidly after the third year,
when start-up funding from the federal economic stimulus dried up. Fewer than one-third of schools met state implementation benchmarks, according to a study in 2014. More than 4 in 5 schools
simply stopped reporting student data by the fourth year of the program. That was a disappointment, Goodman said, since the schools that did fully implement the framework saw much bigger
gains, particularly in student behavior. “What we learned is we could get good outcomes from behavior and reading—when staff implemented it with fidelity,” Goodman said. STUDY OF
IMPLEMENTATION Michigan’s results mirror other studies also finding mixed results for schools trying to use the framework. “There’s this idea that a tiered framework can be applied in many
different domains and that those can complement each other,” said Rekha Balu, who studies response-to-intervention models for the research group MDRC. But, she added, “thinking of
next-generation support systems, I see huge coordination challenges ahead.” For example, this September, the Tennessee education department found fewer than 1 in 4 schools involved in the
state’s mutltitiered-systems initiative actually had most teachers implementing all its core pieces. MICHIGAN'S MODEL: EFFECTS ON READING, DISCIPLINE Source: Michigan’s Integrated
Behavior and Learning Support Initiative Moreover, even among the so-called “high implementer” schools—those that showed the most improvement for students—implemented the framework
differently from those with smaller student gains. The schools that improved the most had strong leaders and specialized staff who prioritized the model. The schools also used several
different data sources to make decisions about students, rather than relying on one screening test. Perhaps most importantly, the Tennessee study found, the schools arrange staggered
schedules, so that teacher planning and student interventions don’t interfere with core instruction. “In some of our small schools, there’s an assumption that communication will just
happen,” said Lynnette Borree, the director of response to intervention in the Copper Country Intermediate district, which serves three rural districts in the state’s Upper Peninsula. “But
you need to be intentional about it. If you just assume it will happen without giving and dedicating time for those buildings to communicate, it just doesn’t happen.” Superintendent David G.
Hornak said the Holt district “had some false starts.” He was a building principal when Holt adopted the multitiered-supports system, and saw that implementation varied significantly from
school to school, and changed when new principals came in. “At a building level, you get a little possessive of your space and time and resources. You try to pivot and protect what you are
already doing,” Hornak said. WHOLE-DISTRICT SUPPORTS The results in Michigan persuaded Goodman and other state-level experts to broaden the initiative’s implementation targets from schools
to districts. “We could only get so far with a school-based model” of the MTSS, Goodman said. “Working with schools, we [at the state level] provided training, coaching, evaluation,
expertise. That is not scalable; you can only do it in small projects with outside resources coming in. To sustain it, you have to develop local capacity. “At the district level, you have
people with the authority and resources to say this is a priority,” he added. The Ingham Intermediate district was one of the districts that stepped up to help. A regional service agency
representing 12 local school districts (including Holt) and 10 charter academies in and around Lansing, Ingham had been one of the original areas to pilot the framework. The district was
quick to expand it using more than $11 million from the 2009 federal economic-stimulus money. “I felt like all of us went back and got another master’s degree; it was a whole year of
learning nonstop,” said Roberta Perconti, Ingham’s director of student instructional services. The regional district has worked to coordinate training, planning, and budgets to help local
schools stay on track with the model. “We’ve had districts who really embraced it, and then leadership changed, and they stopped,” Perconti said. “Anybody who says it isn’t a challenge
probably isn’t doing it right.” The federal money helped build some initial enthusiasm, but real understanding of the model took longer, Perconti said. Some school and district leaders
thought of tiers as primarily a special education system, rather than for all students. Many schools did not implement the behavioral system at all at first, because they didn’t consider
behavior something to teach. “It all got rushed through at the end of the school year,” said Netzel, Holt’s curriculum director, who was a special education teacher when his district started
to implement the multitiered system. “Nobody would say no to it because it sounded good, but that’s not the same as being committed to it. “ To keep schools on track, Ingham developed a
detailed description of what implementation would look like—and cost—at different phases. The district began to meet regularly with superintendents, curriculum and other specialists, and
business officers at each district. “People get immobilized with there being so many things to work on and not knowing what to focus on. We needed to connect our implementation checklist to
actual work,” Perconti said. “We asked a lot more questions [like], ‘Do you have evidence of implementing this? Can you show you’ve allocated time and staff? Do all teachers have access to
your data?’” she said. “In our districts, the offices didn’t always talk to each other. It was fascinating to see a superintendent hearing his staff report and saying, ‘What do you mean
we’re not providing time for [professional development]?’ ” Hornak, Holt’s superintendent, said he worked with Netzel to build up training for all school leaders and staff. “When you are
building systems ... It has to be slow and methodical so everyone understands the ‘why’ of what’s happening,” Hornak said. “With strong systems in place, leaders can change positions without
it all falling apart.” STRUCTURING TIME In the neighboring 3,200-student Mason, another of Ingham’s districts, Lisa Francisco, the principal of the Alaiedon Elementary School, said her team
also struggled to make the model match reality. On paper, the response-to-intervention “pyramid” describes strong, research-backed core instruction that is effective for about 80 percent of
students, with increasingly intense interventions for the rest. But in the 475-student Alaiedon school, “We had no real reading program, and our [RTI] ‘triangles’ were really out of whack,
almost upside-down,” Francisco said. “We were intervening with too many kids.” The district decided to bring in new reading, and later, math curricula to their schools, with training and
data support from Ingham. Like the Tennessee researchers, they also found the need to provide more time and staff support to make sure interventions for students didn’t interfere with core
instructional time. And Ronald Drzewicki, Mason’s superintendent, began regularly gathering school staff to compare data both within campuses and across the district. “Strategic planning is
not just Lisa [Francisco] talking about the plan to her teachers; it’s educating a lot of staff members about district goals,” Drzewicki said. “It ... gives Lisa the ability to say, everyone
in the district is doing this.” At Alaiedon Elementary, Francisco and her teachers agreed to shuffle all the students in each grade who needed extra practice in certain skills for a
30-minute literacy-intervention period each day, grouping students according to the specific reading skills that needed extra practice to avoid having to pull some students out of regular
classes. As a district, Mason was also able to hire some retired teachers part time, to spread out students into smaller groups during intervention periods. It seems to be working: In 2009,
Holt and Mason were each referring 21 percent of their students for special education. Today, the special education rates have fallen to 9 percent at Mason and 11 percent at Holt, both below
the national average of 12 percent. “It’s still hard to be compared to other people, but we are seeing gains,” Francisco said. The school has improved enough to leave its status as a
“focus” school since adopting multitiered supports. “It felt for a while that we are learning this, and this, and this, and this ... but now teachers are all starting to see it come together
and make a difference for all students.”
Trending News
Dan walker savaged by bbc viewers over boris' bike ride remarks“Kit gives a good response to the PM’s bike ride. A 14 mile bike ride for the average cycling enthusiast is about an hou...
Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne Transform as Kanye West and 'Wife' Bianca Censori for HalloweenSharon and Ozzy Osbourne Transform as Kanye West and 'Wife' Bianca Censori for Halloween The Osbournes recreated the cou...
Alison hammond in hysterics as lisa snowdon suffers wardrobe mishapShowing her own backing for the item, Lisa told the hosts: “I’m wearing them now! “I’ve been wearing them all day, they’...
Breach of union rules decision Mr Alec McFadden v Unite the Union (PDF format) - GOV.UKThe applicant made two complaints under section 108A(1) of the Trade Union Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 tha...
Australia employment up again, jobless rate dropsTom Grill | Photographer's Choice | Getty Images Australian employment outstripped expectations for a second month ...
Latests News
Can michigan sustain its multitiered supports?Through a statewide initiative, Michigan has launched multitiered systems of supports as a framework to improve academic...
Point of no return - DER SPIEGEL------------------------- * * X.com * Facebook * E-Mail * * * X.com * Facebook * E-Mail * Messenger * WhatsApp * Sie kön...
Neuronal network activity controls microglial process surveillance in awake mice via norepinephrine signalingABSTRACT Microglia dynamically survey the brain parenchyma. Microglial processes interact with neuronal elements; howeve...
Shirley maclaine recalls uneasy '80s encounter with donald trump: 'i got out of there real fast' (exclusive)Shirley MacLaine has made dozens of films in her nearly 70-year acting career., so it's no surprise that she's...
Big bang theory’s mary cooper lands huge new role 'the dropout'Mary Cooper (played by Laurie Metcalf) became an instant hit with Big Bang Theory fans when she first appeared in the CB...