We are pretty sure that you've heard the acronym MTSS, which stands for Multi-Teared System of Supports. We're also pretty sure you have questions about MTSS because we sure do. And we can't wait to get some answers to those questions today and hear how this system, so this MTSS system can make your phonics instruction even more effective.

And we're here today with Stephanie Stoller, who you might know from Reading Science Academy. She is a researcher and has conducted research in the areas of assessment and early intervention. So perfect for this topic today. And she's also an assistant professor in the Reading Science program at Mount St. Joseph University. Welcome Stephanie.

Thank you both so much. It's a pleasure to be with you today.

We're so excited you're here.

Yeah, you're our second guest from the Mount St. Joseph program. Oh, nice.

Very good. Happy to hear that.

So we'd love to start off by just talking about the whole system of MTSS. We know that the multi-tiered system of supports, it's a framework that helps teachers provide support for students with various needs. And we know that there are lots of different needs. But can you share more about the history of it and how you would define it?

Sure. For me, MTSS is a framework for school improvement. It is the large umbrella under which all of the improvement efforts that your school and district is engaged in fall. So that whether you are talking about improving behavior and mental health outcomes or academic supports reading or math. This is the framework for using data to identify the roadblocks and hurdles to better student performance. And it sometimes isn't thought of in that broad perspective. I tend to focus just on the reading or literacy aspects of MTSS. And I personally focus just on early literacy because I think that's where we have the biggest impact and the most potential for change. But sometimes people just think about the tiered model. They think about tier one, tier two and tier three. And the other thing is that if you don't understand MTSS in terms of where it originated or the fact that it's a comprehensive approach to changing student outcomes. So it just a little trip down memory lane for me. When I went to graduate school, it was not long after the time when students with disabilities were first required to be served in public schools. And so there was a time when students with disabilities were either institutionalized or they were kept at home. There wasn't a requirement for them to be served in public schools. That happened in the mid 70s. And so in the effort to start serving all students. Unfortunately, one of the things that happened is there were two systems set up that are still very much siloed today. They have a separate education system of service delivery and special education. And that originated even in educator preparation programs as separate programs in school districts. Those are separate funding streams. They have separate teams within central offices separate professional development sometimes for educators. And so the first thing that happened was that the MTSS model was originated was to blend those service delivery systems to have a seamless system of supports that could improve outcomes for all students, rather than having this separation. Some of the needs, assumptions, preferences, whims, you know, chasing shiny objects. So MTSS was an alternative to that in focusing people on making decisions based on data. And it was the time when we had the emergence of really good direct assessments that could be used to form the basis for those decisions. And that decision making in the MTSS model needs to happen in teams. So rather than just top down decision making within a district or school, rather than just informing parents what's going to happen, in MTSS, there are collaborative teams at the school level, at the district level, that include all stakeholders, including parents, family members, community members. And those teams are using student data to make decisions. So they're identifying the barriers that might be existing within the system that are keeping students from better outcomes, and then systematically making plans to eliminate those barriers. So I think that's kind of it in a nutshell, the important components of the model and how they emerged as alternatives to what I call the old way of doing business. But the old way is still alive and well in many places.

Yeah, that's a really helpful overview. Some of that I really had no idea of how it came to be. So that was really helpful. Thank you. I'm wondering if we can talk about the tier one tier two and tier three. I know those are terms we're familiar with. I'm sure many of our listeners are familiar with, but we also know people have different definitions of them. There's a lot of confusion, misconceptions between what should happen in each of those tiers. So can you just, we want to hear from you. What should be happening in tier one, tier two, and tier three?

Yeah, so let me connect this to go back to a little bit of the history lesson. You know, we used to only have assessments that would focus only on what was going on with the student. And we would only wait until there was a problem that bubbled up in the classroom and we would rely on the teacher noticing that there was a problem with reading and then referring that student to some system of hurdles that they had to jump through to get help.

And in the

reading research, we have really good evidence of the ability to prevent reading problems from happening. I think it's maybe the most important finding in what we now call the science of reading, that we can prevent reading problems for almost every student. And that's where the tiered model originated. So it started in public health. It was about disease prevention in public health. So preventing the flu, you know, what we do with everybody. That's tier one. What we do with some people who are at risk of the flu, that's tier two, what we do with the people who have the flu to keep it from going to pneumonia. That's tier three, like tertiary prevention.

So

that was first transferred into the positive behavior support realm. And then eventually that tiered model was applied to reading to early literacy. So the tiers in the MTSS approach are prevention of reading failure. You have primary prevention of reading failure. That's tier one. What we do with everybody, like preventing the flu, you know, hand washing and not letting people sneeze on you and covering your cough, that kind of thing. And we have tier two system of prevention of reading failure for individuals who are at higher risk of reading difficulties. So again, the flu analogy that's like people who work in schools or in the health care professions get a flu shot right there at higher risk. And then tertiary prevention tier three is to catch students up who are struggling readers, perhaps older struggling readers to really accelerate their performance. It's the most intensive and individual supports that we can provide. So all of it rests on this basis of effective classroom reading instruction. And that's why it's depicted like a triangle, right, because all students are impacted by classroom reading instruction. And the characteristics of effective primary prevention of reading failure include things like all students receiving tier one instruction. So everybody gets it. Nobody's coming out of tier one to get their SLP service or their EL service or their reading intervention. Everybody gets it. It's a protected block of time. It doesn't have to be continuous minutes, but it's a protected block of time. It is highly differentiated to meet the needs of the students in that grade level. It is lined up to research about what and how to teach. So a sequence of skills. Instructional routines and materials that have some evidence behind them. And we know that that tier one system is effective if most of the students in the grade level are reaching our grade level expectations just with classroom reading instruction. So the job of tier one is to shrink risk. It's to minimize risk. So we don't let people sneeze on us so that we don't have to get a flu shot. Right. That's kind of the idea. What do we do to prevent reading failure. So the most important piece of that tier one instruction is the use of screening data to inform how it should look and maybe we'll come back to that and I'll describe tier two a little bit because I think that's the use of screening data and tier one is something that people don't often talk as much about.

So

tier two system of supports is that extra layer in addition to not instead of the classroom reading instruction that's very customized to the needs of the students. So the job of tier two is to accelerate progress and catch up the students who are at an increased level of risk of reading difficulties. So tier two is not accommodations. It's not help with homework. It's not extra time on tests. It is very targeted instruction focused on the skill that the student needs to learn next with the goal of catching them up short term intensive support to catch them up. That instruction is planned by the grade level team just like the tier one instruction is using screening data using diagnostic data, perhaps progress monitoring data. Tier three then is the very most intensive and individualized support that a school can provide to students. So the job of tier two is to catch up something like 15 to 20% of the students who are at risk. And if students are not making progress and catching up with tears one and two, then we intensify support. Now the difference between tier two and tier three is a blurred barrier. It's not necessary to have different programs at tier two and tier three. They don't need to be different individuals within the school. It doesn't have to be a different time of day. The idea of intensifying at tier three is that we become more individualized, not necessarily individual one on one instruction, but we're focusing in on the needs of that individual. Because let's say four out of five students who were also getting that same tier two intervention, they caught up. But this one didn't with that same effective tier two and tier one. This student is still struggling. Now we need to provide more time. We need to provide a longer dose of intervention each time we meet with the student. We need a more skilled educator. We need more iron clad instruction and we need incentives, rewards, consequences that are more individualized to that student. And we need more frequent progress monitoring because we don't have a minute to waste with students who we are giving those intensive supports to.

My biggest thought right now is, and I loved how you said this, that it is tier two is in addition, not instead of tier one. And I think that really does help kind of make that line, like draw that line in the sand very clearly between tier one and tier two. So we should not stop teaching tier one if students have gaps in their learning. Am I hearing you right?

Students who have gaps in their learning students who are at risk or struggling need more and better instruction to catch up. So we shouldn't replace the minutes. Otherwise, they're just getting the same number of minutes that the not at risk students are getting. And we can't expect them to catch up with the same number of reading minutes. So it's an extra dose at another time of day. Now, what's happening during tier one might look different than what I commonly see. So, but you continue with

your questions. I was curious if you had any like explicit misconceptions that you wanted to share. Like, do you want to dive into a misconception a little bit more deeply?

Yeah. So one of the biggest misconceptions I encounter is because we say tier one is for all students, people misunderstand and think that means all students get the same tier one, or that tier one should be all whole group instruction. And that's not how the model was designed. And I don't find that to actually be very helpful. Because the places that I work with have lots of students who are struggling readers and or at risk in kindergarten and first grade of not learning to read. And so there's a wide range of needs within those kindergarten and first grade classrooms. And it wouldn't make sense to teach everyone the same thing. I hear a lot of this misconception coming out as fidelity to the core program. So I think this is where we've taken a term fidelity from the intervention research and perhaps misapplied it or overgeneralized it to core instruction. Just because we spent a lot of time selecting a core reading program, spend a lot of money on it, doesn't mean that it's necessarily helpful to give it to everyone in the same way, or to expect all students to spend time in that same tier one instruction. That might be a good use of time. But here's what I'm going to go back to that I mentioned earlier about the use of screening data. This is related misconception. Many folks are using their universal screening data to send students to intervention. They screen, they identify kids are at risk, and then they put those students into intervention.

Stephanie, can you give some examples of screening data? Like what

kinds of what kinds of tests would so Acadians reading Dibbles 8th edition fast bridge. Those are all tools that I have preference for. So they're screening students with those kinds of direct measures, finding students who are on track with the essential literacy skills or not on track, and then putting those not on track students into intervention. Instead of what is the most powerful way to use universal screening data is to inform the health and effectiveness of your tier one classroom reading instruction. That's where you're going to be able to line up how and what you're teaching into your one with what the children actually need who are in front of you. Rather than plowing ahead and implementing some program out of the box with fidelity. We have to make sure that that represents and matches what the students in front of us actually need. Does that make sense?

Can I like throw out a scenario that if I were a teacher listening right now I'd be wondering? Yep. Okay. So I have my U fly manual right here next to me. And I'm, let's just say, for the sake of this conversation, a second grade teacher. And I'm about halfway through the school year, and I'm noticing that there are about 50% of my class who have gaps in what I've been teaching. What do I do then? Like, maybe I just, they're not picking it up the way that maybe they don't have the prerequisite skills to pick it up. Right. Is what I might be thinking. Can I throw that scenario at you? Do you feel comfortable reacting to that? Okay.

I know we didn't talk

about that. So yeah, I really like the U fly program, by the way. But this is exactly the scenario that I'm speaking of. So let's say you did your middle. Well, let's say you did your beginning of second grade screening. Okay, let me, let me take it there. And you find out that half of your second graders can't read CVC words accurately and automatically on a non word screening assessment. But in the U fly program, maybe what you're teaching based on that phonics scope and sequence is a vowel team. Okay. So there's a disconnect there. And so one way to go might be to provide some pre teaching of the vowel team some re teaching after the whole group lesson in small group. That would be one approach to try. I haven't found that to be very successful, especially in second grade and above. You might get some good results with that in kindergarten. But my point is you should follow the data on the students. If you're doing screening, if you're doing progress monitoring, and you're seeing that you still have this gap between the grade level expectations and where your students skills actually are. You're supposed to be teaching vowel teams. You have half the grade level can't read CVC words. Rather than continuing to teach the vowel teams and spend that 20 or 30 minutes on a lesson that is not lined up to where the students skills are. What if you provided during tier one small group instruction on CVC words.