I can't believe I am sitting here with only 7 days left as an Administrative Intern. The MTSS structures that are in place are probably what I am most proud of. A system was in place for the MTSS process, but the district had large representation in the process at Rogers Garden Elementary. My administrator made it very clear that this was a system that she wanted the school to regain ownership of. The idea of collaboration with district representation was one that should be honored, but owning the process, the students, the data, building capacity with the teachers, were all components of the MTSS structure that Ms. Ann Broomes, principal at Rogers Garden Elementary wanted to see in place.
Through collaboration with Amy, the school-based behavioral Specialists/MTSS Chair, we got to work. The journey was some days frustrating trying to find answers and be turned in circles for answers. Attempting to locate pieces of information and ensure that we were meeting the personal and legal needs of every student. Whole leadership teams looking through every single CUM folder to ensure that proper documentation was present as our district shifted from one form of a paperwork accountability system to another. Ensuring that brand new teachers understood academic and behavioral accommodations, applied them with fidelity, stayed true to intervention blocks and aligned student needs to best instructional practices guided by an understanding of data, and most importantly, ensuring the every student received what every student needed.
Our experience was unique. In accordance with the MTSS philosophy, identifying the lowest 25% is the way to allocate instructional resources and align them to student need. This presented a unique challenge. It is very easy to discern who the lowest quartile of performers are. The challenge is that there are whole groups of students who are not meeting proficiency targets who also need support, so to simply identify a cutoff of the lowest 25% does not meet the needs of our learners. We also recognize that a Tier I problem exists and we are working towards tackling that obstacle. Briefly, that challenge is being met with side-by-side coaching cycles targeted to teacher-need in accordance with the quantitative data as well as the qualitative data.
So ... we have come full circle to say the least. A summary of our process is as follows:
Meeting Structure:
Every Tuesday from 12:30-3:30
Team members: District Social Worker, District Psychologist, Language/Speech Pathologist, MTSS Chair/Coordinator/School-based Behavioral Specialist, Administrative Representation/LEA, Reading and Math Coach, Teachers when necessary, Parents when necessary.
Challenge:
The process for teachers selecting which students require additional support is a flawed one for many reasons. First of all, we are asking teachers to make decisions about students and in some cases, they naturally are not comparing students to benchmarks or National Percentile Rankings (NPR,) but rather they are comparing them to the peers that sit alongside them in the classroom. This becomes a problem at schools that have Tier I challenges, because a teacher's perception of what "proficiency" looks like becomes "harried" and student's who have a "need" when compared to their peers nationally, may be overlooked. Additionally, an inexperienced teacher may simply not understand how to navigate the MTSS process to know how to support his or her students. There is always a handful of teachers that choose not to refer students through to MTSS as a result of the quantity of the work-load that is associated with the process or because they have not seen the "benefits" to the learner when they have put forth the effort in the past. These are all obstacles that prevent students from getting what they need.
How we have overcome:
Data is collected and reviewed each month at the CORE meetings to look at the progress of the class as a whole. This allows us to see what Tier I data looks like. As students begin to "bubble" up, discussions are had in conjunction with the individual "coaches" (ie. behavior, science, math and reading) to target students needs. The teachers are also required to ensure that every student is having the Progress Monitored monthly and more frequently for some students depending on whether they are receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 Interventions. The Principal's Bulletin is a folder that is housed on our internal server. This holds the Progress Monitoring (PM) data for each student. This folder is accessible by teachers, coaches, administrators, as well as the MTSS team. Every couple of months, the MTSS team will sit down to analyze this data. We look for NPR and Grade Level Norms to determine whether a gap in ability exists between the students and their actual "peers." This doesn't mean the students that are sitting alongside them in their classroom necessarily. This system of "flagging" students helps us to ensure that we are removing the burden from the teacher alone to identify students with need. Once a student becomes "flagged" by the team, the problem solving process begins.
Through collaboration with Amy, the school-based behavioral Specialists/MTSS Chair, we got to work. The journey was some days frustrating trying to find answers and be turned in circles for answers. Attempting to locate pieces of information and ensure that we were meeting the personal and legal needs of every student. Whole leadership teams looking through every single CUM folder to ensure that proper documentation was present as our district shifted from one form of a paperwork accountability system to another. Ensuring that brand new teachers understood academic and behavioral accommodations, applied them with fidelity, stayed true to intervention blocks and aligned student needs to best instructional practices guided by an understanding of data, and most importantly, ensuring the every student received what every student needed.
Our experience was unique. In accordance with the MTSS philosophy, identifying the lowest 25% is the way to allocate instructional resources and align them to student need. This presented a unique challenge. It is very easy to discern who the lowest quartile of performers are. The challenge is that there are whole groups of students who are not meeting proficiency targets who also need support, so to simply identify a cutoff of the lowest 25% does not meet the needs of our learners. We also recognize that a Tier I problem exists and we are working towards tackling that obstacle. Briefly, that challenge is being met with side-by-side coaching cycles targeted to teacher-need in accordance with the quantitative data as well as the qualitative data.
So ... we have come full circle to say the least. A summary of our process is as follows:
Meeting Structure:
Every Tuesday from 12:30-3:30
Team members: District Social Worker, District Psychologist, Language/Speech Pathologist, MTSS Chair/Coordinator/School-based Behavioral Specialist, Administrative Representation/LEA, Reading and Math Coach, Teachers when necessary, Parents when necessary.
Challenge:
The process for teachers selecting which students require additional support is a flawed one for many reasons. First of all, we are asking teachers to make decisions about students and in some cases, they naturally are not comparing students to benchmarks or National Percentile Rankings (NPR,) but rather they are comparing them to the peers that sit alongside them in the classroom. This becomes a problem at schools that have Tier I challenges, because a teacher's perception of what "proficiency" looks like becomes "harried" and student's who have a "need" when compared to their peers nationally, may be overlooked. Additionally, an inexperienced teacher may simply not understand how to navigate the MTSS process to know how to support his or her students. There is always a handful of teachers that choose not to refer students through to MTSS as a result of the quantity of the work-load that is associated with the process or because they have not seen the "benefits" to the learner when they have put forth the effort in the past. These are all obstacles that prevent students from getting what they need.
How we have overcome:
Data is collected and reviewed each month at the CORE meetings to look at the progress of the class as a whole. This allows us to see what Tier I data looks like. As students begin to "bubble" up, discussions are had in conjunction with the individual "coaches" (ie. behavior, science, math and reading) to target students needs. The teachers are also required to ensure that every student is having the Progress Monitored monthly and more frequently for some students depending on whether they are receiving Tier 2 or Tier 3 Interventions. The Principal's Bulletin is a folder that is housed on our internal server. This holds the Progress Monitoring (PM) data for each student. This folder is accessible by teachers, coaches, administrators, as well as the MTSS team. Every couple of months, the MTSS team will sit down to analyze this data. We look for NPR and Grade Level Norms to determine whether a gap in ability exists between the students and their actual "peers." This doesn't mean the students that are sitting alongside them in their classroom necessarily. This system of "flagging" students helps us to ensure that we are removing the burden from the teacher alone to identify students with need. Once a student becomes "flagged" by the team, the problem solving process begins.
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