Here is a diagnostic worth applying to your own building. When a disproportionately large number of students appear to need individual behavior plans, that is usually a signal that the Tier 1 system needs strengthening — not that all those students need Tier 2 or Tier 3 support.
Strong MTSS teams ask the systems question first. It is the single habit that most reliably separates schools where the tiered model works from schools where it exists on paper.
What MTSS is, and what it is not
MTSS is a widely adopted, evidence-based framework that lets school staff provide varying levels of support based on student need, across academic learning and social, emotional, and behavioral health together. Its defining feature is a three-tiered continuum in which each school and district system provides universal supports that all students access, and can be leveraged to respond to individual need with evidence-based practices at targeted or intensive levels.
Two clarifications matter more than any other, because most implementation problems trace back to one of them.
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1. MTSS neither excludes nor is exclusive to students with disabilities. Every student served by school staff should have access to Tier 1 supports. This includes students who receive any of their special education services in separate programs or classrooms. Those spaces, and the students in them, should have the same Tier 1 resources and supports as general education classrooms. Tier 3 supports should likewise be available to any student who needs them, regardless of eligibility under IDEA or Section 504. A student does not need a disability label to receive intensive support, and a student with a disability does not stop needing universal support. Services in an IEP or 504 plan supplement the tiered system. They do not replace it. |
2. The second clarification concerns ownership.
Social, emotional, and behavioral health supports must be de-siloed — they cannot be treated as the exclusive province of the counselor, the behavior team, or special education staff. Washington State demonstration sites for reducing restraint and eliminating isolation (RREI) have been consistent on this point: this work must be district-wide, supported by leadership, and adopted as the collective work of all staff. Where it lives with one role, it does not survive that person’s absence.
What strong Tier I actually looks like
Six features distinguish buildings where Tier 1 is functioning from buildings where it is nominally in place.
1. Universal supports reach every student, regardless of placement, disability status, or classroom — and reach them as soon as they are needed, not after a referral or a waiting period.
2. The system addresses the whole child. Academics, social-emotional needs, and behavioral health are organized together rather than as separate initiatives. The Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Health framework provides the connective tissue, integrating PBIS, social-emotional learning instruction, and school-based behavioral health into one approach.
3. Data drives decisions at the systems level. Teams review school-wide data on a cadence and adjust the system, not just the student.
4. School climate is deliberate — built on safety, relationships, environment, and teaching practices. Students feel physically and emotionally safe; the environment reflects and affirms student identities; instruction is designed so all learners can access it.
5. Social, emotional, and behavioral skills are taught rather than assumed. Washington’s six SEL standards — self-awareness, self-management, self-efficacy, social awareness, social management, and social engagement — are modeled, practiced, and reinforced daily and embedded across content and routines.
6. Tier 1 instruction is accessible to every learner, including multilingual students. Frameworks such as SIOP — with attention to content and language objectives, comprehensible input, scaffolding, and frequent structured interaction — strengthen the universal tier for everyone, not only for multilingual learners.
How effective MTSS teams make decisions
Data-based decision making in MTSS is not a philosophy; it is a meeting agenda. Teams that include members from across school and district systems come together on a schedule and work through five decisions:
| Decision point | What the team does |
| Ensure effectiveness of Tier 1 | Review school-wide data — for example office disciplinary referrals by time of day and location — and ask whether Tier 1 is adequate for all students. Where a pattern appears, adjust the system (supervision, materials, scheduling) and revisit the data at the next meeting to see whether the adjustment worked. |
| Tier 1 to Tier 2 | Identify students for whom Tier 1 does not appear adequate. Confirm the student is still accessing Tier 1. Review data in the area of need. Identify the appropriate Tier 2 intervention and who is responsible for implementing it. |
| Tier 2 progress review | Review progress of students receiving Tier 2 support and decide whether to maintain, increase, or decrease intensity. |
| Tier 2 to Tier 3 | Identify students who continue to struggle at Tier 2, or who present significant risk without having received Tier 2. Confirm Tier 1 access. Review data. Refer to individualized Tier 3 support when the data supports it. |
| Tier 3 progress review | Review progress and decide whether to maintain, increase, or decrease intensity. |
Notice how often “confirm the student is still accessing Tier 1” appears. It is the step teams skip, and skipping it is how students end up receiving intensive support as a substitute for universal support rather than in addition to it.
The data to review before you refer
Before an individual student moves to a more intensive tier, five categories of data tell you whether you are looking at a student need or a system gap.
Schoolwide behavior data disegregated
Office disciplinary referrals, behavior reports, and incident logs — not as totals, but broken out by time of day, location, grade level, and activity. If most referrals occur during recess, that is not a student problem. It is a Tier 1 problem at recess, and the response is supervision, equipment, scheduling, or structured activity, not a stack of individual behavior plans.
Disproportionality
Washington districts must annually review discipline data disaggregated by sex, race, multilingual learner status, and disability. Building teams should do it more often. Are certain groups referred at higher rates? Are students with disabilities excluded from classrooms more often? Are students of color receiving more punitive responses for the same behaviors? Where the answer is yes, the finding is about systems, not about individual student deficits (Skiba et al., 2011).
Implementation fidelity
How consistently are Tier 1 practices actually implemented across classrooms? Gibbons, Brown, and Niebling (2019) frame strengthening Tier 1 as an action-oriented process requiring teams to systematically identify barriers to implementation — including gaps in curriculum alignment, instructional quality, and assessment practice. Are expectations taught and retaught through the year? Are SEL skills explicitly modeled? Are routines predictable? The Tiered Fidelity Inventory helps, and so do walkthroughs and honest conversations with teachers. Where Tier 1 practice varies room to room, students get referred for behavior that consistent implementation would have addressed.
Instructional accessibility
Consider whether instruction is producing the data. Where instruction lacks comprehensible input, scaffolding, or opportunity for interaction, students — particularly multilingual learners and students with diverse learning needs — may disengage or exhibit interfering behavior that is a rational response to inaccessible teaching. Reviewing behavior data through an instructional lens is essential before attributing a pattern to individual student need.
Attendance and engagement
Students who are frequently absent, tardy, or disengaged are communicating something about their experience of Tier 1. Do they have a trusted adult in the building? Is there a sense of belonging? Attendance data read alongside behavior data usually locates the period or setting where the system is failing.
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The protocol shift worth making this year Make it standard practice that before any referral discussion, the team presents two things: evidence of what Tier 1 supports are in place for that student, and the data suggesting those supports are not sufficient. It is a small change to a meeting agenda. It reduces unnecessary referrals, ensures equitable access to universal supports, and — not incidentally — produces exactly the documentation a School Improvement Plan needs in its intervention table. |
What the evidence says about payoff
Schools implementing school-wide PBIS consistently and with fidelity show measurable results. Bradshaw, Mitchell, and Leaf (2010) found reductions in exclusionary discipline. Luiselli and colleagues (2005) documented improvements in both academic and behavioral outcomes. And the effect is not limited to students: Kelm and McIntosh (2012) and Ross, Romer, and Horner (2012) found that teachers in schools implementing PBIS effectively are significantly more likely to feel prepared to meet their students’ needs and less likely to report burnout.
That last finding deserves more attention than it gets. In a period of persistent staffing shortage, a functioning Tier 1 is a retention strategy.
It is also, in practical terms, the most efficient use of school resources available. Most students’ needs are met by Tier 1 practices. When Tier 1 is insufficient or inconsistent, more students have unmet needs and require the resources of a higher tier — and the higher tiers are where a school’s scarce time and expertise get consumed.
DECS provides program reviews and coaching in MTSS and inclusive education for Washington schools and districts, fundable through School Improvement dollars when aligned to the L-CAP or SIP. Schedule a complimentary consultation with Dr. Hannah Gbenro, who is experienced partnering with schools and districts for continuous improvement. |
Sources cited
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