Your First-Quarter Data Has Something to Tell You
By early November, every district has a quarter of discipline, restraint, isolation, and placement data. Counts tell you whether the number went up or down — not who is being removed, from where, or why. Four questions that show you what the counts hide.
CSIP Development & Implementation
Every school in Washington must have an annual school improvement plan under WAC 180-16-220. The plan must be data driven, must promote a positive impact on student learning, and must include a continuous improvement process with ongoing monitoring, adjusting, and updating. That last clause is the one that might be challenging to honor. A Consolidated School […]
Strengthen Tier 1 Before You Refer: Evidence-Based Practice in MTSS
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 […]
Who Owns MTSS?
Building Shared Leadership Across General and Special Education There is a question that surfaces in nearly every district I work with, usually spoken quietly and sometimes with a little frustration: “Is MTSS a general education thing or a special education thing?” The honest answer is that it is neither — and both. But how district […]