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Top Episode of 2024: 193: Systems to Get Better Reading Results with Stephanie Stollar

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From 5/10/24

In this conversation, Stephanie Stollar discusses the implementation of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS).  MTSS is a framework for school improvement that helps to provide support for students with various needs. The MTSS framework focuses on using data to identify barriers to student performance and making plans to eliminate those barriers. Stollar explains that word recognition skills are more discreet and sequential, while language comprehension skills are more unconstrained and complex. Stephanie recommends that special education resources should be blended with general education resources from the beginning, and students should receive intensive support as soon as it is needed, without having to go through a series of interventions and assessments. She also emphasizes the importance of evidence-aligned instruction and the need for team-based decision-making in the MTSS model.

Takeaways

  • MTSS is a framework for school improvement that helps teachers provide support for students with various needs
  • The tiers in MTSS are prevention of reading failure, with tier one being primary prevention for all students, tier two providing extra support for students at higher risk, and tier three offering intensive and individualized support for struggling readers
  • Differentiate tier one instruction and provide targeted instruction based on screening and diagnostic data
  • Assessments in MTSS include screening assessments to identify students at risk, diagnostic assessments to determine specific instructional needs, and progress monitoring assessments to track student progress.
  • Blend special education resources with general education resources from the beginning and provide intensive support as soon as it is needed.
  • Focus on evidence-aligned instruction and team-based decision-making in the MTSS model.

Resources 


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Lori:

You're listening to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy. If you're an elementary teacher, you've probably heard about different tiers of instruction Tier 1, 2, and 3. And if you're like us, these tiers can seem confusing. You probably have questions like should I teach phonics in Tier 1 to all students? How does instruction in Tiers 2 and 3 remediate gaps? Should we stop teaching tier one phonics if students have learning gaps? So many questions. We have answers. Stephanie Steller joins us today on the podcast to share about effective systems to teach reading that work. Sometimes a podcast is enough and sometimes you might want something more.

Melissa:

So we wrote a book answering your questions called the Literacy 50, a Q&A handbook for teachers Real world answers to questions about reading that keep you up at night.

Lori:

It's a handbook that includes downloadable resources for planning and instruction. You'll love the practical tips we supply to bridge the research to practice gap.

Melissa:

Pre-order your copy now on Amazon.

Lori:

Hi teacher friends. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two educators who want the best for all kids, and we know you do too.

Melissa:

We worked together in Baltimore when the district adopted a new literacy curriculum.

Lori:

We realized there was so much more to learn about how to teach reading and writing.

Melissa:

Lori, and I can't wait to keep learning with you today.

Lori:

Hi everyone. We are pretty sure that you've heard the acronym MTSS, which stands for Multi-Tiered 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.

Melissa:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

Thank you both so much. It's a pleasure to be with you today. We're so excited you're here.

Lori:

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

Stephanie Stollar:

Oh nice, Very good. Happy to hear that.

Lori:

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. So lots of different needs. But can you share more about the history of it and how you would define it?

Stephanie Stollar:

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. They 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's just a little trip down memory lane for me.

Stephanie Stollar:

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. Some people your age might not even know 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 general 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 one of the reasons 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

We also were caught up back then in making decisions on beliefs, assumptions, preferences a 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.

Melissa:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah.

Stephanie Stollar:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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 healthcare professions get a flu shot. Right, they're 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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 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, 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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 in tier one is something that people don't often talk as much about.

Stephanie Stollar:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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 tiers 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

The idea of intensifying at Tier 3 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 ironclad 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.

Lori:

Oh my gosh. Okay, so 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?

Stephanie Stollar:

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 question.

Lori:

That's okay. 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?

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah.

Stephanie Stollar:

So one of the biggest misconceptions I encounter is because we say tier one is for all students.

Stephanie Stollar:

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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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, spent a lot of time selecting a core reading program, spent 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 a related misconception. Many folks are using their universal screening data to send students to intervention. They screen, they identify kids who are at risk and then they put those students into intervention.

Melissa:

Stephanie, can you give some examples of screening data, like what kinds of tests would?

Stephanie Stollar:

So Acadian's reading, Dibble's 8th edition, FastBridge, 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 in Tier 1 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?

Lori:

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, let's just I have my UFLY manual right here next to me and I'm let's just say for the sake of this conversation, 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah, I really like the UFLY program, by the way, but this is exactly the scenario that I'm speaking of. So let's say you did your middle of 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 UFLY program maybe what you're teaching, based on that phonics scope and sequence, is a vowel team OK. 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.

Stephanie Stollar:

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 who can't read CVC words the vowel teams and spend that 20 or 30 minutes on a lesson that is not lined up to where the student's skills are. What if you provided, during tier one, small group instruction on CVC words?

Stephanie Stollar:

And that small group would actually look like half and half at that right, Just looking at what I just threw out to you, like half the class, half the class, yes, and so if you had two second grade teachers, half could go with one and half could go with the other, right, that would be a way to do it. Or the model that I really like is to flood the grade level with other adults to get even smaller groups for the most struggling students. So to bring in your special education staff, teachers, paraprofessionals you're reading resource people, title I teachers, if you have them reading coaches or reading specialists, your SLP or school psychologist, librarian, whoever you can wrestle up to train to do that UFLY program, and you're targeting those lessons which are very nicely constructed and designed to the student's skill level where their current skill level is, and then, at another time of day, those struggling students are getting a second dose of UFLY. Within the same school day they might be getting two doses of UFLY, so to speak. So rather than getting like the first half of the lesson on Monday and the second half on Tuesday, they get both of those stacked on top of each other. That's what the three-tiered model is about Stacked on top of each other within the same school day so that they move through the scope and sequence and get caught up to wherever the second graders are at the end of the year as quickly as possible. And if you start this approach in kindergarten and continue it in first grade, everybody can leave first grade at pretty much the same place. You close those gaps. You actually prevent the gaps. Well, you know, in some cases students come in with differences at the beginning of kindergarten, but you can close those gaps right away. It's much harder to do it when they're in third grade and above, something willy-nilly.

Stephanie Stollar:

Because I suggested differentiating your tier one phonics instruction. I'm saying use your data to make these decisions. Use your universal screening data. You're spending all of that time collecting it. Many schools, hopefully, are also, if they're doing MTSS, collecting good diagnostic data like a phonics diagnostic. You've collected all those data. Use it, not just to inform intervention and then ignore all of that and keep teaching with fidelity, so to speak, a core program that's not matched in Tier 1. Match what students need during Tier one. Replace that whole group lesson, use the time differently to be targeted at what the student needs and stack up those learning opportunities within the day so that they can move through the phonics scope and sequence more quickly and close that gap.

Stephanie Stollar:

So people will often talk to me about what? About grade level standards. We have to teach to the standards. We have to assess on the standards. There's a test at the end of third grade on the third grade standards. This is not different from that. What I'm describing is in service of those grade level standards. In fact, I believe it's the only way to get students to those grade level standards and expectations. If you want third graders to understand what they read, independently from third grade material, they have to read accurately and automatically and they have to have good language comprehension skills. So those students need to move through phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding, accurate and fluent reading of text to get to reading comprehension. So if I have to take a second grader back to reading CVC words, it is in service of those second grade standards, not separated from them.

Melissa:

That makes so much sense. Thank you for explaining it that way. I do want to back us up a little bit, if you don't mind, to assessments. We talked about the screening assessments and you gave some examples, but then you also just mentioned diagnostic assessments. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the difference, what's the difference between those assessments? And then, which ones do I use for which tiers to make decisions?

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah, great question. This is a big point of confusion and it's a really important component of an MTSS framework. You can't implement MTSS without a good assessment system. All assessments answer questions and the MTSS model has particular questions that have to be answered. So one of those questions is well, maybe this is two, but which students are at risk and which systems are at risk? Okay, that's a screening question. That's like who needs support is the way I think about that. So you're going to have to have tools for universal screening. You also need to know exactly what to teach tomorrow. That's a diagnostic question. You're going to have to have diagnostic assessments in all five early literacy skill areas phonemic awareness, phonics and decoding text, reading fluency, vocabulary and reading comprehension. You need diagnostic tools in each of those. Then you also need to know is my instruction working in real time? So should I make a change or should I keep doing what I'm doing? That's a progress monitoring question. So in an MTSS approach to service delivery, you need assessments for screening, diagnostic and progress monitoring. You need assessments for screening, diagnostic and progress monitoring.

Stephanie Stollar:

Screening assessments have to be brief. You're giving them to everybody three times a year. You can't take too much time away from instruction. To do it, they have to be indicators of these essential skills, the five that I just named, that research has converged around as important. So they have to function as indicators of those skills and, most importantly, screening tools have to be predictive. The whole purpose of doing screening is to identify concerns and difficulties early enough to change the outcome. So you should know what your universal screening tool predicts. Screening is not about categorizing students. That's not sufficient. So this is why I didn't name any screening tools that are only norm referenced or computer adaptive, because they are not the ones that help us make predictions about important reading outcomes in the future.

Stephanie Stollar:

Now, diagnostic assessments are a completely different animal. Everything that I described about a screening tool does not apply to diagnostics. They are not brief, they take a long time to give. They are in-depth measures of those same five essential skill areas. But now, OK, screening told us that there's a problem in the ballpark of phonics, and decoding Diagnostics tell us what row and seat number in the ballpark. That's the way I think about it. Right, Very specific. It's going to tell us exactly what to teach next. Diagnostic assessments are usually not timed, they're not standardized. They could be, but they don't have to be. And the most important variable when you're selecting a diagnostic tool is that it is linked to instruction, so it's not diagnosing a disability. That's not what we mean by the term diagnostic. It's telling you exactly what to teach next. So these are non-overlapping circles in a Venn diagram Screening, diagnostic there's no overlap. You're going to have to have different tools for those two different assessment purposes.

Melissa:

I mean so helpful. I want to go listen to it five more times, but it definitely. I mean I still get those terms confused, and so I know there are teachers out there that do too.

Stephanie Stollar:

Well, here's what makes it super confusing is some tools designed for diagnostic purposes have the name screening in the title. That's what makes it very confusing. You might have heard of the past Kilpatrick's past assessment. I think it's phonemic awareness screening test. It's not a screener, it's a diagnostic. 95% group has one called the PSI Phonic Screener for Intervention. It's not a screener, even though it has screening in the title, it's a diagnostic. So very, very confusing.

Lori:

Okay, well, that makes a lot of sense why we're a little confused. And then I think that there are assessments out there that are utilized in the ways that they're not supposed to be used. Is that right? Like? I'm thinking of some of the online assessments that cannot really give you the data that you need but that then are utilized in various ways. And I'm actually thinking more along the lines of, like a comprehension assessment, which we know really difficult to assess comprehension, first and foremost, but especially on a tool that's a digital tool, not about what we've taught. So, okay, just want to make sure we say that too. Melissa, do you want to add anything to that?

Melissa:

Well, just, I mean, you brought up comprehension and I had this in my head probably since we started talking. But everything you've been saying with assessing and all the tiers, makes a lot of sense in my brain. With word recognition, decoding, maybe even fluency, I can follow it all and then I get a little. I'm like what would it look like for vocabulary and comprehension, Because that just feels so much messier to me. Right, there's like not a limit of how many words that our students know or comprehending the text is messy. To assess All of it just seems a lot messier. Do you have any suggestions for what this whole process looks like for those areas?

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah, I'll do my best. Messy is a good word. It's complicated, right. The word recognition skills seem so much more discreet and sequential and like you can get your hands around them. But the language comprehension skills sometimes people call them unconstrained because they do sort of go on and on.

Stephanie Stollar:

There's not like this discrete progression of skills and so forth, so I rely on the simple view of reading. I mean, that's my schema that I have in mind when I'm doing meetings with MTSS leadership teams and we're looking at their data. So I always have that word recognition and language comprehension, you know sort of component or domain in my head when we're sitting down looking at grade level screening data. We want to know how should we design our tier one instruction based on what our students need, and so we've been talking about a second grade example at the beginning of second grade. If I have more than 20% of my students who are not meeting grade level word recognition skills, then I'm probably going to want to differentiate that in my tier one instruction in the way that I described with flooding the grade level to get as small of a group as I can for students who need acceleration. Give them that second dose in tier two so that I move them quickly through that word recognition sequence and catch them up as soon as possible through that word recognition sequence and catch them up as soon as possible.

Stephanie Stollar:

And that might mean no whole group word recognition, right, because I'm using that time in my ELA block for this adult-led, very targeted, differentiated word recognition instruction. But that doesn't mean that those students can't and shouldn't participate in whole group language comprehension instruction Right, so they are. And in fact I think in my understanding of the research it works really well to have heterogeneous groups for the language comprehension components where you get, you know, positive peer models in classroom conversations and you have lots of modeling of language. If you have dialect speakers or you have English learners and so forth, you can have lots of purposeful conversation and you're relying on the teacher reading aloud from text that's much more complex than what the students can read on their own. So in the primary grades I really picture these simultaneous and parallel tracks. In fact Claude Goldenberg sort of gave me this image of I'm demonstrating with my hands.

Lori:

I know we can see you. It's okay. You want to describe it? Go ahead.

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah, so parallel tracks is the way that I envision it Coming from the components of the simple view, right? So a word recognition strand or track and a language comprehension strand or track, and at some point the two come together for students. And the point where they come together and get integrated, where I'm no longer teaching language comprehension through read aloud but now I'm teaching it through the students reading text, that intersection point is when the children can read grade level text fluently and automatically, where now they can take over that responsibility of reading the text independently and demonstrating what they know about it. And prior to that point in time I, as the teacher, am reading to them and they're demonstrating what they have understood orally and I'm building their word recognition skills, their phonemic awareness, their text reading accuracy and automaticity and their reading comprehension in text that is at their level, so to speak, text that they can read very, very accurately. That might be controlled decodable text, especially in kindergarten and first grade.

Stephanie Stollar:

So I don't know if that image translates at all, but the mistake that I have seen people make, what I think is a mistake with the simple view, is that we should emphasize and teach word recognition in the primary grades and then at fourth grade we shift. Once they can read for meaning, we shift to focusing on language comprehension, and that will not be sufficient. That doesn't work. So we shouldn't overrun our ELA block with all word recognition or all decoding. We shouldn't sacrifice the language comprehension goals that we have from day one of kindergarten. We just have to be very sophisticated about how we manage both of those capacities for students, how we're supporting both capacities, the text that we're using differentially for those different times of our ELA block, and how we make decisions about that based on student data. Not because our program told us one way to do it, not because you listen to somebody on a podcast. Talk about it. But what do your actual students need?

Lori:

Yeah, stephanie, that's such a good point. One of the things that you've said that really has hit home for me is the idea of reactive versus proactive. And when I think about what students need, we really can be proactive in those younger grades to, like you said, get that level playing field, so that then we are moving forward in a altogether versus that reactive approach. And that's why, when I gave you that example earlier, I intentionally chose second grade, right the higher end, where there would be more gaps. But what I want to think about now is the idea of special education and where that fits into this picture, because we know that MTSS is a really important consideration when we're thinking about special ed eligibility. So I'm curious why it's important and what is the assessment criteria. And I don't know if it differs from place to place, but that's just generally what I'm wondering about.

Stephanie Stollar:

Yeah Well, there's a lot in that wonder. There's a lot to talk about. So I'll go back to the sort of what I think of as the old way of doing business, which was thinking of special education as a place, as a destination, and our assessment and intervention activities were like hoops to jump through to get to that destination. To jump through to get to that destination. Again, general education separate from special education that's the way we used to do business. In some places that's still the way that they're functioning In an MTSS model.

Stephanie Stollar:

The general education and special education resources and everything that that means are blended together and they are available to students from day one of kindergarten every student, even intensive instructional supports. You might know at the beginning of kindergarten, some students who come in the door needing very intensive support. They should get it from day one. They don't have to jump through hoops, they don't have to have a certain number of weeks in each tier. I hear people talk about it that way. They don't need to fail and be behind their peers in a certain number of data points or something. None of that is particularly helpful and, in addition to those statements I just made, this might seem like a contradiction, but these things have to both be true, and also, the only way we can provide intensive intervention services to students who need them is if very few students need them, right. So here's the problem that people are running into if they are just screening and sending kids to intervention, their intervention systems, whether it's tier two or tier three, are overloaded, yes, which means they cannot be effective. They're watered down and people are running around trying to get a different program or get more interventionists or find more time in the day. Trying to get a different program or get more interventionists or find more time in the day. They're ending up with things like a group of 12 meeting twice a week for 10 minutes and calling that tier two right, and then when you talk about intensifying, they say, well, we can't, we don't have any other people or we have no more minutes in the day, right. You get yourself into like a roadblock when you're approaching it.

Stephanie Stollar:

That way, the only way you can provide very intensive support. That is what's required by students with disabilities like dyslexia, if only a very small number of students need it. How do you get there? By shrinking, minimizing and reducing risk through the first way you teach reading. This is why it's called systems of support, multiple tiered systems of support. Right, it's a system. One change in any part of the system is going to have a ripple effect, right, and you have to consider all of your students ripple effect, right, and you have to consider all of your students, including students with disabilities, in that equation. So special ed has impact and implications on all tiers.

Stephanie Stollar:

In the MTSS model Students with disabilities are supported and served in all tiers. They are part of the tier one instruction. Some students with disabilities will need intensive support to participate in and access that classroom reading instruction. They will receive tier two, perhaps tier three, and the major difference I think in the MTSS model related to special ed is let me draw a contrast to the way we used to do things.

Stephanie Stollar:

We used to do what was called pre-referral intervention and people listening can decide if they're still doing this or if they've moved away from this. We used to do pre-referral intervention. We used to have a teacher recognize a concern with a student, bring them to a team. We called them intervention assistance teams. Now they're called PLCs or student support teams or teacher-based teams. The team would sit around, give the teachers some suggestions. The teacher would go off and try it for a number of weeks, come back and say it didn't work, and then they would accelerate the student up the tiers. Right, it was about documenting failure. It was about demonstrating that they've tried everything. Right, we've tried everything. Now nothing worked, so we're going to refer to special ed, and then a school psychologist, most commonly, would do a series of tests usually ones that are completely disconnected to what's going on in the classroom and make a pronouncement about whether or not the student was eligible for special education services. And sometimes they weren't eligible, right, and so then the teacher was left just doing the best that they could without support for the student.

Stephanie Stollar:

In response to all of the problems with what I just described, mtss was born, and in the MTSS model it's about finding what it takes to enable learning. It's about switching the order of these things, the sequence of these things, in Tier 3. In the MTSS model, through the flexible service delivery that I described that blends together regular ed and special ed, students can receive intensive supports, tier 3 interventions, specially designed instruction in Tier 3. As part of the process of discerning, does this student have a reading disability, a specific learning disability? And, I would argue, the only way to really know if a student has a learning disability is to measure their response to instruction, including their response to very individualized and intensive instruction and intervention. So it is when what it takes to enable learning is unique and intensive and individualized and can't be maintained without special education, that's when you suspect a disability. So the sequence of events is flip flopped.

Stephanie Stollar:

You don't try a bunch of things, refer for a special ed evaluation and then put the student on an IEP or give them the specially designed instruction. You give them the specially designed instruction as a way of determining do they have a disability? So this creates a seamless system. It used to be when I was a school psychologist, so I was part of that old flawed system. I would identify a student as having a specific learning disability as part of that team decision and the special educator would say well, now I don't. How am I supposed to teach him? What does he need? What should I be doing with him when he's with me? Instead of running into that situation, you have already given the specially designed instruction in tier three. You already know that that's what's required for the student to make progress, to catch up and close that gap. Does that make sense? I don't know if I'm drawing the distinction clearly enough.

Lori:

Yeah, no, I think it goes back to the because I was part of that system too like letting the student fail to document the failure, which never felt great. But I'm just wondering, I'm just thinking, if I'm a teacher listening, how would I know if the specialized instruction like the specially designed instruction, how would I know if it's evidence aligned or research-based or however we want to say it? How would I know that?

Stephanie Stollar:

Listening to your podcast for one.

Lori:

Please go listen to the.

Stephanie Stollar:

Holly Lane episode, if you're listening right now. Well it's, it's not all on the shoulders of the classroom teacher. These are team-based decisions, right? So, um, that's one thing that might be a relief is that teachers don't have to know those things on their own, and especially, especially in the MTSS model, where you have a building leadership team who's looking across grade levels what are the needs of students in each grade and what is our intervention that's aligned to the reading research that we're going to use in these scenarios when we see this type of need at each of these grade levels? So that should be a system level decision, not something that sits on an individual teacher's shoulders.

Lori:

Yes, I love that. That's so important because it does often feel like you know. Sometimes you're in an isolated bubble as a teacher and I love the idea of like, if this system is done well, what I'm hearing you say is that it is very clear from the get-go what is being used to support students at each tier and what my role is in the system. That's right.

Stephanie Stollar:

That's right and you have a voice in that right. It's not something that's done to you. You are part of all of those decisions all along the way. Let me just paint a little bit more of a picture about those decisions and data at each of the tiers, because this is often confused. You know, in the model, the picture of MTSS, the triangle, you often see the percentages out to the side right and it adds up to 100%. That's because every student who has reading as a goal needs to reach your grade level expectations. So some students who have significant disabilities might be working on goals around positioning or feeding or communication they don't have reading goals. But everybody else 100%, everybody who has reading goals is represented there and the tiers are about what it takes to get them to those grade level expectations. It's not 80% score at benchmark, 15% below and 5% well below, it's 100%. Get there. How do they get there With different levels of support? So an effective tier one system will cause at least 80%. Now, this is not set in stone, this is a schema, it's a heuristic, it's a framework. Right, like 80% represents the vast majority. Lots of kids get to the goals with no intervention, just very matched to what the grade level needs. Tier one instruction Okay. Then students who are getting tier two another 15% get to those grade level expectations with the tier one and tier two. So we know we have effective systems in place when we're hitting those kinds of outcomes.

Stephanie Stollar:

If we are not getting at least 80% of our students to those benchmarks with the first way we teach reading, we're just going to overwhelm our intervention system. We'll never be able to discern which students have a reading disability and which ones are just falling victim to our ineffective instructional system. We'll never be able to make that determination. They all are scoring equally low. How do we decide which one has a disability? It'll end up being a very error-filled kind of process. But if most students who are getting Tier 2 are catching up and closing that gap and most students who are getting Tier 3 are making accelerated progress and we know how to accelerate growth for this individual and we know that if we don't have that specially designed instruction they don't grow as quickly.

Stephanie Stollar:

That's a student we suspect has a disability. They don't grow as quickly. That's a student we suspect has a disability. We might at that point have some extra questions about that student. We might not. We might have already collected every piece of information we need for a multifactored evaluation and we just formalize exactly what we've already been doing for that student onto an IEP.

Stephanie Stollar:

So it's a seamless system. It's not make a referral document failure, try some different interventions, refer to special ed. It's complicated stuff, right. It's a different way of doing business. This is not making a flow chart of interventions that are used in different tiers. This is not just having decision rules about which kids are getting which intervention. This is about changing the way we do business. It's about surfacing and identifying what are the barriers in your school to getting better student outcomes. Surfacing those barriers, prioritizing them as a team, working your way through action planning to remove those barriers and making sure that the way that you are operating as adults in the system are serving the needs of your students. That's what MTSS is about. It's a mic drop right there.

Lori:

I already need to go back and listen to this episode again, and I was here for this, so I'm sorry, it's a lot. No, it's amazing. I'm so appreciative. I feel like this is so difficult to understand and I'm so grateful that you took the time in such depth to walk us through this let me say it this way, because here's what it's boiled down to.

Stephanie Stollar:

In my experience, you ask any classroom teacher, any classroom teacher listening to this if you could wave a magic wand, if you were queen for the day of your school, what would you change? You know, you know what to do. You know what would be helpful. You know what your students need. You know what the barriers are in front of you, what you're beating your head against, what your principal won't listen to you on. You know what needs to change. It doesn't really need to be much more complicated than that. If you focus on the needs of your students, if you focus on what you see and experience as a teacher that if it changed, everyone's lives would be improved. That if it changed, everyone's lives would be improved. That's what this is about.

Lori:

Well, I mean, I know that if I were listening, I would just want to run to your website and read and see all of the things that you have going on there, and also your social media. You're so fun on social media. Yeah, you do a great job. Do you want to share where everybody can find you? Thank you, yeah, you do a great job.

Stephanie Stollar:

Do you want to share where everybody can find you. Well, you can get to all of those things through my website, which is Reading Science Academy, wwwreadingscienceacademycom. There's an about tab which includes events, so I try to post recordings of things after the fact, and then also conferences and places where I'll be speaking so that you can check that out. And then there's also links to my Facebook page, which is Stephanie Stoller Consulting, my YouTube channel, which is Reading Science Academy. I think that's the same way on Instagram, also Reading Science Academy. So, yeah, I would love to interact with anybody who's listening on those platforms. We have lots of fun conversations there. It's tough to go into some of this complexity on social media, but I sure give it my best try and you have a course.

Melissa:

just about MTSS, correct?

Stephanie Stollar:

I do. I have an online course on MTSS. It is best experienced by teams, so certainly individuals can take the course, but it's constructed for teams to go through it and sort of you know, start the video and then pause it to do an activity or have a discussion. It's meant to guide them through the kinds of processes that we've been talking about, and I have a membership called the Reading Science Academy, so if people are looking for more ongoing support, that's the best way to connect with me.

Lori:

We'll link all of that in our show notes. In fact, we already have it in our notes. So we will do that and we will also send you the link to this conversation if you think it might be helpful to post on any of your channels so that, because you articulated it so clearly here, like just another resource for you. So thank you so much.

Stephanie Stollar:

Thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. Thanks for your great, deep questions and thinking about this topic. I appreciate it.

Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

Just a quick reminder that the views and opinions expressed by the hosts and guests of the Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Podcast are not necessarily the opinions of Great Minds PBC or its employees.

Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us. Thank you.