Are you a millennial holding tight to your skinny jeans, not quite ready to embrace the new trends? Or maybe you are on the opposite side of the spectrum, grabbing tape to try The Ceiling Challenge for yourself! A quick social media scroll will show that new trends and old classics are popping up daily, and K-12 education is no exception. Take a look at our list of MTSS “Ins” and “Outs” for 2024!

At the beginning of the school year, we strategize, collect data, and form our playbook. We work with the teams at our schools to make sure we’re ready to take on any challenge. We prepare and train through high-quality professional development and effective meetings. Once the game of the school year starts, though, we can find that we’re encountering unexpected challenges, and they can start to wear down on us as the year progresses. You may find this is how you’re feeling as we approach midyear.

A well-functioning Early Warning System (EWS) plays a crucial role in helping schools identify and support students at risk of school failure. By tracking key indicators such as attendance, behavior, and course performance, EWS enables schools to intervene early and prevent students from falling through the cracks. But how can schools maximize the impact of EWS to ensure student success?

In our podcast conversation, Sarah Frazelle, Senior Researcher and MTSS Trainer at AIR, shared valuable insights into the best practices for using an Early Warning System to drive equitable outcomes for all students.

“Early warning indicator systems are about that threshold that we're going to intervene at early. It is the actionable piece to have more equitable student outcomes as well. It’s not just the kids that are on our hearts and minds that we're supporting. It's also those kids who are really quiet. They show up all the time, but maybe they're not getting good grades, you know. So we really are trying to figure out why students are struggling.”

- Sarah Frazelle, Senior Researcher and MTSS Trainer at AIR

Once upon a time, I entered the classroom as a young teacher excited to impact my students' lives. I started as a middle school teacher, so I had my class syllabus, the class rules, and the outline of what we would be doing for the year, and I presented that to my students on the first day of school. I did this because it's what my own school experience was and it's what I was told to do in my teacher education program. A few years later, I had the privilege and opportunity to attend a Tribes training, now known as Peace Learning Center. The program emphasized creating engaging learning communities. This shift from control to collaboration with students not only resonated with me but also yielded remarkable results in my classrooms over the years.

Just as your mechanic has the diagnostics and tools needed to keep your car running smoothly, Branching Minds has all the features you need to monitor and fine-tune your students’ learning plans!

As a teacher in a Title 1 school, many of my students lagged behind in meeting benchmarks each year. To teach them my grade level standards, I began by attempting to remediate missed learning. However, their progress was limited. Attempting to backtrack to their level just took too much time and resulted in frustration and disengagement. In order to achieve more within the year, I began to use the accelerated learning approach by integrating the required concepts for specific standards into the current lesson. I saw increased student engagement and achievement. And when I started using Proficiency Scales, my students’ motivation soared!

Although educators meet frequently to discuss student needs, teacher supports, and interventions, how often is there a discussion around implementing those supports with fidelity? Our goal is to serve the needs of our students. However, without fidelity monitoring in a Multi-Tied System of Supports (MTSS), we don’t know if the student actually received the high-quality instruction or intervention that we planned! There is often a big difference between a plan on paper and what happens in the day-to-day life of a school. A consistent plan to monitor and improve the quality of your intervention implementation could be the missing ingredient in your students’ success!

For parents,* the education journey for their child can be a rollercoaster of emotions. From the excitement of new beginnings to the concerns that they are making the best decisions for their child’s well-being, every parent's heart is deeply intertwined with their child's learning experiences. The impacts of decisions parents and families must make regarding their child’s education can be long-lasting, reaching far behind students' K-12 lives. 

Accelerated learning is currently one of the hottest keywords in education. It is hailed as the hero to address “learning loss” and large instructional gaps. Some states have even gone as far as adopting it into their educational policies, hoping to help students catch up to grade-level benchmarks.

Based on an analysis of Spring 2023 Map Growth assessment data, the NWEA Research Policy Brief* revealed that achievement gains in the 2022–23 academic year fell short of pre-pandemic trends across most grades, hampering progress toward pandemic recovery. Significant achievement gaps persist, with the average student needing 4.1 additional months of schooling in reading and 4.5 months in math to catch up.