Reaching Struggling Learners
Reaching Struggling Learners
#81: Redefining Educational Support: Unraveling MTSS, RTI and Special Education for Student Success
Ever felt like the educational support system is a maze without an exit? I'm Jessica Curtis, and in this episode, I confront the tangle head-on, dissecting the complexities of MTSS and RTI in schools. Join me as I make the case for these frameworks to be more than mere pathways to special education, advocating for a synergistic relationship where shared insights and strategies lead to student success. With a focus on the parallels between MTSS and special education, I call attention to the importance of data-driven decisions, periodic reviews, and targeted goals, all crucial for meaningful progress. It's a mission to ensure that the commitment schools make to support student learning is not just a promise, but a practice.
This conversation is an urgent one, with implications that reach far beyond individual classrooms. As the new year unfolds, it's time to rethink our approach to educational support, aiming for consistency and resource-sharing that can uplift both MTSS and special education. By exploring interventions like the Orton-Gillingham approach, which may serve to elevate all students, we can begin to address the deep-seated issues that leave too many students lagging in basic skills. I'm calling for a year of innovation to combat teacher burnout and reverse the exodus from this critical profession, crafting an educational experience that's as fulfilling for educators as it is for students. Tune in for a candid discussion about shaping an educational future where every learner is equipped for success.
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5 Steps to Getting Started with Progress Monitoring
So over the years in this podcast, I have done a lot of talking about MTSS and RTI because I feel like, and always have felt like, mtss really could be a huge tool for improvement for schools, for students in general. I truly do believe that MTSS could be a fantastic way for schools to really hone in on what they're doing right, what they're doing wrong and find ways to help their kids learn and grow. Now, just because you know, I feel that MTSS is an opportunity, I will say we're not doing MTSS right. There isn't a single school that I could point to and say man, they are doing it right, they've got the RTI down, they know what interventions they're using, the teachers are on board and the teachers, most importantly, are supported the way they should be supported. We're not doing MTSS right. Again, I cannot point to a single school that I could think of that is doing MTSS. A single district, a single state that is actually performing the process correctly. Could it be done correctly? Absolutely, are we doing it?
Speaker 1:No, that being said, mtss for a lot of schools and this is not the correct thought process but for MTSS, for a lot of schools the goal of MTSS, the RTI process, all of that is, to find students eligible for special education.
Speaker 1:That's the thing that, meeting after meeting, I have sat in and teachers have said well, you know, I don't think this kid needs to be an MTSS, because I don't think that kid needs special education. That's the wrong goal. But along those lines, I think that we do need to start thinking a little bit more about how MTSS and the special education system are similar, because they are, they are very closely related sisters maybe. The fact is that, aside from the initial process of how we find the students, both systems were built to work very, very similarly, even if they don't currently work that way in practice. So today, that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about MTSS, but, more importantly, we're going to really start focusing for the next few weeks on special education and how that entire process is going and how we can make it a whole lot easier on ourselves, our students, and start making progress.
Speaker 2:Hi, I'm Jessica Curtis of Teaching Struggling Learners. I'm a boy mom and a veteran teacher. You're listening to the Reaching Struggling Learners podcast, where we talk all about helping students succeed academically, socially and behaviorally. Thank you so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1:So MTSS and special education are very, very similar. If you don't believe me, I'll give you a little bit of a rundown. Both systems are reliant on data. We use data to determine whether a child should be in or out of each system and we track their progress throughout the system whether it's MTSS or special education to see or we are supposed to track the data to see if the interventions and what we're doing is working. We do periodic reviews to see does the student still need these services, these supports, or not, and then we also similarly have meetings where we're supposed to be discussing this data and determining next steps for each of these different students, whether they're in the MTSS or the special education process. So it really does.
Speaker 1:It makes sense, when you think about using data to inform instruction, how important it is to start seeing the similarities between MTSS and special education. We see, like I said in the intro, we see a lot of times that MTSS, the goal of MTSS, is to get kids into special education. But that really shouldn't be the goal and we really do need to start seeing them as sister systems and we can learn from each other. Our special education teachers could really benefit from being able to have access to some of the interventions, some of the data, some of the information that is populated through the MTSS process and, similarly, the MTSS process, the interventionist and all that would greatly benefit from input from the special education teachers, because they see a different side, they have different viewpoints, they have different experiences. That could very much help the MTSS side of the house. But again, when it comes down to are they similar or not, the reality is this is what both of them are doing we screen the kids to identify weaknesses, we provide interventions to figure out, to help the students make progress, and then we do a little bit of testing to see did it work? They are both official processes, they both have a goal, they both have to move forward. And now I will say one of them comes with more legal stress weight, obviously, but MTSS plans, even though we think of them as just a school plan. But the fact is it is really an agreement between the school and parents of what is going to be provided when we make a MTSS RTI plan and say that a child is going to be receiving, five days a week, 30 minutes of intense instruction on reading for phonics, and this is the goal that we are setting for the child and we are going to progress, monitor it, even though maybe the parents aren't signing off on an IEP for that, it is still an agreement that the school is saying, hey, this is what we are doing. Mom, dad, guardian, whoever, parent, grandparent, whoever you are, this is what we are saying we are going to do. And if we say we are going to do something as a school system, we have to back it up by actually doing it.
Speaker 1:Now, the weird dichotomy between MTSS and special education is that special education promises services which, honestly, are questionably provided. I mean, let's be honest. And then we give them quarterly progress reports that show how the kids are doing the reason I say these services are questionably provided. Well, first of all, I have sat in many, many, many initial IEP meetings and the vast majority of those initial IEP meetings, whether the parents are realized it or not, the child was losing access to supports, they were gaining accommodations, which was always how that was kind of smoothed over if a parent questioned it. But the reality is, most of the time when kids go from MTSS, you know, tier three is should be, you know, five days a week, 30 minutes a lot of our kids are going, then, from five days a week of 30 minutes of intense instruction to three times a week for 30 minutes. Guys, that's a reduction in services, even though special education is a higher tier of support. We're giving accommodations but we're reducing the actual face time of supports that these kids are getting.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, we, you know the special education teacher. How often are they pulled out because they have an IEP meeting? So, yeah, we say on this legal document that the child is going to get 30 minutes, three, you know, three times a week. But how often is that actually happening? Because of all of the ways that the special education teacher is pulled, please don't come at me and say you don't care about special education teachers. No, I love me some special education teachers. They are amazing, they are, dare I say it, the backbone of education at this point, because they are the ones that are keeping that special education department running or crawling. They're not running, they're crawling. Right now. They're dragging the department forward and keeping it moving, keeping it alive, but the reality is we're not providing the services that we say we're going to do.
Speaker 1:And then we get progress reports quarterly, but those progress reports are, you know, sometimes they have data, sometimes they don't. You know it's questionable For MTSS side. Let's be honest, mtss, we tend to be more consistent in the services provided. Now again, different schools do different things, but the consistency end of it interventionists tend not to be pulled into IEP meetings, into all these other things. They're able to, by and large, able to provide more consistent services, but the progress monitoring data that they may collect and a lot of, a lot. It's not their fault, but a lot of times interventions aren't taught how to collect the data. They're taught how to provide the intervention program, but they're not necessarily taught how to actually collect the data to say, hey, this is how that student performed and how they're performing, how they're doing you know over time. But that data is very rarely actually provided to the parents for them to review. So with special education, get your quarterly progress report. The parent can look over it and go, oh, there's the data right there. And but for MTSS, sometimes we have quarterly meetings, sometimes we don't, sometimes we invite the parents, sometimes we don't, but rarely is the actual data provided to the parent to review.
Speaker 1:So if we could kind of get the positives of both of these processes together, we would have a really, really good supportive system. I mean honestly, if we could get the consistency of interventions across the board for these kids no-transcript, all of them, whether they're in the MTSS or the special education process, all of them need the help. We are raising our hands, those teachers, and saying, yes, these kids need the help. So if we could actually give it to them, that would be fantastic. But then also if we could collect the data and show it to the parents and show it to each other and go, hey, this is working. This isn't this intervention. It's not working for, you know, all these kids, we got to try something else. This intervention is working, fantastic, let's keep this one going.
Speaker 1:If we could get those two processes, the positives of both of them, together, oh, my goodness, the supportive system that we could actually be providing for the kids. Now I will say a lot of interventions could be shared across both and improved on if we could open up our minds to investing in the range of opportunities across all of the needs that we see. What I'm saying is, I have seen schools that have said that, for example, this one FONX program is only for MTSS and this other FONX program, orton-gillingham, whatever it is, is only for the students with special education, because we are obsessed with this idea that we have to have something different for both of those groups of kids. But the fact is, maybe some of those kids that are in special education right now that have special ed services, maybe just maybe some of them, if they had received the Orton-Gillingham or whatever it is and I say Orton-Gillingham, whatever, I'm not promoting them in any way, shape or form but let's say, some of those kids in MTSS, if they had gotten that support when they were in MTSS a couple years ago, maybe they could have caught on a little bit earlier and been on grade level and not needed the special education services at all. Maybe some of those kids the kids that are doing that did okay and were making progress, not fast enough to not need special education, but they were making gains with this other program. But all of a sudden you're switching to this other thing and you're wondering why they're not doing well. Maybe they should have kept on. Keep on with the program that was working for them.
Speaker 1:I've seen it time and time again where all of a sudden we're switching things up on kids or things that could have worked really well for our students in MTSS, to the point that they may not need special education, but because that was a special education program or that was an MTSS program, they were denied that access. Yeah, those are strong words when I say they were denied that access. It's true, they were denied access to a program that could have made a big difference for them, even to the point of some students not needing special education. That's a big deal. If we could open up our minds to sharing resources a little bit more and realizing that, hey, not just resources, but knowledge, sharing ideas, sharing ways of teaching different things, we could again have a really, really strong, supportive service for our students. Now, why am I talking about all this today? Well, because it's the first podcast of the year and because I'm crazy and because I think that we have to start rethinking education.
Speaker 1:Education is guys. The numbers are out. You can see it all over Instagram and TikTok, where teachers, middle and high school teachers, are coming out of the woodwork and saying my high schoolers, what was the one? The high schoolers or middle schoolers that can't spell the word because middle schoolers and high schoolers who can't read? I have friends in different areas of the country that are messaging me and saying Jessica, I have, I have science students in high school who cannot read. And I'm not talking about the textbook, because we've stopped giving the textbook. I'm talking about worksheets that are differentiated so that the reading level is much lower than what would be expected in that textbook.
Speaker 1:The kids are not able to read sight words. The kids are, they're illiterate when they're getting to high school. That's a mean term. Saying someone is illiterate, that's mean, that's harsh, but that's the reality for a lot of students going into middle and high school. And we got it. We got to make some changes.
Speaker 1:And no, I don't blame teachers. You can quote me on that. I do not blame teachers. The entire system, the education system, is broken. And can we fix it? Absolutely we can. I have no doubt in my mind that it can be fixed. But we have to start saying it like it is and like those teachers are calling it out when they see it, saying that, hey, high schoolers that can't spell the word, because, guys, we got a problem here. Algebra teachers saying, hey, guys, my students can't add. If they can't add, they can't do the Pythagorean theorem. That's the reality.
Speaker 1:So I want this year to be one where we start thinking outside the box. I'll do, I'll think, I'll share my ideas. I'll share, you know, my thoughts of outside the box and let's see if we can come up with some ways to make this a little bit more doable. Because the fact is, teachers are run down, they're overworked, we know they're underpaid. I'm not even gonna say that they're run down. They're overworked, they are burnt out, they're leaving. You guys, teachers are leaving. You know it. You know, in every building teachers are leaving at a massively quick rate and nobody blames them. Nobody blames them. We know why. We see it. So we've got to make this easier. We have to make teaching easier, we've got to start making things simple. So that's going to be my goal this year is finding ways and sharing ways to make this more doable, more sustainable, so that A we can keep the amazing teachers that are in the classrooms there and, you know, not burned out and not ripping their hair out, but also so that we can make sure that the students are more successful year on year.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, happy new year. I hope that you have had a fantastic break, I hope that you are ready to hit the ground running and I hope that you get to really enjoy what's coming up. Everybody, we know that this is. This is a tough time of year, that we're heading into. February Coming up is a tough time of year. That's alright. We're going to find ways to simplify, we are going to find ways to make it doable, to do it sustainable, and, who knows, we might even find some fun along the way. Until next time, may your coffee be strong, your students calm and your workload manageable. Bye.