Dr. Timothy E Morse

A core feature of a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) is configuring instruction to match each student’s needs. For students who demonstrate academic achievement deficits and need supplemental remedial instruction, it must be coordinated among all scheduled activities, evidence-based, and individualized. Each of these matters results in challenges that must be addressed for the promise of an MTSS to be realized. One resolution involves systematic instruction during brief lessons (10 min or less). This instruction is time-sensitive, evidence-based, and can be properly configured for each tier and various students’ needs.

Federal law and judicial rulings in the United States direct educators to provide special education services to students with disabilities that enable them to demonstrate meaningful progress, considering their circumstances. The services are to comprise evidence-based practices and must account for students’ unique learning characteristics and the time allotted for instruction. Accordingly, this paper reports on two interconnected investigations involving four high school students with autism and an intellectual disability who were taught to read and define finance vocabulary via a systematic instructional approach presented during short-duration lessons (5–8 min). A multiple-probe, nonconcurrent single-case design established a functional relationship between the lessons and the students’ vocabulary acquisition. All four students learned to read their targeted words. One student demonstrated acquisition of all the definitions, whereas the other three demonstrated variable acquisition before the study was discontinued because of the end of the school year. The students also demonstrated variable skill maintenance and generalization. The results suggest an appropriate structure for a short-duration lesson and a corresponding research agenda for investigating parameters associated with its effectiveness and efficiency. The study offers teachers instructing students with moderate-significant disabilities a practical evidence-based instructional strategy that accounts for their time management challenges. Furthermore, the strategy’s framework offers a theoretical way for investigating the impacts of increased academic learning time and practice opportunities.

Research has established that relatively higher levels of educational achievement are associated with better health outcomes. Thus, while providing every student with a high-quality education is always a public health concern, this matter garnered exceptional attention following the COVID-19 pandemic. It disrupted schooling across the globe, requiring elementary and secondary schools to address many resulting issues, including their students’ learning loss, interrupted learning of grade-level curricula, the need for accelerated learning, increased absenteeism, and staffing shortages. Consequently, this paper reports the many circumstances surrounding one approach employed widely in the United States to address the learning issues resulting from the pandemic: tutoring. First, the extent of students’ academic declines following the pandemic is documented, as is the association between educational attainment and health outcomes. Next, several facets of tutoring are explained, including (a) an operational definition, (b) research support of its effectiveness before and after the pandemic, (c) the characteristics of two types of effective tutoring germane to this paper, and (d) its fit within a school’s systems of interventions for all students. The paper concludes with a case report about relevant work performed at a high-needs school in the southeastern United States to establish a sustainable tutoring program resulting from the pandemic. It is one example of how K-12 schooling in the United States has improved in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) framework was established as a comprehensive, equitable approach for addressing urban students' academic, behavioral, and social-emotional needs. Still, confusion surrounded its implementation. On returning to in-person instruction, urban educators have been challenged to resurrect their school's MTSS framework while simultaneously confronting many other issues, such as increased student absenteeism, academic achievement deficits, and staffing shortages. Consequently, revisiting this matter is warranted, particularly concerning operating MTSS frameworks in high-poverty urban schools. Accordingly, this paper explains the design and operation of an MTSS and then discusses its historical evolution and current relevance. Next, the article identifies drivers of well-functioning MTSS frameworks while discussing the circumstances surrounding high-poverty urban schools. The paper concludes with a discussion of a core component of an MTSS framework that urban educators have identified as one for which they need more information: intensifying instruction. Properly addressing this component will equip urban educators with the foundational knowledge they need to design and implement an MTSS framework tailored to their unique circumstances.

This manuscript reports the results of an investigation of the simultaneous prompting procedure to teach a five-step algorithm for solving three addition basic facts. Four preschool students receiving Tier 1 services in their school's multi-tier system of supports (MTSS) framework participated. A multiple probe across participants single case design was employed, and a visual analysis of the data indicate a functional relationship between the independent and dependent variable. Three of the participants achieved the mastery criterion and maintained the targeted learning outcome for 2-6 weeks. These participants applied the five-step algorithm to three sets of novel addition facts and acquired incidental information consisting of mathematics terminology. The fourth participant voluntarily discontinued her involvement in the study but, prior to her withdrawal, her data were similar to that of the other three participants. Social validity data from the participants' teachers confirmed their satisfaction with the study's procedures and participants' learning outcomes. The results extend those from related research and validate simultaneous prompting's effectiveness in teaching mathematics to students receiving Tier 1 and Tier 3 services in an MTSS framework. Topics for future research are discussed, and include investigating the effectiveness of simultaneous prompting to teach mathematics across students receiving services through all MTSS tiers.

Excerpt - This issue of Preventing School Failure is devoted to COVID-19 and the effect it had on instruction for school-aged children, including children in need of special instruction and support and those at-risk of falling behind for a variety of reasons. Preventing School Failure has always focused on the needs of children and youth with learning challenges and behavior problems. The pandemic produced a series of complications to which policy makers and edu-cators had to quickly respond to deliver instructional pro-grams to the students. Some emerging data suggest that a significant percentage of students may not have grown as much as they might have absent a pandemic. These data indicate a noteworthy percentage of students’ academic test scores substantially declined during the pandemic. As a result, some researchers have noted a significant number of students are now academically ‘at-risk’. Thus, ‘failure to achieve’ may be a concern for a large number of students, not just students who have special needs. It is imperative, therefore, that educators explore effective educational pro-grams and models.

School closures resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have brought the issue of learning loss to the forefront in what has been called the "COVID slide." Data from the pandemic show a decline in student achievement in the areas of reading and mathematics for school districts that shifted to virtual learning platforms. However, it is unclear whether students experienced a loss of learning, or if they progressed at a slower rate while adapting to a new and unfamiliar learning modality. We propose that the latter may be especially true for younger students (i.e. K-3) as well as students with disabilities, who likely required additional support to engage in virtual learning. We offer recommendations as K-12 students return to in-person learning.

Students demonstrating persistent, significant learning challenges - which means their academic achievement is deemed to be multiple grade-levels below their age-appropriate grade level - must be provided systematic instruction designed to remediate their academic achievement deficits. In the United States, it has been estimated that 5%-10% of a school’s students will present persistent, significant learning challenges that require ongoing remedial instruction.