TRANSCRIPT Steve Goodman: Integrated Multi-Tiered System of Support October 2016 Allyson: Welcome to SWIFT Unscripted. SWIFT podcasts give you, the listener, the opportunity to hear the inside story and be a part of the conversation about All Means All with leaders in the field of inclusive education and schoolwide transformation. We’re here today at the University of Kansas recording a live podcast on the topic of Integrated Multi-tiered Systems of Support. Our guest today is Steve Goodman, and Steve is the director of Michigan’s Integrated Behavior and Learning Support Initiative and a partner with the National Technical Assistance Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports. He was the Michigan grantee principal investigator for the first OSEPfunded model demonstration grant competition utilizing an integrated behavior and reading support model. Dr. Goodman has over 30 years of experience in the field of education as a special education teacher and a teacher consultant, and he has worked has a trainer for Michigan’s Positive Behavior Support Project. He has co-authored several research articles and book chapters and has presented at numerous national and international conferences. Dr. Goodman is also on the board of directors of the Association for Positive Behavior Supports. He serves on advisory panels for several statewide projects and has consulted with state and district level projects across the United States. We’re very honored to have you here with us today, so thank you. Goodman: Thank you. Glad to be here. Thank you. Allyson: Thank you. We’re so glad to have you. Can you describe for our listeners what you mean by Integrated Multi-tiered Systems of Support? Goodman: When we talk about Integrated Model of Multi-tiered Systems of Support, we are specifically … our work has been around reading and behavior. When we talk about integration, we are saying that the content is integrated. The supports we provide for students are integrated and within a continuum of supports based on need. For those needing more support, the intensity of that support is increased. Allyson: What is the rationale for really looking at the academic side and the behavior side together? I know some people have these different systems of looking at those separately, so why are you saying that it’s really important to look at those together? Goodman: We see an interconnection between the behavior and reading. For example, what some research is suggesting is when you integrate, it’s more efficient for getting the work done. Instead of

having multiple teams, you have one team working on that. There’s a strong connection between behavior and reading. If I have difficulty performing well on academic tasks, it may show up in my behavior, so I can escape or avoid the task. Other reasons why we’re looking at integration is because there’s similar processes for the academic and the behavior in a multi-tiered system. You look at data, you have a team approach for it. You act upon the data based on the student needs, so there’s multiple reasons why the connection makes sense. Allyson: I think as educators, efficiency is always a great selling point for why you should be doing this. That’s always important. I heard you reference data, so can you tell me a little bit more about that, about the role that data plays within an Integrated MTSS model? Goodman: We look at data a couple different ways. One is at the student level, so what we’re trying to identify is if a student is having difficulty reading, performing well on grade level reading tasks, how much is that contribution of problems with behavior as their behavior contributing to the lack of access or instruction? We look at data to help us guide those, make those decisions. We also look at data to ensure that we are doing what we said we would. If I am saying I’m implementing a Multi-tiered System of Support, how do I know that I’m doing it right? Or how do you know as an administrator or team that I’m actually implementing the way it should be done? And if I’m not implementing it well, we wouldn’t expect the students to change or the outcome. Another level is at a schoolwide level. How well is our school implementing to meet the needs of all students and to provide better supports for those with more significant needs? We can jump up data integrated at a district or regional level as well. We’re combining both the data to look at the impact of reading and behavior and multi-tiered. Allyson: Clearly data is playing an important role in guiding implementation, but sometimes I hear schools saying things like, “We’re drowning in data; we have so much and what do we do with it?” Do you have any tips for educators and administrators on some of the most efficient ways to utilize their data within their teams? Goodman: Part of it, we keep hearing folks say that we are data rich, but implementation poor. How do we act upon that? We have worked with school teams at a district or building level to determine what data are currently being collected. How confident are you that those data are accurate and you can use those to act upon? Then the school teams and the district can help us decide if there is duplication in the data being collected. What can we combine or what can we get rid of? What are the critical features?

What we keep saying is we need something to measure the big ideas. For example, when reading was…the big ideas around the principal…building blocks for reading. Big ideas in behavior, once we measure those, we need something to measure that we are doing it well, which is fidelity. If we can focus on the core features of assessment, then we can start acting upon it more…look at duplication, what we can get rid of. Allyson: You’ve talked about these teams looking at data. Can you tell me a little bit about what teaming structures you recommend within schools or who’s actually using this data and looking at it? Goodman: At a building level, we have been working with building leadership teams. Building a leadership team would be a representative of the staff and school…so special education in early elementary or upper elementary, or elementary level. The principal would also be involved in that. That team looks at schoolwide data. Another team would be at the district level that would be focusing on compilation of the data from different schools in the district. The whole approach of the teams looking at the data would be, again, collecting it and then doing something with it—acting upon it to make it better. We want people on the team who understand the data, but also have the authority to act upon it and implement plans. Allyson: You mentioned the building level—that’s what it looks like. We know that this work doesn’t just occur at the building level. Can you tell us a little bit about the role that the district plays in supporting this or maybe even that the state plays in supporting the districts and supporting the schools in this implementation process and how does it work across those different systems? Goodman: When we first started doing this work, we focused on the building level and what we found is that schools can only go so far without the district support. Allyson: Right. Goodman: Districts can provide expertise that would not be available at a school level. Districts can provide efficiency of allocating resources, based on need across the district. Districts can also provide better support around visibility and the political support in saying “this is a priority,” which is limiting at a school level, within a district. Now you bump that up, at the state level, it’s a level of coordination, so you should be coordinating efforts, making sure that there’s understanding. At the district, it is the allocation of resources and the direction for the work to take place. At the school level is where the implementation happens.

Allyson: When schools and districts start implementing this work, we know that with so many initiatives in education, they come and they go and it’s just on to the next thing. How does MTSS sustain over time? What do we do to make that happen? Goodman: Part of it, it’s been interesting that folks talk about a tipping point. And a tipping point meaning that if we get critical mass going on within a district or a region that all of a sudden many more folks will come on and we’ll be good to go, be sustained. What is happening, as Rob Horner’s been talking about, is that there may not be a tipping point in education to help move this forward. Once we get to a large enough critical mass, we may be competing for resources from other groups and we may no longer be the shiny new object. What we have been focusing on then is how do we develop structures to support this that is aligned from the state to the district to the schools in those structures to ensure that this is meeting the needs, so we’re always bringing it back to the student outcomes. We set up conditions so that we can act upon the data to make sure that it is becoming efficient. We always have room for improvement. And then there’s always turnover in staff. How do we help new folks understand why this is important while keeping the existing educators on board? Allyson: You talked a little bit about student outcomes. If you focus on student outcomes, that’s part of it. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about the data associated with the projects that you do— that the schools and districts that you work in are implementing MTSS, and what are some of the relationships you’ve seen of student outcomes? Goodman: We have been using curriculum based measures, specifically dynamic indicators— basically Early Literacy Dibels. We have used the Aimsweb Program and for the reading side, some folks from our team have compared those data with high stakes tests and found that it is correlated well, as well as predictable of outcomes. We have increased our confidence that these are good measures to use, because they’re more frequent. We can use them frequently and take less time. We use those within acted-upon data for developing supports. For the behavior, we have been using the schoolwide information system—SWIS—and we also have been using student RIS—SRSS— for screening purposes. And at a high school level, we have been looking at the early warning systems to look at attendance, behavior, and course completion. Allyson: Let’s say a school or a district is wanting to get started with this and they haven’t really been implementing an Integrated MTSS system. Maybe they’ve been doing some academic work or some behavior work. What are your tips? What is your suggestion about the steps that they take to get started for that? What advice would you give them on really building an Integrated MTSS system?

Goodman: I would start out by identifying a team. If you’re going to focus at a district level, that would be a district exploration team. That team would help to identify why would we do something different than what we’re already doing? Why would we look at integration? That team would try to connect it to the needs of the student—the fit—to say, “Does it fit with the philosophy of the school or our teaching strategies? Do we have the capacity to do an integrated model? Why would we do that as opposed to what we’re currently doing?” From that team, then they would share the information to the administration and then move forward to start gaining consistent commitment from different schools into the work. Allyson: I know you’ve been in this field for a while and you’ve worked with a lot of schools and districts, especially across Michigan. Can you tell us any specific examples or stories of schools or districts that you’ve worked in and the process that they’ve gone through and some of the outcomes that they’ve seen? Goodman: Yes. A number of schools have mentioned that what has helped is that they have a focus on student outcomes. We hear many folks previously talking about zero tolerance for behavior. They are taking the approach of zero tolerance for student failure and what they mean by that is they’re going to put their efforts and create systems to ensure that all students are being successful. Some of the differences that I’ve heard are people seeing outcomes for students which are very exciting. We’re seeing changes in how resources are allocated within the schools around teaming and around making sure that they’re intensifying supports. We are also seeing changes at the district level where, as you’re selecting new principals, it might be part of the job description that they understand MTSS as important and how it’s done and experienced. Allyson: In your process of supporting these schools, are there any lessons you’ve learned along the way? Maybe things that didn’t work so well or things that worked really well over the years? Goodman: Yes. I think a real important thing is that this is a process. It’s not something that you can send a group of teachers to a training and they come back and they implement it well. It is something you need to set up an environment so that folks can be successful in implementing, which means that you have leadership to provide support for [the process] and prioritize it. I think it also means that there’s a lot of coaching along the way, because it is hard work. It takes some time and people make mistakes, so they need to understand what is working well and how to keep continuing forward.

Allyson: You mentioned coaching. What does coaching look like from your standpoint when you’re working with schools and districts? How do you coach them through this process? Goodman: What we see coaching for is—think about the training that typically folks would go to. As you’re learning a new skill set and new activities that you can bring back to work with your students, what coaching does is allows for variations around the contextual fit. What I mean by that is I can go into training and hear, “This is what I should be doing for teaching my student to read,” but when I go back in the classroom I have students at all different levels or I have different curriculum than was taught in the training. Coaching can help make that leap, that connection between the training to the actual setting and help with fidelity and implementation. Allyson: Another thing that I heard you saying was that this doesn’t happen overnight and that’s something we say a lot in the work that we do with SWIFT. This is a process. It’s not something you just go in and then tomorrow you’ve figured it out. It’s part of a process. One of the things that we like to ask is what is your vision for the future? What do you hope to see out of this, looking five, ten years down the road or even further down the road? What is your hope for schools across the country when it comes to thinking about Multi-tiered Systems of Support? Goodman: If I were king of the world… Allyson: Yeah, if you could have it your way. Goodman: I think ideally a vision that I would have is we wouldn’t necessarily need specific programs to help support MTSS implementation. It would be part of the fabric of what we do. It would be from teacher prep—it would be taught this is what MTSS is. This is what good teaching is and has these components of MTSS. It would be something that the districts would automatically … that would just be their way of doing things, their procedures and our work would change from this initiative that supporting specific things around MTSS to how do we help create systems where that fabric of what we do, that standard practice becomes something that will be sustainable and ongoing that you don’t have to even know it’s called MTSS. You just do it as good teaching. Allyson: Right. It’s just part of what everyone does. Goodman: Right. Allyson: And that’s such a good point that it’s not just at the schools or the districts, it’s also teacher prep playing a role in that and sustaining this over time on a large scale. As we come to an end, is

there anything else that you’d really like our listeners to know about Integrated Multi-tiered Systems of Support and any advice that you have for educators out there on the ground? Goodman: I think, to me, it’s a really exciting time. When I first started on education, we were just hoping that we can show some change in individual students. Over time we’re saying, no, it’s not enough for individual students. How do we have more students doing it? How do we make sure that it lasts longer? What I’m excited about the MTSS work is one, it’s really looking at the needs of all students. Allyson: Right. Goodman: I think that’s a very exciting time. I think the other thing that’s so important within that is that we are setting up systems to help support staff to do it well. So not only are we supporting students, but we’re supporting staff to be successful, which I think helps everybody as well. Allyson: And what a perfect way to end, supporting all students. That’s what SWIFT is all about. This is a great reminder for us and Multi-tiered Systems of Support and an Integrated Multi-tiered System of Support being a mechanism for supporting all students and meeting the needs of all students. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Goodman. We really appreciate it and for our listeners, if you’d like to know more about Integrated Multi-tiered Systems of Support, you can go to swiftschools.org and click on SWIFT Talk where you can find lots more stories written by leaders in the field of schoolwide transformation. SWIFT is a national K-8 center that provides academic and behavioral support to promote the learning and academic achievement of all students including students with disabilities and those with the most extensive needs.