Building Shared Knowledge: Effective Use of Multi-Tiered Student Supports as a Dropout Prevention Strategy

Date: February 24, 2015
Location: Webinar

This webinar is an encore to an in-person seminar that provided a peer-learning opportunity for schools that requested support in implementing Multi-Tiered Student Supports (MTSS) in the mathematics classroom, particularly as interventions for students at risk of dropping out in Utah schools. The seminar provided an opportunity to learn more about MTSS in Utah and specifically how schools might customize implementation to meet the needs of their students. Time was allotted for sharing implementation strategies across the Dropout Prevention Alliance for Utah Students with Disabilities using a structured reporting format. This format draws on continuous improvement methodologies used in healthcare (Berwick, 2003) and the Carnegie Foundation improvement work in education (Bryk, Gomez, & Grunow, 2011). Schools were asked to organize their reports by the following four prompts that also guided their planning:

• What is the problem we’re trying to solve?
• What are we trying to accomplish?
• What change can we make that will result in an improvement?
• How will we know that a change is an improvement?

Planning materials, the webinar presentation and handouts are also archived to facilitate conversation among teams.

Event Goals:

An outcome of this event was to better define implementation efforts of MTSS in individual schools and across the alliance.

The goals of the seminar were to:

• Learn about promising practices and research-based strategies regarding multi-tiered student supports in mathematics from Utah State Office of Education (USOE) staff, colleagues, and other resources
• Work collaboratively with school team members to begin plans for using multi-tiered student supports in mathematics