Through a statewide initiative, Michigan has launched multitiered systems of supports as a framework to improve academics and behavior in more than half the state's 900 elementary and secondary schools. But educators and researchers have found that initial buy-in, financial incentives, and even early success don't guarantee schools will sustain the model for the long haul.

Multitiered systems of supports, or MTSS, are intended to address all students' academic progress and behavior in schools by providing research-backed instruction for all students in academics and social-emotional development. Students who do not progress based only on this core instruction, known as Tier 1, are assessed regularly and provided increasingly intense interventions, called Tiers 2 and 3. The framework is intended to combine elements of similar models, like response to intervention for academics or positive behavior interventions and supports for behavior.....

.....Michigan's results mirror other studies also finding mixed results for schools trying to use the framework.

"There's this idea that a tiered framework can be applied in many different domains and that those can complement each other," said Rekha Balu, who studies response-to-intervention models for the research group MDRC. But, she added, "thinking of next-generation support systems, I see huge coordination challenges ahead".....

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