Implementing Systematic Interventions

A Guide for Secondary School Teams

Hank Bohanon, Lisa Caputo Love, Kelly Morrissey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000072518
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Accessibly written and specifically designed for secondary schools, Implementing Systematic Interventions provides you with the tools you need to successfully organize for and smoothly implement schoolwide intervention strategies. Discover how to:

• Organize administrative support and leadership teams;

• Create effective communication techniques and protocols;

• Use effective models to select school-specific priorities;

• Support staff and students during the transition;

• Identify desired outcomes and assess whether or not they've been achieved.

Featuring supplemental online resources, this essential guide helps your team avoid common mistakes, identify clear goals, and implement successful interventions to help every student succeed.

part 1

Organize Systems for Implementation

Find Your Purpose, Find Your Direction

1

What Makes an Effective Secondary School?

In a Nutshell

• Schools have a variety of needs that should be taken into account when designing effective systems.
• Safety, physical environment, teaching and learning, and interpersonal relationships are the factors that make up an effective school culture and climate.
• Develop and maintain explicit systems that are monitored and driven by data.
• Provide tiers of support that are proactive, and then responsive according to data-identified needs.
• Tiered support systems include common academic and social-emotional/behavioral strategies that are implemented for all students, with additional supports added to benefit those who don’t respond.

Introduction

While some people really enjoyed their educational experiences, not everyone has fond memories about their schooling. When Winston Churchill was told he would begin his education, he said: “I did what so many oppressed people have done in similar circumstances: I took to the woods.” Much of his perception of school life did not improve over time. He was criticized for his lack of academic performance by his teachers. Later he commented that when his interests and imagination were not engaged in school, he could not or would not learn. Rather than be punished for his lack of progress in Latin and Greek, he wished he could have done something that would have connected more with his interests.

Like Churchill, some students have similar frustrations in school. When a student demonstrates a lack of progress, sometimes they are neglected due to low expectations, criticized, or punished. Coercion and neglect are certainly not the experiences for all students, nor do all teachers respond with harshness when students are not successful. However, there are circumstances where well-meaning people unintentionally create environments where students have negative experiences. This purpose of this chapter is to help educators think about the ingredients that go into a productive environment for all students that prevents as much failure as possible.

Box 1.1 Pondering on Purpose

• Use the Pondering on Purpose boxes to guide your thinking, deepen your understanding, and to emphasize essential information.
• Ask them in professional learning teams to drive discussion, develop consensus, and identify intrinsic biases.

Connection – Components of an Effective School

As you think back to your own secondary school experiences, what where the things that made the environment work for you? Or, perhaps you did not have a very good experience. Why was this the case? I (Lisa) went to school in a highly rated district and always considered myself a pretty good student. Surrounded by academic reputation and competitive peers, I watched as my classmates were quickly judged and sorted into classes of the “haves” and “have nots” based on their performance. The classes that were perceived as “most rigorous” were usually lecture style, and though I did fine in those classes, the teachers that I learned the most from were those that thought outside of the box in their instructional methods. They assigned us roles tapping into the strengths of each individual student and had us work together to achieve a common goal. One science teacher created an entire “Living in Space” program that taught us about project management, hydroponics, robotics, and fish farming, culminating in a “mission” that required all our efforts to succeed. Classes based on lectures, memorization of facts, and tests provided little opportunity to apply information to real life. In addition to content, classes like Living in Space focused on connections, collaboration, and problem solving with peers. Some criticized these non-traditional methods. However, the content of classes like this “stuck” with me the most. They also taught me about my learning style so that I could do a better job of accessing knowledge for the rest of my life. Sometimes we don’t realize all the factors that need to be in place for instruction and learning to be effective.

Point/Principle – Components of an Effective School

Although the components of an “effective” school will vary depending on the community it serves, the State of Vermont (based on the work of the National School Climate Center) has done a nice job of describing the kinds of environments that help students be successful and feel safe. Table 1.1 provides an illustration of the key components. The four major areas include safety, the physical environment, teaching and learning, and interpersonal relationships.

Table 1.1 Vermont’s Domains of Safe and Successful School Climates

Safety	Physical Environment	Teaching and Learning	Interpersonal Relationships
__ Behavioral expectations __ Health & wellness expectations __ Sense of physical security __ Sense of social-emotional security	__School connectedness & community engagement __Physical surrounding	__Support for learning __Social skills development __Student engagement & self-direction	__Respect for diversity __Social supports for students __Leadership __Professional relationships

Application – Components of an Effective School

Box 1.2 Pondering on Purpose

• Take time to review the domains in Table 1.1 to establish your roadmap to a highly effective school.
• Do you have predictions as to which areas will come back as strengths? Areas of need? How do these biases impact your daily practices?
• Once you gather some evidence to help you determine where you stand in each area, that will get you one step closer to understanding your next steps. How will you gather data for this table? From who?

Connection – Multi-tiered Systems of Support and School Improvement

We should not underestimate the importance of prevention. Since you were a child, your parents have told you to wash your hands. There was a good reason for encouraging this behavior. Far more children die from hygiene-related illnesses that could have been prevented with a little soap and water (https://usa.soapaid.org/what-we-do/) than from “scary” diseases like cancer, that tend to get more attention. In a society that values “go big or go home,” we often put far too much emphasis on grand gestures, and forget that the small, manageable actions that are preventative in nature can often have the biggest impact. Further, it is far easier to prevent catching a cold in the first place than attempting to make it go away once we’ve caught it. We can think about prevention and intervention on a continuum across tiers of support. Effective schools have a well-supported, tiered prevention and intervention system.

Point/Principle – Multi-tiered Systems of Support and School Improvement

You may already be familiar with many of the components of multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), which shares a considerable amount of overlap with school improvement efforts. You can use MTSS and school improvement approaches to analyze and meet the needs of all of your students, in the same way you address needs for individual students. For example, when we make individualized behavior plans for a specific student, we gather information about the current strengths and concerns, and define the problem in measurable, objective terms. Next, we select from a continuum of strategies for intervention that addresses the expected or problem performance, set a goal and outline how it will be measured, and create a plan that explicitly outlines what each stakeholder involved will do. Both school improvement and MTSS look at the entire school through a similar process. A key difference is that MTSS focuses on prevention and providing supports across a continuum of tiers. Table 1.2 cross-references key components of MTSS with examples from school improvement, as most schools have participated in some form of a school improvement process over the years.

Table 1.2 Comparing MTSS and School Improvement

Focus area	Multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS)	School improvement
Systems	Systems in place to ensure interventions are implemented correctly	Leadership roles distributed Community and parent partners included Staff provided sufficient resources and time Support obtained from school staff External support procured for technical assistance
Data	Assessments used to determine which students need support Student performance data collected, guides programming and improvement efforts	Student progress monitored using data Program evaluation conducted Measurable goals and benchmarks identified
Practices	Interventions organized across tiered continuum of support Interventions selected, implemented, and monitored Supports begin with effective core curriculum	Programs designed comprehensively Core instruction standardized Research-based strategies selected

(Adapted from Goodman & Bohanon, 2018; Slavin, 2007; Sleegers, Thoonen, Oort, & Peetsma, 2014)

Application – MTSS and School Improvement

Review a copy of your school’s “school improvement plan.” Consider how it connects to your current MTSS (or other tiered systems used to address student needs). The school improvement plan has goals that you would like your school to accomplish, just as in MTSS you set goals for your student(s). Neither can reach the goal without an intervention. What “interventions” have you selected to reach your schoolwide goals? Consider ways to synthesize efforts between the systems in your school. For example, what behaviors or academic issues consume the deans, administrators, or clinicians (counselors, social workers, etc.), time? What factors, strategies, or approaches do they use that could be implemented across settings such as the classrooms? How would having these supports built into their day impact all students? Developing successful systems for academics and social-emotional/behavioral needs involves identifying common practices that work well for a variety of students and using those strategies in all settings.

Connection – Systems, Practices, Data, and Outcomes

I (Hank) have a friend who is a pilot for a private jet. He was in town (Chicago) getting ready to fly one of the final guests for the Oprah Winfrey show. He let me go on board the plane as he was preparing everything for his return flight. During his preparation, he was using a checklist. He said there were certain requirements that had to be met before the plane could take off. These factors included how long it had been since the plane had maintenance, and how many hours the pilot has slept the night before. He said that if the preparation requirements were not met, the plane could not take off. I told him that I wished schools had pre-flight check...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: Using This Book
• Acknowledgements
• PART 1: Organize Systems for Implementation: Find Your Purpose, Find Your Direction
• PART 2: Encouraging Teams to Be More Effective
• PART 3: Providing Effective Instruction