Let’s be real: Building and implementing a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) for reading in your district can feel a bit like juggling glass bottles.
You’ve got a lot of moving parts — fidelity checks, assessment data, planning meetings — and if even one bottle drops, the whole system could come crashing down.
Meanwhile, your students are depending on the adults to get this right. If they don’t master foundational reading skills by the end of 1st grade, the data is clear: It’s highly likely they will continue to fall farther and farther behind their peers.
If there’s a secret to creating an MTSS that will truly impact student reading achievement, it’s this: You need everyone — from teachers to coordinators to principals to district level admin — to take ownership in the process and truly believe in what they’re doing.
How do you make that happen?
We turned to two educators who have built thriving MTSS in their own districts to find out.
Katie Schubmehl, MEd, serves as K-4 literacy and humanities coordinator in Chelsea Public Schools, a gateway school system just north of Boston. Phelton Cortez Moss, PhD, is a tenure-track professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. A former English teacher and principal, Moss’ work in moving an underperforming middle school from an F to C in two years led him to become the bureau director of educator effectiveness and talent acquisition at the Mississippi Department of Education.
Here, they break down how you can foster a culture of MTSS ownership in your own district.
What Is a Multi-Tiered System of Supports?
We know from Science of Reading researchers and, specifically, Nancy Young’s Ladder of Reading and Writing, that the majority of kids need more literacy support than any one curriculum or teacher alone can provide.
Building a functional literacy ecosystem that actually gets results requires:
- Meeting each student where they are
- High-quality Tier 1 curricula used with fidelity
- Proven Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions supports to the students who need them
- Meaningful assessments and progress monitoring to ensure the system addresses every child’s needs
It’s these elements combined that technically make up a Multi-Tiered System of Supports, but they’re nothing if the educators involved aren’t able to take true ownership.
“When I think about some of our schools that have had the most success with MTSS structures…it has a lot to do with collective advocacy,” Schubmehl says. “We have so many stakeholders. In fact, some of our most striving readers have many adults that are working with them every day and are dedicated to getting the [best] outcomes.”
How do you get to that point? Let’s dig into it more.
What Does a Culture of MTSS Ownership Look Like?
MTSS ownership happens when every adult in the building has a clear understanding of how their role connects to student reading success. This goes beyond just using the required materials or filling out paperwork correctly.
“The leadership task is to establish a culture where we’re all responsible for the academic outcomes with young folks, while at the same time creating a culture where folks aren’t intimidated by this work or feeling shame that they’ve not gotten the academic outcomes,” Moss explains.
In a healthy MTSS, educators are actively problem-solving when students aren’t progressing, and they’re engaging fully with MTSS processes because they see the direct connections to student success.
This is how a MTSS can help a district move away from a reactive model and towards a proactive, preventive one.
How to Build and Nurture a Culture of MTSS Ownership
Let’s talk about how to build this culture of ownership from the ground up. Here are some of the essential steps, according to Moss and Schubmehl.
1. Focus On The “Why”
Building a supportive culture of ownership starts with a mindset that “we’re all on a journey to ensure that young folks get an excellent education,” Moss stressed.
The MTSS is not just another mandate. It’s a collaborative road map meant to move the entire school in the direction of that goal.
Explicitly address why reading success matters to your school, what barriers you see as individuals and as a group, and how your MTSS can help.
2. Build Collective Efficacy
“We know that collective efficacy has a huge impact on students, on teaching, [and] on learning,” Schubmehl told us. With that in mind, include voices from all levels right at the start when building or refining your reading support systems.
“The literacy tutor, the paraprofessional in a classroom, the school leader and the assistant principal, the instructional coaches, even the math coach should be invested in making sure that students learn how to read,” she explained.
Each position should have clearly defined roles in supporting student literacy outcomes.
You might consider creating an MTSS leadership team with representation from every level and department. Alternatively, seek input and feedback from multiple groups on interventions, progress monitoring, and other key elements of your system.
For example, Schubmehl once organized a “curriculum council” at an elementary school that was composed of 40 different teachers, instructional coaches, and school leaders who helped select a Tier 1 literacy program.
The result? A lot of buy-in and huge growth.
Sustaining Your MTSS
Researchers have found that investing in a culture of MTSS ownership when reforming the system provides teachers with a deep understanding of the pedagogical principles of the change. In turn, these teachers are then “better able to respond to new demands and changing contexts in ways that are consistent with underlying principles of reform, thus sustaining and, at times, deepening reform over time.”
3. Prioritize Psychological Safety
Compliance and accountability are not bad words, Moss stresses, but the system should be built around listening and collaborating, rather than punitive evaluations and shame.
“When I was a school principal, our MTSS meetings were just as important as our PLC meetings,” Moss explained. “We had them on the calendar. They also weren’t places where teachers felt like they would be abused or they would be shamed for not getting the results with certain young people.”
In a psychologically safe and productive MTSS structure:
- Leaders and coaches are willing to listen.
- Compliance and accountability are used to align goals and problem solve.
- Teachers feel comfortable, valued, and prepared.
- Responsibility for academic outcomes is shared.
4. Use Data Meaningfully
Instructional data actually needs to inform teaching decisions, and teachers need the necessary resources and support to use and understand all the data that’s being thrown at them. “Data is a compliance piece, but teachers need to own that data. They need to understand the data,” Schubmehl says. “They need to know exactly what that number on every DIBELS subtest means about a student and their journey to become a fluent and accurate reader.”
- Explicitly train teachers and coaches to use data. Talk about what assessments are for, how to use them, and what different results indicate.
- Make data an integral part of the entire literacy ecosystem. “When we think about how we build systems, our coaches coach to and through data, every conversation is about data,” Moss said. “That data can’t live in a binder. It can’t live in a workbook. It has to be part of the school culture.”
- Provide strategies to implement data in the classroom. For example, Moss’ schools have a daily instructional block called Read To Grow where every student has a targeted instructional focus area with attached resources to use in the classroom. “We ask teachers to collect three data points along the way,” he explained. “I think it’s empowering to teachers to see that the work that they’re doing to collect the data is being used.”
- Actively seek teacher input on different students. “What does the formative data say, what does the summative data say, and what does the teacher say? A teacher is a data point about a learner,” Moss noted.
- Get students involved. Talk about their scores and their progress with them. Get excited. Show kids that the adults around them genuinely care how they’re doing.
“There are principals who eat, sleep, and breathe data, right? And those who eat, sleep, and breathe data train their teachers to eat, sleep, and breathe data, and they also train their kids to do the same,” Moss says. “Those are schools where we see amazing results.”
5. Make The System Crystal Clear
Imagine trying to take ownership of a system you don’t fully understand. You’re bound to end up frustrated and more likely to give in.
All MTSS procedures, funding allocations, and reporting requirements should be formalized in district policy, not left to individual discretion.
“We need systems of compliance because we have kids who are waiting on us to ensure that they can read, write, count, and comprehend,” Moss explains. This means aligning on your desired outcomes, formalizing your policies, and defining accountability structures to unify your entire district.
“You have to have an accountability point for everyone in the system so that everyone in the system can be responsible,” Moss says. “That is how it sticks. The board should be thinking about MTSS, the superintendent should be thinking about MTSS, the director of literacy should be thinking about MTSS, the principal, the teacher. Everyone has a role to play in this.”
Don’t just explain your MTSS structure. Codify it.
6. Provide Ongoing Resources and Support
Building a culture of MTSS ownership isn’t a one-and-done endeavor. It’s a complex structure that’s built over time, little by little and win by win. Celebrate the small victories, and build administrative systems that support teachers, coaches, and principals, rather than overwhelming them with paperwork.
Here are some ways to set your district up for success:
- Make sure every educator and student has access to high-quality materials.
- Provide ongoing coaching for both teachers and administrators.
- Create regular opportunities for reflection and feedback.
- Offer check-ins to share strategies and troubleshoot challenges.
- Treat each person as a partner, not just an implementer.
- Seek proven supports, like high-dosage tutoring, that can address students’ precise needs.
“What multi-tiered systems of supports have been able to do for us in the education space is [allow us to] think about a holistic approach to ensuring that the learner is ready to go,” Moss says.
If you treat MTSS like a checklist, that’s what it will likely become. You’ll be stuck with a system of disjointed interventions and reactive referrals that won’t move the needle on outcomes.
If you adopt it as a shared mission, on the other hand, you create a collaborative environment in which everyone, at every level, and in every role, has the tools they need to help students thrive.
