Introducing Turnaround for Children’s Approach to Tiered Systems of Support

“Tiered support systems are developed and implemented in service of holistic outcomes – social, emotional, motivational, cognitive, academic, and so on – and in service of equity, so that all students can thrive.”

    By Dawn Foreman, M.Ed. and Tami Hill-Washington, Ed.M. 

Most schools started the 2020-2021 school year in a state of virtual or hybrid learning. The dual pandemics of COVID-19 and increased racial unrest highlighted the need for schools to be prepared and able to meet the moment with crisis–level supports. In September 2020, Turnaround for Children launched a series of blogs and our Tiered Supports Crisis Action Pack. At this point in the school year, our hope is that you have been able to use these resources to respond to the most urgent needs of your students. We now want to continue to provide you support to enhance Tiers 2 and 3 of your school’s tiered system of supports. 

Key Principles

Turnaround’s approach to tiered supports is grounded in the science of learning and development and centers on four key principles:

• Recognizes and supports the needs of ALL children 
• Provides supports in an integrated way 
• Requires strong collaboration among all adults in a student’s context 
• Operates with an understanding of the impact of trauma and adversity on learning and development 

The purpose of a tiered supports system is to provide a framework for an adaptive, responsive continuum of integrated supports for all students, which will vary in level of intensity.

Tiered support systems are developed and implemented in service of holistic outcomes—social, emotional, motivational, cognitive, academic, and so on—and in service of equity, so that all students can thrive. 

Implementing With Partner Schools

Our Tiered System of Supports model has been used within our partner schools for several years—here are some anecdotes from our school partners that illustrate their experiences: 

“This school year has revealed how . . . Turnaround for Children’s approach to tiered levels of support has benefited our school community. The meeting structures, sample forms, templates . . . we received over the last two school years allowed us to transition in our virtual learning environment with a solid foundation about our multi-tiered supports system.  

—Christina Hanson, Assistant Principal Ketcham Elementary School, Washington, DC  

“The Tier 2 and Tier 3 structures that were put into place benefited the culture of our school. We were able to generate documents for our Tier 2 and Tier 3 processes. We were also able develop our MTSS behavioral system that would target classroom- and building-wide procedures. Our school community showed great progress from one school year to the next with the implementation of Turnaround resources. With the implementation, we saw a decrease in teacher anxiety and student behaviors.”   

—Donya Wright, former Assistant Principal at Moten Elementary School, Washington, D.C.; current Assistant Principal at Eliot-Hine Middle School, Washington, D.C. 

For more information about Turnaround’s Tiered System of Supports approach and model, please click here. 

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