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Morse, T.E. Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports. Encyclopedia. Available online: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59241 (accessed on 05 December 2025).
Morse TE. Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports. Encyclopedia. Available at: https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59241. Accessed December 05, 2025.
Morse, Timothy E.. "Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports" Encyclopedia, https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59241 (accessed December 05, 2025).
Morse, T.E. (2025, November 07). Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports. In Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/59241
Morse, Timothy E.. "Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports." Encyclopedia. Web. 07 November, 2025.
Peer Reviewed
Maximizing Systematic Instruction Throughout a Multi-Tiered System of Supports
This is a peer-reviewed entry published in Encyclopedia Journal, full entry can be found at 10.3390/encyclopedia5040186

A core feature of a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) is configuring instruction to match each student’s needs. For students who demonstrate academic achievement deficits and need supplemental remedial instruction, it must be coordinated among all scheduled activities, evidence-based, and individualized. Each of these matters results in challenges that must be addressed for the promise of an MTSS to be realized. One resolution involves systematic instruction during brief lessons (10 min or less). This instruction is time-sensitive, evidence-based, and can be properly configured for each tier and various students’ needs.

systematic instruction explicit instruction response prompting procedures multi-tiered system of supports intensifying instruction
Schools have employed various mechanisms to address the distinctive instructional needs of students who demonstrate an academic achievement deficit. Examples include re-teaching a unit or lesson after the students performed poorly on an exam, conducting after-school tutoring, and providing special services to students with disabilities. However, this work has not always been coordinated within a coherent, well-managed system. Resulting inefficiencies have included (a) students missing instruction presented in their general education classroom because they were removed to receive supplemental remedial instruction, (b) students being misidentified with a disability and provided costly yet unsuitable special education services, and (c) schools employing ill-defined instructional and administrative protocols for staff to follow [1].
Accordingly, concerted efforts have emerged to methodically address these students’ instructional needs. One such effort in the United States that has risen to the forefront is the use of a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) [2]. An MTSS comprises a framework that schools use to account for each student’s performance. Within the framework, a data-driven approach for instructional decisions enables schools to match their system of interventions with each student’s instructional needs [3][4].
The MTSS’s evolution has coincided with the work educators in the United States have performed to implement the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [5]. It is a federal law that has the most direct impact on how public schools provide special education services to K-12 students with disabilities. Additionally, it identifies a second group of struggling students who are to be provided support services using the law’s accompanying federal funding. They are students who need academic or behavioral supports, referred to as early intervening services (EIS), to be successful in the general education curriculum and avoid more costly special education services [6].
Since the IDEA’s passage, educators have vacillated between approaches that (a) focused on determining, in an isolated manner, how to configure appropriate highly individualized services for struggling students versus (b) how instruction could be routinely and systematically reconfigured across a school so that only a very small percentage of students struggled to the point of needing individualized, remedial instruction [7]. This vacillation is attributable to several factors, including the eligibility criteria for special education services, the creation of a dual service delivery system, imprecise knowledge about teaching reading, and philosophical differences.
Since its passage in 1975 as the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the IDEA has set forth a two-part eligibility criterion for identifying students who could receive special education services. One part involved the student meeting the established criteria for one or more of the law’s categories of disability (e.g., intellectual disability, autism, specific learning disability). The second part was establishing that the disability adversely affected the student’s educational performance, thereby necessitating the provision of special education services [8].
An early criticism of this categorical approach, which continues to this day, is its focus on a student’s disability more than the quality of the instruction they receive [9]. That is to say, the eligibility criteria imply that the student’s lackluster educational performance is the result of an inherent disability when, in fact, that performance may be the result of poor instruction. With a disability focus, specialized instruction was configured to address the disability’s features outside of the school’s general education programming. An example involved instruction designed to address the basic psychological processes underlying a student’s specific learning disability instead of directly teaching foundational academic skills [10].
Another early problem that emerged was the development of a dual educational system where specially trained teachers were employed to present instruction to students with disabilities that was distinct from that provided in the general education classroom. One reason for this arrangement was that funding mechanisms ensured that hard-fought-for resources were dedicated to students with disabilities [7].
Consequently, the origins of today’s MTSS can be traced to the late 1980s with calls for the elimination of the dual educational system by focusing on ways to present high-quality instruction to all students in a general education classroom [11][12]. The students who demonstrated noteworthy learning challenges would be identified for highly individualized instruction, and concerted efforts would be made to ensure that it was connected to the general education classroom instruction and core curriculum.
This concept gained traction in the late 1990s and early 2000s as reports that synthesized the research on how students learn to read and resulting federal initiatives furthered the conceptualization of schoolwide models of support [13]. These became integrated with similar, emerging models for addressing students’ engagement in proper school social behaviors [14]. Educators acknowledged the merits of connecting them, as research established a correlation between some students’ difficulties learning to read and their engagement in disruptive, inappropriate behavior [15].
One model that gained particular prominence with respect to reading instruction was response to intervention (RTI), which was identified in the IDEA [5]. At the same time, early intervening services (EIS) were established in the law. RTI and EIS were highlighted simultaneously to get schools to focus more than they had on the quality of their general education reading instruction for all students. If students learned to read, the number of students found eligible to receive special education services would be significantly reduced because the primary reason students were identified with a specific learning disability (SLD) was due to a reading difficulty. At that time, about half of all students receiving special education services were identified with an SLD. Additionally, advocates argued that when a student was provided this instruction but still demonstrated a need for special education services, the resulting eligibility determination would be valid [1].
Unfortunately, this approach resulted in RTI being considered a formal process for identifying students who were eligible to receive special education services, more so than a mechanism for schoolwide instructional improvement. Put another way, it was regarded as a refined pathway to special education eligibility [7].
Yet, this unintended outcome did not spell the end for MTSS efforts. Instead, the MTSS framework evolved and gained traction through state and federal efforts, often buoyed by full inclusion advocates who insisted on the acceptance of their philosophy regarding the merits of keeping all students in a general education classroom with appropriate services and supports provided to deserving students [16]. Data indicate that all 50 states provide guidance about MTSS or mandate its use on their department of education websites [2]. Additionally, the Every Student Succeeds Act, another federal education law, recommends MTSS as an appropriate approach for students with disabilities and English language learners [17]. Furthermore, the concept of a tiered intervention system is reflected in work involving its use beyond the United States.
MTSS has evolved into its present form as educators have begun to catch on to the concepts of system- and student-level factors [18]. System-level factors refer to actions that personnel at the school district, school building, and grade level can take to ensure that high-quality instruction is presented to enable all students to master the general education core curriculum. Student-level factors involve those that can be analyzed to determine how to adapt (i.e., individualize) the high-quality instruction that has not been effective with a particular student. Importantly, student-level factors are considered in concert with, and many times only after, system-level factors are addressed [7]. The MTSS’s design supports this approach. That design is discussed next.
An MTSS comprises an organizational scheme in which a school’s system of interventions is characterized in terms of tiers. The tiers are a categorization scheme for designating the types of interventions and students receiving them. A three-tier framework often serves as the basis for a straightforward explanation of an MTSS. Tier 1 consists of high-quality instruction that is presented in the general education classroom to teach the core curriculum. Tier 2 involves supplemental interventions that are provided to students demonstrating an academic achievement deficit despite the Tier 1 instruction. Tier 1 services should be effective with at least 80 percent of the students, meaning up to 20 percent will receive tier 2 instruction. Tier 3 services are provided to students manifesting significant, persistent academic achievement deficits, and comprise individualized instruction that results from adaptations to the Tier 2 interventions that were less than optimal. About 5 percent of a school’s students will need tier 3 instruction [19].
A noteworthy process that is central to an MTSS is intensifying instruction. It refers to adapting alterable instructional variables to create more individualized instruction that is hypothesized to be more effective than prior instruction [20]. It can occur within and across tiers and highlights how an MTSS is a data-driven framework involving extensive coordination among its components. Yet, researchers have remarked that teachers are not confident in intensifying instruction [21] and have questioned schools’ commitments to it [22].
Hence, while MTSS advocates emphasize that it is a mechanism for addressing ongoing school improvement, educators must address three of its most pressing challenges to realize its promise. These challenges include scheduling all needed instruction, using evidence-based practices, and crafting effective and efficient individualized instruction through intensification [7].
Given the numerous components comprising an MTSS, scheduling its activities presents numerous challenges. Two that are closely related include (a) scheduling enough supplemental intervention and (b) doing so such that a student does not miss necessary instruction involving another tier (e.g., a student does not miss Tier 1 instruction while receiving a Tier 2 intervention).
Beginning with high-quality instruction in Tier 1, schools are to use evidence-based practices throughout an MTSS [22]. Hence, many evidence-based reviews have identified these practices, which are proven effective in teaching students targeted learning outcomes [23][24][25][26]. One such practice is a systematic instructional approach, which is appropriate for all tiers. While schools were figuring out, over the past 50 years, how to design and operate an all-encompassing, integrated service delivery system that accounts for all students, research has demonstrated systematic instruction’s effectiveness [27][28]. While the approach is effective for all students, it is a necessity for students demonstrating learning challenges [29]. Hence, school personnel must be cognizant of how it can be used throughout an MTSS framework.
Furthermore, systematic instruction is well-suited to intensifying instruction. Its proper intensification can address the third MTSS challenge: crafting effective and efficient individualized instruction. In particular, systematic instruction presented in brief lessons offers one way for ensuring that it is employed throughout an MTSS and assists schools in refining their MTSS scheme for meeting the never-ending challenges of providing effective and efficient instruction to all struggling students.
A recent example involves “short burst lessons” that have been effective in teaching kindergarten and first-grade students foundational reading and mathematics skills [30][31]. Reportedly, they are 5–7-min, scripted sessions presented in a one-on-one arrangement while classmates are engaged in small group or independent work during the general education classrooms’ literacy block. Afterwards, the student independently completes computer-based instruction involving the same skill. Hence, the lessons function as supportive, Tier 1 services.
Likewise, research has established the effectiveness of short-duration lessons with lower elementary and high school students [32]. The supplemental lessons, lasting 5–10 min, involved a systematic instruction approach presented in a one-on-one or small group (i.e., three students) format. The students included ones requiring early intervening, Tier 2 services, and students with disabilities receiving Tier 3 services. Skills taught included naming numerals, reading high-frequency words, decoding vowel-consonant and consonant-vowel-consonant words, solving addition and subtraction basic facts, plus reading and defining mathematics vocabulary.
These lessons contribute to an understanding that every resource must be examined regarding how it can be employed to make an MTSS effective [7]. At a minimum, the approach comprises examining how all school staff can present some type of reading instruction. Similarly, short lessons comprise the consideration of how to use another valuable resource: time. Within an MTSS, schools must identify how every available minute can be used to present instruction, and how the instruction can be configured so that it is effective and efficient. Moreover, an examination of how short, daily lessons accumulate across a school year (e.g., 10 min daily across 180 school days amounts to 30 h of instruction) will likely convince educators that they must be mindful of this resource.

References

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  8. Learning Disabilities Association of America. Eligibility: Determining Whether a Child is Eligible for Special Education Services. Available online: https://ldaamerica.org/info/eligibility-determining-whether-a-child-is-eligible-for-special-education-services/ (accessed on 14 September 2025).
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