Description:
Tier 2 evidence-based interventions are targeted supports designed for students who require additional assistance beyond universal (Tier 1) instruction to achieve academic, social, emotional, or behavioral success. These interventions are selected based on research demonstrating their effectiveness and are matched to students' identified needs using multiple sources of data. Effective Tier 2 interventions are delivered systematically, with sufficient intensity, consistency, and fidelity to improve student outcomes while allowing educators to monitor progress and make informed instructional decisions
Importance:
Selecting interventions that meet evidence-based criteria increases the likelihood that students will experience meaningful improvements in academic, social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes. Implementing interventions with clearly defined procedures and ongoing progress monitoring helps schools determine whether students are responding to support or require adjustments in intensity or intervention type. Using evidence-based interventions also promotes consistency across educators, strengthens implementation fidelity, and ensures that resources are directed toward practices with demonstrated effectiveness.
Critical Features:
- Selection based on high-quality research demonstrating effectiveness for the targeted skill or behavior.
- Alignment between the intervention and the student's identified needs as determined through multiple sources of data.
- Clearly defined intervention procedures, materials, and instructional practices that can be implemented consistently.
- Increased instructional intensity beyond Tier 1, often through smaller group sizes, increased frequency, or additional opportunities for practice and feedback.
- Explicit instruction with modeling, guided practice, corrective feedback, and opportunities for skill generalization.
- Regular progress monitoring using reliable measures to evaluate student response to intervention.
- Data-based decision making to determine whether interventions should be continued, intensified, modified, or faded.
- Implementation with fidelity through staff training, coaching, and ongoing support.
- Collaboration among educators, specialists, and families to reinforce intervention goals across settings.
Implementation Tips:
- Establishing clear decision rules for identifying students who require targeted intervention using universal screening and ongoing data review.
- Selecting interventions that have a strong evidence base and align with students' specific academic, behavioral, social, or emotional needs.
- Defining intervention schedules, group size, duration, and expected outcomes before implementation begins.
- Providing professional learning and coaching to ensure staff understand intervention procedures and implement them with fidelity.
- Monitoring both student progress and implementation fidelity on a regular schedule.
- Using collaborative problem-solving teams to review data and make timely decisions regarding intervention effectiveness.
- Engaging families by communicating intervention goals, sharing student progress, and providing strategies to support skill development at home.
- Evaluating intervention outcomes at both the student and systems levels to support continuous improvement of Tier 2 practices.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Tier 2 Intervention Selection and Function-Based Matching is an evidence-based process for identifying targeted interventions that align with the underlying reason, or function, of a student's behavior. Rather than selecting interventions based solely on the type or severity of a behavior, educators use multiple sources of data to determine why the behavior is occurring and match students to interventions that address their specific skill deficits and behavioral needs. This approach increases the likelihood that interventions will be effective while promoting efficient use of school resources.
Importance:
Students who display similar behaviors may engage in those behaviors for very different reasons. Selecting interventions without understanding the function of behavior can result in ineffective supports and delayed progress. Function-based matching helps schools identify interventions that directly address the student's needs, increasing engagement, improving social, emotional, and behavioral outcomes, and reducing challenging behaviors. Using this systematic approach also strengthens consistency in intervention selection, promotes equitable decision making, and ensures that students receive the least intensive support likely to be effective.
Critical Features:
- Identification of students using multiple sources of data, including universal screening, office discipline referrals, teacher observations, attendance, academic performance, and behavior data.
- Collection of information to identify the likely function of behavior (e.g., obtaining attention, escaping or avoiding tasks, accessing tangible items or activities, or seeking sensory input).
- Selection of interventions that directly address the identified function of behavior and any underlying skill deficits.
- Consideration of student strengths, cultural and linguistic factors, and environmental variables during intervention planning.
- Use of standardized decision-making processes or intervention matching tools to improve consistency across teams.
- Implementation of interventions with clearly defined procedures and fidelity.
- Ongoing progress monitoring to determine student response and inform instructional adjustments.
- Collaborative problem solving among educators, specialists, and families throughout the intervention process.
Implementation Tips:
- Training staff to distinguish between the form of a behavior (what it looks like) and its function (why it occurs).
- Using brief functional behavior assessment (FBA) processes or other structured data collection methods when appropriate to identify likely behavioral function.
- Selecting interventions that explicitly teach replacement skills that serve the same function as the challenging behavior.
- Ensuring classroom teachers reinforce replacement behaviors consistently throughout the school day.
- Monitoring both intervention fidelity and student progress using measurable outcomes and reviewing data regularly.
- Adjusting interventions when data indicate limited student response rather than simply increasing intensity without changing the match.
- Partnering with families to understand student strengths and behavioral patterns across settings and to reinforce replacement skills at home.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Tier 2 Data Decision Rules are clearly defined, objective guidelines that help school teams make consistent decisions about identifying students for targeted interventions, monitoring their progress, and determining when supports should be intensified, modified, faded, or discontinued. These decision rules establish the data sources, benchmarks, and timelines used throughout the intervention process, ensuring that decisions are based on student performance rather than subjective judgment.
Importance:
Without clearly established decision rules, intervention decisions may vary across educators or teams, resulting in inconsistent support for students. Objective decision rules increase consistency, transparency, and equity by ensuring that students receive interventions based on clearly defined criteria rather than personal perceptions or isolated incidents. Regular review of student data allows schools to evaluate intervention effectiveness, make timely adjustments, and provide the appropriate level of support before difficulties become more significant. Consistent use of decision rules also strengthens implementation fidelity and improves overall MTSS effectiveness.
Critical Features:
- Clearly defined entry criteria that identify students who may benefit from Tier 2 interventions using multiple sources of data (e.g., universal screening, office discipline referrals, attendance, teacher ratings, academic performance, or behavior data).
- Established progress monitoring measures that are reliable, valid, and sensitive to student growth.
- Predetermined timelines for reviewing student progress (e.g., every 4–6 weeks).
- Objective decision thresholds that specify when interventions should be continued, intensified, modified, faded, or discontinued based on student response.
- Multiple data sources used to inform decisions rather than relying on a single measure.
- Consistent application of decision rules across grade levels, classrooms, and intervention teams.
- Documentation of intervention implementation, student progress, and team decisions.
- Ongoing evaluation of intervention fidelity alongside student outcome data.
Implementation Tips:
- Developing written decision rules that clearly define how students enter, move within, and exit Tier 2 supports.
- Identifying common behavioral, social-emotional, and academic data sources that all teams will use when making decisions.
- Establishing a regular schedule for intervention team meetings to review student progress and make timely instructional decisions.
- Training staff to collect, interpret, and use data consistently across classrooms and intervention settings.
- Monitoring both student outcomes and implementation fidelity before determining whether an intervention is effective.
- Using visual data displays (e.g., graphs or progress monitoring charts) to facilitate team discussions and identify trends over time.
- Ensuring decisions are collaborative and include input from educators, interventionists, specialists, and families when appropriate.
- Reviewing school-wide Tier 2 data periodically to evaluate the effectiveness of intervention systems and identify opportunities for continuous improvement.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Tier 2 Progress Monitoring and Fidelity of Implementation are essential components of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that ensure targeted interventions are delivered as intended and are producing meaningful outcomes for students. Progress monitoring is the ongoing, systematic collection and analysis of student data to determine whether a student is responding to an intervention. Fidelity of implementation refers to the degree to which an intervention is delivered as it was designed, including the core components, frequency, duration, and quality of implementation.
Importance:
Effective Tier 2 interventions depend not only on selecting evidence-based practices but also on implementing them consistently and evaluating their effectiveness. Progress monitoring provides educators with timely information about student growth, allowing teams to identify students who are responding to intervention and those who require additional support. Fidelity data help determine whether student outcomes are related to the intervention itself or to inconsistencies in implementation.
When progress monitoring and fidelity checks are embedded within Tier 2 systems, schools are better equipped to:
- Make objective, data-informed instructional decisions.
- Ensure equitable access to effective interventions.
- Improve student outcomes through timely adjustments to supports.
- Increase accountability for intervention implementation.
- Maximize the efficient use of school resources and staff time.
Critical Features:
- Clearly defined intervention goals that are measurable, observable, and aligned with identified student needs.
- Regular collection of student outcome data using reliable and valid measures that are sensitive to growth over time.
- Established decision rules for determining whether students are making adequate progress and when changes to interventions are warranted.
- Routine fidelity monitoring to assess adherence to the essential components of the intervention, including dosage, frequency, duration, and quality.
- Data-based problem-solving conducted collaboratively by intervention teams to review both student progress and implementation data.
- Documentation systems that organize progress and fidelity data to support communication among educators, families, and problem-solving teams.
- Continuous improvement processes that use data to strengthen intervention practices and overall Tier 2 systems.
Implementation Tips:
- Select progress-monitoring tools that directly measure the skills or behaviors targeted by the intervention.
- Collect student data consistently according to a predetermined schedule (e.g., weekly or biweekly) and graph results to visualize growth over time.
- Establish clear benchmarks and decision-making criteria before beginning an intervention.
- Monitor fidelity regularly using observation checklists, self-reflection tools, coaching feedback, or implementation logs.
- Ensure interventionists receive initial training, ongoing coaching, and performance feedback to maintain high-quality implementation.
- Review both progress-monitoring and fidelity data during Tier 2 team meetings before making decisions about modifying or intensifying supports.
- Consider whether insufficient student progress may be related to implementation challenges before concluding that an intervention is ineffective.
- Engage families by sharing student progress, celebrating growth, and communicating any planned adjustments to intervention supports.
- Use school-wide data to evaluate the overall effectiveness of Tier 2 interventions and identify opportunities for professional learning or system improvements.
Websites for Additional Information: