Description:
Tier 2 Welcoming & Inclusive Environments ensure that families of students receiving additional supports experience the school as a safe, respectful, and supportive partner. Schools intentionally remove barriers to participation and create conditions in which families feel valued, heard, and comfortable sharing information about their child's strengths, needs, experiences, and goals.
Importance:
Families may be particularly hesitant to engage with schools when previous interactions have focused primarily on problems, discipline, academic concerns, or referrals for additional services. A welcoming environment helps establish trust and communicates that families are valued partners rather than recipients of school decisions.
Creating inclusive environments is especially important when students are receiving targeted supports because effective intervention often depends on honest, ongoing communication between families and school staff. The U.S. Department of Education emphasizes building strong partnerships through positive relationships, open communication, and attention to the challenges and barriers families may experience.
Critical Features:
- Strengths-based interactions with families
- Respect for family knowledge, culture, language, and experiences
- Welcoming and accessible school environments
- Staff who communicate warmth, respect, and openness
- Attention to barriers that may limit family participation
- Multiple ways for families to participate
- Interpretation and translation when needed
- Opportunities for families to share concerns without fear of judgment
- Consistent expectations for respectful family-school interactions
- Focus on partnership rather than compliance
Implementation Tips:
- Begin Tier 2 conversations by identifying student strengths and successes.
- Avoid making the first or most frequent contact with families about a problem.
- Ask families how they prefer to communicate and when they are most available.
- Examine physical, linguistic, technological, transportation, scheduling, and other barriers to participation.
- Provide interpreters or translated materials when needed.
- Use language that communicates partnership rather than blame.
- Invite families to share what works at home and in other settings.
- Make sure families understand that their perspective can influence intervention decisions.
- Check periodically with families about whether they feel welcomed and included.
- Use family feedback to improve engagement practices.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Tier 2 Two-Way Communication establishes frequent, purposeful communication between families and school staff about a student's strengths, needs, intervention, progress, and next steps. Communication is designed as a reciprocal exchange in which schools share information and actively seek, listen to, and use family perspectives to guide support.
Importance:
Families have information about their child's experiences, strengths, interests, behavior, and responses to strategies that may not be visible at school. Similarly, school staff have information about the student's performance and response to interventions during the school day. Combining these perspectives creates a more complete understanding of the student and supports more effective decision making.
At Tier 2, the Center on PBIS specifically identifies two-way communication about the targeted intervention, its purpose, the family's role, and student progress as an important component of family-school collaboration.
Critical Features:
- Communication is reciprocal rather than one-way
- Frequent and predictable communication
- Strengths and successes are communicated along with concerns
- Families have opportunities to ask questions and provide feedback
- Multiple communication methods are available
- Communication is accessible and culturally responsive
- Information is clear and understandable
- Student progress data are shared in meaningful ways
- Family input influences intervention decisions
- Communication continues throughout the intervention—not only when problems occur
Implementation Tips:
- Establish communication expectations when the Tier 2 support begins.
- Ask families about their preferred communication method and frequency.
- Share positive information regularly.
- Explain the purpose, components, and expected outcomes of the intervention.
- Share progress data in a format families can understand.
- Ask families what they are observing at home.
- Use questions such as:
- What are you noticing?
- What seems to be working?
- What concerns do you have?
- What would you like us to try differently?
- Respond to family questions and concerns in a timely manner.
- Document important family input and use it when making intervention decisions.
- Review communication practices when a family is difficult to reach rather than assuming a lack of interest.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Family Partnerships for Student Success involve families as active partners in identifying student strengths and needs, establishing goals, selecting supports, and evaluating progress. Collaborative problem-solving provides a structured approach for bringing families, students, and school staff together to understand concerns, identify barriers, generate possible solutions, and develop a shared plan for supporting student success.
Importance:
Students are more likely to benefit when the adults supporting them have a shared understanding of their strengths, needs, goals, and support strategies. Families possess valuable knowledge about their child's experiences, preferences, culture, strengths, and responses to previous interventions. Collaborative planning helps schools incorporate that knowledge rather than making decisions about students without the family.
The Dual Capacity-Building Framework emphasizes family-school partnerships built around shared responsibility and collaborative practice rather than one-way communication. Research-informed guidance also supports collaborative planning and problem-solving among families, students, and school staff around student goals and strategies.
Critical Features:
- Shared responsibility for student success
- Strengths-based problem identification
- Student and family voice
- Clearly defined concern or goal
- Consideration of multiple perspectives
- Identification of barriers and contributing factors
- Collaborative generation of possible solutions
- Shared decision making
- Clearly defined action steps
- Ongoing progress monitoring
- Follow-up and adjustment based on data
Implementation Tips:
- Start with what the student is doing well.
- Define the concern collaboratively rather than assuming the school has the complete picture.
- Ask families what they are seeing at home and what strategies have been successful.
- Include the student's perspective whenever developmentally appropriate.
- Identify the underlying needs or barriers contributing to the concern.
- Brainstorm multiple possible solutions before selecting an intervention.
- Consider what can be changed at school, at home, or across both settings.
- Establish one or two measurable shared goals.
- Identify who will do what, when, and how progress will be monitored.
- Schedule a follow-up rather than assuming the plan will work without adjustment.
- Celebrate progress and revise the plan when data indicate that a change is needed.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Family Voice, Leadership & Decision Making provide meaningful opportunities for families to influence decisions about their child's supports and contribute to broader school improvement. At Tier 2, family voice includes participation in intervention planning, progress review, problem-solving, and decisions about continuing, modifying, intensifying, or fading supports.
Importance:
Family engagement is strongest when families have opportunities to influence decisions rather than simply receive information about decisions already made. Families bring perspectives and knowledge that can improve the fit, relevance, and effectiveness of student supports.
Meaningful family leadership also helps schools move from a model of doing things for families toward working with families. The Dual Capacity-Building Framework specifically describes effective engagement as a partnership in which family knowledge is valued and honored and communication is two-way.
Critical Features:
- Family input sought before decisions are made
- Multiple opportunities for participation
- Family knowledge treated as an asset
- Shared decision making
- Accessible leadership opportunities
- Representation of diverse families
- Feedback loops showing how family input influenced decisions
- Opportunities for families to participate at both student and school levels
- Support and capacity-building for family leaders
Implementation Tips:
- Invite families to participate in student intervention meetings and progress reviews.
- Ask families what goals are most important to them.
- Offer multiple ways to provide input—not just attending meetings.
- Use surveys, interviews, focus groups, advisory groups, and individual conversations.
- Schedule meetings around family availability when possible.
- Provide information in accessible language before asking families to make decisions.
- Explain how family feedback was used.
- Recruit family leaders who reflect the diversity of the school community.
- Compensate or otherwise remove barriers to meaningful leadership participation when possible.
- Avoid relying only on the families who already attend school events.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Equitable & Sustainable Family Engagement ensures that all families have meaningful opportunities to participate in their child's education and contribute to school improvement. Tier 2 practices intentionally identify and address barriers that may prevent some families from accessing communication, participating in intervention planning, or contributing their perspectives.
Sustainable engagement is embedded into existing school systems and routines rather than dependent on individual staff members or occasional events.
Importance:
Traditional family engagement practices can unintentionally favor families who have greater flexibility, transportation, technology access, English proficiency, familiarity with school systems, or previous positive experiences with schools. Equitable engagement requires schools to examine and address these barriers rather than interpreting differences in participation as differences in family commitment.
The U.S. Department of Education identifies equitable family engagement as including a commitment to equity, making engagement part of routine school practice, building relationships, meaningfully involving families and trusted community advocates, and engaging families beyond the school building.
Critical Features:
- High expectations for every family's participation
- Identification and reduction of barriers
- Culturally and linguistically responsive practices
- Multiple pathways for engagement
- Flexible communication options
- Family engagement embedded within school systems
- Shared responsibility among staff
- Leadership support and resources
- Data used to examine participation and access
- Continuous improvement based on family feedback
Implementation Tips:
- Examine which families are participating—and which are not.
- Disaggregate engagement data when possible.
- Ask families directly about barriers to participation.
- Offer multiple communication formats and meeting options.
- Provide translation and interpretation when needed.
- Consider transportation, childcare, work schedules, technology access, and other practical barriers.
- Engage families outside traditional school events and hours.
- Partner with trusted community organizations.
- Build family engagement expectations into staff roles and routines.
- Avoid defining family engagement by attendance at school events alone.
- Regularly ask families whether engagement opportunities are accessible, respectful, and meaningful.
Websites for Additional Information:
Description:
Caregiver Partnership Strategies provide practical, individualized ways for schools and caregivers to work together to support students receiving Tier 2 interventions. Strategies may include home-school goal setting, shared reinforcement or support strategies, attendance problem-solving, home-school communication tools, caregiver coaching, coordinated routines, and opportunities for caregivers to reinforce skills and successes across settings.
Importance:
Students experience greater consistency when important adults communicate about goals, strategies, and progress across home and school. Caregivers can provide insight into what motivates their child, what strategies are effective outside of school, and what barriers may be affecting attendance, engagement, behavior, or learning.
Caregiver partnership should not mean asking families to “fix” school problems at home. Instead, schools and caregivers should determine together what support is realistic, useful, and aligned with the family's priorities and capacity.
Critical Features:
- Partnership rather than compliance
- Respect for caregiver expertise and capacity
- Shared goals
- Strategies that are feasible within the family's context
- Clear and accessible communication
- Coordination between home and school strategies
- Strengths-based feedback
- Opportunities for caregiver input
- Flexibility and responsiveness
- Monitoring of student outcomes rather than caregiver compliance
Implementation Tips:
- Ask caregivers what they already know about the student's strengths and needs.
- Identify strategies that are already successful at home.
- Develop shared goals rather than assigning families tasks.
- Offer practical strategies caregivers can use if they want them.
- Keep home-based recommendations realistic and manageable.
- Provide positive feedback about student progress.
- Use consistent language for expectations and strategies across settings when appropriate.
- For attendance concerns, work with caregivers to identify barriers and develop solutions rather than relying primarily on consequences.
- Ask whether the support is working for the family.
- Adjust the plan when family circumstances or student needs change.
Attendance Works, for example, recommends that Tier 2 attendance outreach involve staff and families analyzing why absences are occurring and problem-solving together to reduce barriers.
Websites for Additional Information: