MTSS Common Language

Common Language is an important layer to creating a sustainable MTSS Framework. It provides clear Communication when Collaborating and creating Collective Responsibility for all stakeholders. The MTSS Common Language found on this page is a starting point for you as you begin the journey of building your district-wide MTSS Framework. As you build your MTSS Common Language from the terms provided here, remember these are the terms that should flow seamlessly from district to campus to students to parents to community.

"Fidelity refers to how closely prescribed procedures are followed and, in the context of schools, the degree to which educators implement programs, assessments, and implementation plans the way they were intended. When we implement interventions and assessments with fidelity, intervention teams can make more accurate decisions about an individual student’s progress and future intervention needs. In addition, fidelity of implementation to the data-based individualization (DBI) process as a whole, across multiple students in a school, helps to ensure that staff have the necessary resources and processes in place to support strong implementation for individual students."
Source: National Center on Intensive Intervention
"Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is a general term that refers to positive behavioral interventions and systems used to achieve important behavior changes. PBIS was developed as an alternative to aversive interventions used with students with significant disabilities who engaged in extreme forms of self injury and aggression. PBIS is not a new theory of behavior, but a behaviorally based systems approach to enhancing the schools’ ability to design effective environments that are conducive to quality teaching and learning."
Source: The National Education Association, 2014

"Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) is an evidence-based three-tiered framework to improve and integrate all of the data, systems, and practices affecting student outcomes every day. PBIS creates schools where all students succeed."
Source: PBIS: Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (an OSEP Technical Assistance Center)
Problem Solving Teams come together on a regularly scheduled time to follow the Data Informed Decision Making Protocol of intentionally defining, analyzing, implementing and evaluating data and other informational resources.
- Collective Responsibility
  Every stakeholder believes that all students deserve and have the ability to learn at a high level and assumes responsibility for ensuring that each student learns at a high level.
- Concentrated Instruction
  Curriculum is designed to create learning pathways that enable all students to master essential knowledge and skills aligned to the TEKS and Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines.
- Convergent Assessment
  Multiple sources of data are routinely collected for review and analysis to determine the learning needs of each student and the effectiveness of the curriculum and instruction in meeting those needs.
- Certain Access
  Each student’s growth on the learning continuum will guide planning and implementation of appropriate next steps in support to ensure that each student’s potential is maximized.
Source: Buffom, Mattos, and Weber, 2012
“Universal screening is the systematic assessment of all children within a given class, grade, school building, or school district, on academic and/or social-emotional indicators that the school personnel and community have agreed are important.”
Source: Ikeda, Neessen, & Witt, 2007

In an MTSS framework, screening is conducted to identify or predict students who may be at risk for poor learning outcomes or in need of Prevention, Enrichment and Intervention supports and services.

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