Many schools are transitioning towards a preventative approach to meet the needs of at-risk learners with academic and/or behavioral concerns through the Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) framework. This qualitative study explored the perceptions of the impacting factors for MTSS and the needs of building leadership teams through semi-structured interviews using a video conferencing-based online platform. Participants included 15 building administrators from school districts in a mountain west state of the United States. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed through thematic analysis. A total of four themes or impacting factors were identified. First, participants reported that MTSS relies on the district's capacity to provide support and partnership, like administrators or district leadership. Second, provision and prioritization of resources (e.g., personnel, time, or training) was perceived as key to MTSS implementation. Third, stakeholder buy-in and disposition were perceived as effecting MTSS practices, including staff buy-in, the awareness of the need for MTSS, and building's culture and established practices. Lastly, other contextual factors in the building were reported as also influencing MTSS implementation. The results of this study can act as an implementation guide for building and district MTSS teams looking to strengthen and enhance their MTSS efforts. It is also a call to action for school districts nationwide to prioritize their MTSS practices through ongoing training, provision of resources, and consistent support to building-level teams. Finally, this study sheds light on the day-to-day realities of MTSS implementation. Limitations of this study include the following: (a) limited generalization of findings to other geographic regions; (b) little to no involvement of the participants in day-to-day implementation of MTSS interventions; (c) potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic; and (d) possible confirmation bias during data analysis. Steps were taken to ensure the trustworthiness of the data, including pilot interviews, member checks, analyst triangulation, and audit trailing.

Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) is a model that can be implemented in school buildings with the support of school district leaders. However, the voices of district leaders involved in MTSS implementation are limited in the research. This study sought to investigate what district leaders perceived as impacting factors towards MTSS implementation and draw conclusions about impacting factors from their opinions. Ten district leaders in a mountain west state of the United States were interviewed via Zoom and had their transcripts analyzed for impacting factors using a form of thematic analysis. All participants were involved with MTSS at their district in some form. This study identified four themes from the data: Personnel Involvement, Pervasive Influences, Foundations and Framework, and Supports Beyond the Site Level. Within each theme, multiple constructs came across which may be beneficial to those looking to implement MTSS or would like to better sustain MTSS implementation in their schools. Findings of this research study can directly impact districts and schools in their planning stages of MTSS implementation that could lead to longer and stronger sustainment of MTSS in their schools. Some examples of ideas drawn from the data include how school systems may want to consider the personnel they currently have access to or could potentially gain access to; they may want to consider emphasizing data and dedicate time to work on MTSS implementation; they may want to consider creating a strong structural foundation so that future implementation will be better sustained, such as structuring practices in a way that they can continue despite changes in personnel; they may want to consider which outside supports they have available to them to assist in supporting implementation.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the longitudinal effects of a multi-tiered narrative language intervention in at-risk students provided in kindergarten on fourth grade reading comprehension. The participants included 686 students from four school districts in the upper Midwest. Twenty-eight kindergarten classrooms were randomly assigned to a treatment or control condition resulting in 14 treatment classrooms and 14 control classrooms. Every student in the study participated in a pretest regarding oral narrative language skills. Students in the control group were considered to be at-risk, average performing, or advanced performing depending on their pretest score. Each student in the treatment group received large group oral narrative language instruction that followed Story Champs procedures and was led by the classroom teachers for 14 weeks. The control group engaged in their regular classroom instruction that was established at the commencement of the school year. Students who were unable to meet the narrative retell criterion at pretest and whose oral narrative retell skills did not improve after one month of large group instruction then received additional small group (Tier 2) oral narrative intervention for 10 weeks. Tier 2 intervention followed Story Champs small group procedures and was administered by speech-language pathologists. Posttest scores reflecting a significant difference in progress between treatment and control groups in narrative skill in kindergarten are given in Mollie Brough's thesis (Brough, 2019). Reading comprehension was then measured five years later via the state standardized assessment. The results indicated that the at-risk treatment group had similar reading comprehension scores to the average performing, advanced performing and combined average and advanced performing control groups. This study provides preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of a multi-tiered oral narrative language intervention on later reading comprehension skills in at-risk students.

The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of a multi-tiered oral narrative language intervention on kindergarten students' written expository discourse. The participants included 270 participants from a larger sample of 686 kindergarten students from four school districts in the upper Midwest geographical region of the United States. Participants received contextualized language intervention using Story Champs narrative intervention procedures. Tier-1 treatment groups received large group instruction from their classroom teacher who followed Story Champs procedures. Students whose oral narrative retell scores did not improve following the initial four weeks of treatment were assigned to receive additional small group intervention (Tier-2). Tier-2 intervention also followed Story Champs procedures but was led by the schools' speech-language pathologists rather than classroom teachers. Expository writing samples were collected before and after intervention and following the treatment period. These writing samples were analyzed for expository language complexity and text structure. Pretest and posttest writing samples were evaluated on measures of expository language complexity and text structure using the Expository Language Measures (ELM) flow chart. Typical language learning students in the Tier-1 treatment condition were compared with typical language learning students in the control condition and showed statistically greater performance on measures of written expository language complexity, but not on measures of written expository text structure. Additionally, students with weaker language learning ability in the Tier-2 treatment group were compared to students with similar language learning difficulty in the control group. Analyses revealed no significant differences on measures of written expository language complexity nor written expository text structure for these students with weaker language learning ability. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of multi-tiered oral narrative intervention in improving written expository language complexity for typical language learning kindergarten students. Furthermore, this study indicates the need for further investigations of interventions specifically aimed at addressing expository discourse in younger students.

In the American public school system, as of 2011, over 8% of students are placed in special education programs. To provide early intervention for struggling students before placement into special education services, three-tier model called Response to Intervention (RtI) was put into effect (FDOE, 2009). RtI (currently known as, Multi-Tiered System of Support-MTSS) is a multi-tiered system for struggling learners that provides increasingly intense levels of academic interventions and assessment (Bryd, 2011). Early intervention is a set of services for students who are at risk of, or who currently have, developmental delays or social emotional problems (Guralnick 2005). MTSS focuses on six core components: (1) evidence-based curriculum, instruction, intervention, and extension; (2) assessment and progress monitoring; (3) data-based decision making; (4) leadership; (5) family, school and community partnerships; and (6) cultural responsivity (Kashima, Schleich, & Spradlin, 2009). The goal of this research is to gain a clearer understanding of parents' perception of the MTSS process, their knowledge of the MTSS process, and their involvement in school-based reading interventions for their children who are receiving intensive interventions at the UCF Reading Clinic. I discovered that overall there was a dissatisfaction with both the communication between the parents and school, and the support that is provided for students. The majority of the parents surveyed recognized the term MTSS but they lacked a deep understanding of the process. Overall, there seemed to be a lack of understanding about how MTSS related to their student and what it meant for their child's education.

"This thesis explores techniques for improving the Quality of Service (QoS) driven routing of IP traffic in a Network Centric Military Communications System within an HC3 (High Capacity Communications Capability) tiered topology. In this specialized network various routing algorithms, including traditional, QoS-constrained search-based, and heuristic approaches, were evaluated. An automatic system for the probabilistic generation of appropriate networks and traffic was created for Monte Carlo simulation of the systems and testing of the various routing algorithms. A new algorithm we propose, based upon a hiercharical decomposition of routes about the minimum distance routes, is described and tested. These results provide both insight into this problem and demonstrate the possibility of highly optimized solutions without exhaustive search."

This study examined the relationship between the level of implementation of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) approach to service delivery in schools and educators’ beliefs regarding MTSS, their perceptions of MTSS practices in their schools, and student growth. The study used data from the Florida Problem Solving/Response to Intervention Project. Thirty-four pilot schools in seven school districts across the state of Florida were provided intensive coaching, training, and technical assistance in implementing the MTSS service delivery model for three years. The current study focused on the final year of support. Data collected as part of the project’s program evaluation model were used to examine the relationships between study variables. Multiple regressions were conducted to determine the relationship between the level of implementation of MTSS and the study’s dependent variables. Findings indicated that both Infrastructure and Implementation predicted educator beliefs about Data-Based Decision Making (DBDM), while Implementation alone predicted educator beliefs about the Academic Ability and Performance of Students with Disabilities (SWD). Furthermore, the overall regression model predicted educator perceptions of practices applied to both Academic and Behavior Content; however, none of the individual predictors were significantly related to either dependent measure. No other study dependent variables were significantly predicted by the level of MTSS implementation. Implications for practice and research involve the need for larger scale studies of MTSS implementation and the importance of researchers and practitioners utilizing reliable and valid measures to monitor implementation efforts.

Based on the analysis of value chain and value system, this research investigated the multi-tiered supply chain industry, which are four processes to be followed. First, the research analyzed the value chains and value system in one industry to find out the critical value activities. Second, this research probed into the supply chain integration strategy to plan the future business strategies, which were divided into the upward and downward integration strategies. Third, the interaction of the enterprises in the industry supply chain was investigated by the process analysis approach to draw up the appropriate supply chain processes. Finally, after the strategy analysis of the supply chain, simulation tools were utilized to simulate the real situations in the multi-tiered industry, which could be one basis of solving the suffering problems.

Current research shows that school’s behavior intervention plans are lacking in key components, indicating a need for a standardized model of assessment that sustains teacher adherence, acceptance, and feasibility. Prevent-Teach-Reinforce (PTR) is a model that combines the principles of applied behavior analysis and positive behavior support to provide a standardized approach to conducting a functional assessment and creating a behavior plan. Studies have indicated that PTR is effective in improving student behavior and academic engagement. The current study evaluated the use of PTR for three high school students classified as emotional behavioral disorder (EBD). Results indicated that teacher-implemented functional assessment and intervention planning through the use of PTR was effective at creating substantial reductions in problem behaviors and improvements in replacement behaviors for all three students. In addition, teachers were able to implement the interventions with high levels of fidelity, and social validity scores obtained from both the teachers and students indicated that the acceptability of the PTR procedures and results was relatively high.

Since 2007, Swiss caselaw has developed in a satisfactory manner with regard to the enforcement of multi-tiered clauses. Not only has the Swiss Federal Supreme Court clearly established the cumulative requirements that have to be met to enforce the pre-arbitral tier contained in a multi-tiered clause when a party does not comply with it and directly files an arbitration claim, but the Court has also resolved the question of how the arbitral tribunal should sanction such a violation. In contrast, the issue of the nature of multi-tiered clauses has never benefited from the same attention. Yet, this is a fundamental question as it primarily determines whether the Swiss Federal Supreme Court can review arbitral decisions on claims of non-compliance.   The thesis provides a critical assessment of how Swiss caselaw defines the nature of multi-tiered clauses. The author argues that classifying claims of non-compliance as raising a jurisdictional issue is a mistake and leads to an unjustified extension of the scope of judicial review through the application of art. 190(2)(b) PILA.