Exploring the Alphabet Soup of School Supports
If you’ve attended any recent school board meetings, parent/teacher conferences, or even attempted a casual conversation with a teacher, odds are you were presented with a multitude of random acronyms and educational jargon. While these piles of random letters hold powerful information for educators, it’s understandable that the vernacular is not so simple for our families and community. The “Alphabet Soup” of school supports can be a confusing dish when served without enough explanation.
The top three acronyms tossed into the elementary stew pot are typically: MTSS, PBIS, and SST. They stand for: Mutli-tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), Positive Behavior Interventions (PBIS) and Supports, and Student Support Team (SST). These are frameworks that guide our academic and behavioral processes and help us problem-solve for students. They outline how we support students from the ground up—providing step-by-step “rules” for gathering data, planning academic interventions, and developing strategies for students who need help making progress. They also define classroom-wide expectations for instruction, intervention frequency, and staff accountability in supporting all learners.
The MTSS Universal Recipe Box: The MTSS process works like a well-organized box of Grandma’s tried and true recipes for our academic, behavioral, and social/emotional systems. Support is provided through a tiered approach that guides staff in determining what each student needs. To picture this, imagine a triangle divided into three parts: Tier I supports ALL students. These are the instructional processes and opportunities provided to ALL students and are the most critical for preventing future learning needs. Tier I is known as the core instruction and requires a high level of implementation fidelity. Teachers and administrators work intentionally to align quality instruction and resources. Tier I is like preparing a remarkable soup: follow the recipe, balance the ingredients, and cook it with fidelity to ensure the best taste. If done well, Tier I should meet the needs of at least 80% of our students.
Tier II supports SOME students that may not be making the gains needed with core instruction alone. It can be a reteach of the lesson, preview of tomorrow’s lesson, or an intervention series that helps fill in skills that were missed along the way. Tier II is like giving the soup more time to simmer or adding a missing spice to bring the recipe together. The goal is to have 15% or less requiring an additional layer of support.
Tier III is for the small percentage of students who still need more intentional, focused instruction. These students often have a bigger skill gap and require more time, more practice, and more explicit teaching. Tier III is like returning the pot to the stove with extra care—adding ingredients, adjusting flavors, and cooking it longer to give the soup the strongest chance of turning out well. Tier III should serve 5% or fewer students.
Our academic tiers are determined by our Acadience benchmarking and progress monitoring data. Benchmarking is like the recipe that helps us decide if students meet grade level goals or require more assistance. Progress monitoring is like taste tasting throughout the cooking process; it is a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly quick assessment to see if students are making adequate progress.
When you follow a quality recipe closely, MTSS ensures every student gets the right support at the right time. It helps us stay consistent, intentional, and responsive. The tiered framework allows us to check in regularly, adjust instruction when needed, and make sure students don’t slip through the cracks. Just like a well-crafted meal, strong academic support takes planning, quality ingredients, and thoughtful adjustments along the way. When we follow the process with fidelity, we create a learning environment where all students can grow, succeed, and feel confident.
In upcoming articles, we will take a closer look at the other parts of our “alphabet soup” — PBIS, which guides how we support behavior and socialemotional needs, and SST, the Student Support Team that helps us problemsolve for individual students. Together, these systems work alongside MTSS to ensure that every child receives the comprehensive support they need to thrive in school.
