TPC _Journal-Vol6_Issue_3-MTSS-Full_Issue

The Professional Counselor /Volume 6, Issue 3 286 Results The district’s elementary schools had previously stored hard copies of disciplinary incident forms in the principal’s office. This system did not support easy analysis of disciplinary data or examination of behavioral issues in the building. In the revised process, an administrative assistant electronically entered all information from the new ODR form into the school’s SIS database. The electronic system allowed staff to quickly determine the total number of disciplinary infractions in the building over a given period, identify patterns in the data such as a spike in infractions immediately before vacations, and disaggregate the data to determine the frequency of different problem behaviors among various subgroups of students. This streamlined method of data collection also enabled staff to identify possible trends in disciplinary infractions. If data revealed issues such as disproportionality in the district, school counselors served as advocates in establishing more equitable protocols around discipline policies. Notably, the number of disciplinary infractions dropped significantly throughout the 3-year grant program. Data collected from the PFI provided valuable information to all stakeholders about students’ social-emotional competency development. Because teachers observe behavior and peer interactions every day, their perspective provides a keen understanding of whether a student is able to put into practice each of the indicators listed. In addition, since teachers rate students on the PFI multiple times each year through the district’s electronic report cards, educators throughout the building had access to real-time data about behavioral issues impacting individuals or groups of students. The school counseling program, which prior to this grant project had not been established, consistently reviewed these data, generated charts to determine where gaps existed in social-emotional or academic skill areas and focused their weekly classroom guidance lessons on teaching these competencies. Subsequent report card data were also analyzed to evaluate the impact of counseling lessons on students’ skill development. Data Teams and a Multi-Tiered System of Supports Prior to the district’s ESSCP award, data teams were operating at each elementary school and were led by the building principal. Student names were only considered for data team discussion if a teacher completed a referral form indicating a student was struggling academically in the classroom. These forms, often inconsistently completed and comprised largely of teachers’ perceptions about academic performance, served as the principal mechanism for identifying at-risk students. The only other information frequently reviewed by data teams were standardized test scores, classroom grades and serious behavioral infractions. Interventions to support students were almost exclusively academic in nature. The grant team collaborated with staff to restructure data teams to include social-emotional data analysis. Data teams were then able to expand their RTI approach to a more expansive MTSS framework to include multi-tiered counseling interventions in addition to existing academic interventions. School counselors created graphs and charts of PFI, ODR and attendance data to illustrate such trends as common behavioral issues across grade levels or attendance patterns during certain days of the week or times of year. Data team members reviewed these graphs to identify gaps in social-emotional, behavioral or academic skill areas. Meetings shifted from an almost exclusive focus on academic data to considering multiple sources of achievement, demographic, behavioral and social-emotional variables. As teams explored the relationship across different types of data, a greater understanding began to emerge about how social-emotional factors, such as those included in the PFI, impact academic achievement. The charge of the data teams became deciding which tiered interventions (universal, targeted and intensive) were indicated to promote the development