The quiet signals that a student — or a system — is drifting out of Tier 1, long before the data catches up. Print it, share it with your team, use it Monday morning.
Download the Checklist →In 30 years of schools — as a teacher, counselor, and administrator — I've watched the same pattern play out again and again. A student lands in Tier 2, and the team starts reconstructing a story that began months earlier: a quiet grade slip, an attendance drift, a participation change someone noticed but no one logged. By the time the data catches up, the drift has already cost the kid a semester.
Tier 1 doesn't fail loudly. It leaks. And the leaks are almost always visible long before the numbers are — if anyone is watching for them, and if the system around those teachers is set up to hear what they're seeing.
This checklist is the list I wish I'd had earlier: 10 signals across three layers — the students in front of you, the systems around them, and the paper trail behind them. Look at it with your team. If three or more feel familiar, the problem probably isn't Tier 2.
The quiet grade slip. The informal counselor referrals. The student who stopped raising their hand. The attendance drift from 96% to 91% that no one flagged.
Differentiation happening but not documented. Screener data stuck in someone's inbox. Behavior expectations taught in September and never reinforced.
The intervention list growing faster than enrollment. A Tier 1 reading block that three staff describe three different ways. Every Tier 2 referral starting with "we've tried everything."
Take the free 7-minute MTSS diagnostic. It's 14 questions across four areas — Tier 1 systems, documentation, data flow, and Tier 2 load. Built for school leaders in buildings under 1,000 students.
I read every response personally and send honest feedback within 48 hours — including whether ScholarPath Intervention Management is actually the right fit for your school, or whether the leak is somewhere a new tool wouldn't touch.
Take the MTSS Diagnostic →