Tier II provides targeted support to students who are not responding well to Tier I. This would include students who engage in frequent misbehavior, but not serious or dangerous behavior. Leadership at Tier II generally involves identifying students who need extra support, developing a continuum of interventions to meet the students’ needs, and using data to make decisions about students. The Tier II Leadership Team requires more behavioral expertise and will need to meet more often than the Tier I team.
The critical steps for Tier II are identification of students, determining appropriate placement of students, monitoring progress of students, and linking interventions to Tier I systems. To support delivery of interventions, processes and procedures need to be developed and put into place.
In order to appropriately identify students for Tier II interventions, teams will use discipline data and will also develop processes for staff, families, etc. to ‘nominate’ students. Teams will also develop data-based decision rules to determine eligibility for interventions and rules for ‘graduating’ from or changing interventions. Interventions at Tier II are targeted towards groups of students with similar needs or deficits. Interventions help students learn skills and appropriate behavior. E.g., the intervention called Check-in Check-out helps remind students throughout the day to follow the school-wide expectations, and gives students more one-on-one attention from teachers and other staff. Other groups might address social skills or lack of engagement in school.
As with Tier I, data are used to make decisions at Tier II. Uses of data at Tier II include identification of students, progress monitoring of students, and overall effectiveness of Tier II interventions. Teams will look at discipline data regularly to identify students with frequent office referrals, and also to monitor the percentage of students engaging in frequent misbehavior.