This document provides an overview of the similarities and differences in MTSS implementation and themes found across six high school MTSS implementation stories. It also presents observations that may help SEAs better understand and support MTSS implementation at the secondary level.

Equity begins with resources. To achieve this critical goal, states and communities have various resources, but do not always understand how funding can be used to ensure equitable access to high quality early learning environments, such as Head Start, state funded pre-kindergarten, child care centers, and family child care homes, or home visiting. Many communities overlook one important source of funding for early childhood services for children from birth through the age of school entry—the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). This document highlights ways in which ESSA can help fund services for low-income children, children from multilingual households, children experiencing housing insecurity, and provides additional resources to support the social and emotional well-being of children.

The RC6 helped the GaDOE implement a
legislatively required pilot, as well as harness the power of the pilot to look and plan ahead for statewide efforts aimed at improving early literacy. The RC6 has served as a thought partner to the GaDOE clients since the project began and brought “continued coherence and focus to the project,” the clients report.

In North Carolina, much has been done at the state level in the area of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and Career Technical Education to develop curricular opportunities for students in grades 6–12 in response to an explosion of highly sought after STEM careers. However, these statewide efforts to provide engaging and regular STEM curricular opportunities were not widespread at the elementary level. In 2021, the Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) began a project to supplement work underway at the SEA level for grades 6–12 with support for the implementation of rigorous, evidence-based, and project-based STEM education targeting K–5 students.

In this white paper, the authors address the challenges of ensuring equitable student access to high quality early learning environments. The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) assembled a team of early learning professionals, who determined the need for a statewide collaborative to ensure school policies, practices, and strategies for our youngest learners encompass what research and data tell us is essential to their successful development and learning. Also included are innovative approaches using research-based, practices for working with young children as they navigate their school experiences. These approaches lead to  recommendations, which are interconnected and intended for administrators and teachers who work with children in preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and beyond.

This summary of the Children Come First: Ensuring School Policies, Practices, and Strategies Lead to Positive 3rd Grade Outcomes white paper highlights innovative strategies and recommendations for informing school policies and practices to ensure equitable access to high quality early learning environments.  

What is known about young children and how they develop, grow, and learn provides the foundation for creating engaging and appropriate spaces for learning that meet the needs of each child who walks through the school doors.

In this brief, learn about the types of environments young learners thrive in and how to create learning environments that are most responsive to their needs. 

To teach young children well involves ensuring they experience a child-centered, play-based, high-quality learning environment focused on supporting all their developmental needs – social, emotional, cognitive, and physical. Knowledge of how children within a given age span typically develop and learn provides a general framework to guide educators in preparing the learning environment,

In this brief, explore the the importance of play, balanced content, experiences, and settings to the education and development of young children across the domains.

It should be a principle aim of teachers of young children to ensure that all children see school as a place where they find themselves smart, capable, and knowing they belong. As evidenced by the research, this tends to often be less true for boys and requires a knowledge and practice base that can help teachers be more responsive to their needs, skills, and talents.

In this brief explore the research about why boys’ experiences in school is often different from girls, and steps that educators can take to optimize young boys’ learning experiences.

Understanding trauma, chronic stress, and its impact on children’s learning is now more important than ever. In this brief, explore the definition of trauma, its impact on young children, and how educators can respond in order to create learning environments that are safer, more nurturing, and more stable.

Over the past several years, our youngest learners, particularly children of color, as well as overburdened and under-resourced learners, have experienced trauma that has the potential to disrupt the architecture of their developing brains. It is up to stable, caring adults in their lives to implement well-researched strategies that not only support children’s intellectual growth, but even more importantly, their social and emotional development. This includes an intentional focus on equity—where decisions are prioritized to ensure school is a place where children find themselves smart, capable, and know they belong.

When making choices about instructional practices that best support the learning of young children, it is important to link practices to the research that supports their use and positive impact on test scores, and most importantly, support children’s development and learning.  Aligned practices are demonstrated within a dynamic coordinated continuum where physical environments, instructional approaches, learning and behavioral expectations, and content change gradually and seamlessly in response to children’s learning needs and developmental competencies.

In this brief, the authors highlight seven research-based practices that can help our youngest students  be successful and are predictive of 3rd grade outcomes.

In this brief, read how parallel processes, continuous improvement, and collaborative inquiry can contribute to increasing the number of early childhood programs/early grade classrooms with high-quality learning environments that lead to reducing inequities, closing achievement and opportunity gaps, and supporting young learners.

From our Children Come First series, this brief defines relatedness, competence, and autonomy and their importance in creating high-quality learning environments that contribute to reducing inequities, closing achievement and opportunity gaps, and supporting young learners.

From our Children Come First series, this brief addresses building relationships with young learners in a way that fosters intrinsic motivation, contributes to social and cognitive goals, and helps safeguard the dignity of children and adults alike.

From our Children Come First series, this brief  speaks to the importance of student talk in promoting learning and student success. It is critically important for children to know that their ideas, thoughts, and feelings are valued by both peers and adults. 

Research suggests that no matter the socio-economic status or background of a student, if their parents and families are engaged in their education, they are more likely to do better in school and stay in school longer (Epstein and Associates, 2018). As a result, many educational leaders are deeply committed to supporting districts, schools, and communities to engage parents and families more actively in the overall development of their students.

The information in this document is intended as a resource for those in South Carolina doing the important work of supporting family engagement. That is, as State Education Agency (SEA) staff and others provide technical assistance to districts and schools, share research and best practices, and continuously reflect on and improve parental involvement policies/practices across the state, the RC6 at SERVE offers this document as a roadmap of who is doing what work.

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about the third and final year of implementation of the three-year Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program. This 2022–23 brief is the fourth in a series of briefs developed at the request of, and in collaboration with, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE).

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about school-level implementation of the three-year Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program. In 2019, the Georgia Assembly passed Senate Bill 48 (Georgia Code §20-2-159.6 or S.B. 48) into law. Beginning in the 2024–25 school year, S.B. 48 and Georgia Board Rule 160-4-2-.39 will require local school systems to screen all kindergarten through grade 3 students for characteristics of dyslexia. To prepare for this statewide mandate, S.B. 48 also required the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE) to conduct a three-year pilot program (2020–23) to screen students for characteristics of dyslexia, provide reading intervention services to those who need support, and monitor students’ progress to determine whether the intervention improved students’ language processing and reading skills.

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about the second year of implementation of the three-year Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program. This 2021–22 brief is the third brief produced. It follows the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2019–2020, which provided information on how pilot districts approached the planning year of the pilot, and the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2020–2021: Year 1 of Implementation, which provided information on the first year of implementation.

This document is a summary containing the main findings of the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2021–2022: Year 2 of Implementation. This 2021–2022 brief is the third brief produced. It follows the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2019–2020, which provided information on how pilot districts approached the planning year of the pilot, and the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2020–2021: Year 1 of Implementation, which provided information on the first year of implementation.

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about the initial planning for the three-year Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program leading up to the 2020-21 school year. The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) at SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the RC6 partner, Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), developed this brief at the request of, and in collaboration with, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE).

The brief begins with a description of Georgia Senate Bill 48, which established the Dyslexia Pilot Program. Following this is a summary of how the GaDOE structured its leadership of the pilot, as well as a description of the work the GaDOE and the pilot districts performed prior to Year 1 (2020-21) of the three-year program. Important aspects of the districts’ planning for implementation of the dyslexia pilot are summarized, followed by challenges and needs expressed by the districts in interviews conducted by SREB for RC6. The brief concludes with future training needs and policy considerations.

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about the first year of implementation of the three-year Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program. The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) at SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the RC6 partner, the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), developed this brief at the request of, and in collaboration with, the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE). This is the second brief; the first brief, Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis: 2019-2020, provided information on the planning year of the pilot.

In 2019 the Georgia Assembly passed Senate Bill 48 into law. The bill requires school districts to begin screening all kindergarten students and students in grades 1–3 who have been identified through the Response to Intervention process for characteristics of dyslexia beginning in 2024–25 (Georgia Code §20-2-159.6 or S.B. 48). To prepare for this statewide mandate in 2024–25, the bill also requires that the GaDOE conduct a three-year Dyslexia Pilot Program.

This executive summary highlights information collected through virtual interviews with pilot district leaders. Findings relate to the following four areas: implementation approaches, screening, instruction and intervention, and progress monitoring and data-based decision making.

The purpose of this brief is to provide information about and practical strategies to help secondary schools implement a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) with an academic focus. The Region 6 Comprehensive Center (RC6) at the SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and RC6 partner, Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), developed this brief at the request of, and in collaboration with, the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE).

The document begins with a short definition of MTSS, followed by a description of the main challenges secondary schools report facing when implementing MTSS. It then offers possible solutions for secondary schools who are in early implementation phases. These strategies come both from research and from practice in secondary schools that have implemented MTSS.

Children and youth in rural areas represent a substantial proportion of U.S. students. More than 9.3 million students—or nearly one in five students in the U.S.—attend a rural school, and nearly half of those rural students live at or below the poverty line (Showalter et al. 2019). Given the increased levels of stress, anxiety, and trauma experienced as a result of the pandemic, by both children and adults, many educators are seeking guidance to support students by implementing trauma-informed (TI) practices in schools.

School communities in both urban and rural settings need TI supports; however, the adversities experienced and access to student supports may be unique to rural school communities. In addition, the contextual challenges experienced by rural schools and communities, as well as the strengths that can be drawn from them, will require adaptations of the TI approaches. Therefore, this research brief seeks to highlight the need for, and the importance of, implementing TI approaches in rural school communities, and shares recommendations for planning and implementation by schools and districts. The brief is intended for educators, leaders, and practitioners at the school, district, and state level who are in the initial stages of considering TI approaches and/or planning the implementation process.

This document is an exploratory review of district-level equity plans that are publicly available in the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s web-based management system. The purpose of this review is to gain a better understanding regarding the various types of equity strategies proposed by local education agencies (LEAs) across the state.

The first two sections of this report (I and II) provide context regarding the need for equity plans at both state and local levels and the third section (III) provides an overview of the various types of strategies proposed by the LEAs. The final section (IV) discusses considerations regarding North Carolina’s LEA equity plan development, implementation, and monitoring process for future years.

This standalone Executive Summary of the Georgia Pilot Program Implementation Analysis Brief: 2019-2020 provides an overview of key characteristics of the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program planning year including implementation approaches, monitoring, and lessons learned.

Because the area of improving students’ social and emotional outcomes is of such interest to so many (and the reports/publications/online resources are so numerous), this document attempts to organize the information into categories for more streamlined sense-making. In generating this reading/resource list, we started with a searchable database of resources at the Center to Improve Social and Emotional Learning and School Safety (a U.S.-Department-of-Education-funded national center at WestEd). We expanded this list as other resources were referenced by initial documents and then as several experts in the SEL area suggested additional references to include. The reports/resources are free and easily accessible online (links provided).

In July 2014, the U.S. Department of Education launched the Excellent Educators for All Initiative to address the struggles low-performing schools often experience with both teacher and principal hiring issues. The initiative was intended to encourage states and districts to develop and implement plans to increase access to excellent educators. In 2016, the North Carolina State Board of Education (NCSBE) developed the Teacher Compensation Models and Advanced Teaching Roles (ATR) pilot program. Initially, a three-year pilot, the program was revised in 2018 to become an eight-year pilot through the 2024-2025 school year. This document provides insights into some of the early lessons learned in implementing the program.

In this memo, commonly used measures and strategies for improving outcomes across five School Quality or Student Success (SQSS) indicators are provided, along with measurement considerations and supplemental resources.

This brief highlights lessons learned from eight North Carolina school districts that are designing and implementing Opportunity Culture school staffing models. Of North Carolina’s initial 10 Advanced Teaching Roles pilot districts, six elected to use the Opportunity Culture model. Public Impact, which founded the Opportunity Culture initiative, provides technical assistance and professional learning as districts and schools establish Opportunity Culture roles.

This document was produced based on a request by the Georgia Department of Education as a resource for eight districts involved in the Georgia Dyslexia Pilot Program.

The document includes sample letters districts can use for notifying parents about screening for characteristics of dyslexia, requesting consent from parents for screening or intervention, notifying parents of screening results, and informing parents about changes to their child’s reading intervention.

This is a protected Word document. Users will need to copy and paste the sample letter into a new document in order to customize.

This Rapid Response document developed by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) for the Region 6 Comprehensive Center covers federal, state, and private funding sources that may be used to cover the cost of dyslexia training and/or intervention. These resources can support districts and schools as they carry out the requirements of the pilot program.

This Rapid Response document developed by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) for the Region 6 Comprehensive Center contains a list of information sources and training opportunities for teachers to learn about dyslexia in general and within specific characteristics. These include dyslexia characteristics and instructional strategies to help students with dyslexia, and evidence-based literacy instruction, also known as “the science of reading” and “scientifically-based reading instruction.”

This Rapid Response document developed by the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) for the Region 6 Comprehensive Center identifies structured literacy training opportunities for teachers. The opportunities listed here were identified based on two criteria: 1) they are accredited by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA), and 2) are available entirely online or are based in Georgia, if they require in-person attendance. Descriptions were taken from each organization’s website.

The CARES Act (H.R. 748) was signed into law on Friday, March 27, 2020, providing economic relief to U.S. citizens and public systems affected by the recent COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. The total funding level for the Act is greater than $30B, with a stated purpose to prevent, prepare and respond to the coronavirus, domestically or internationally.

In 2016, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI) initiated a Teacher Compensation Models and Advanced Teacher Roles pilot which will run through 2025. In this video, we highlight a few lessons learned thus far. View the video.

For more information, you can access the brief, Lessons Learned Around Reducing Inequitable Access to High Quality Teachers.

It is no secret that successful school leadership starts with the principal. But who is taking care of school principals and ensuring their well-being? A principal’s needs must be addressed before they can effectively address the needs of their school community. District leadership must prioritize the needs of principals who in turn, will empower the school-based crisis response teams to address the needs of the school community. The purpose of this brief is to provide readers with a structured approach to manage the social-emotional well-being of the adults in the school building, post COVID-19 closures. The phrase, “better together,” has never been truer as school communities embark on the uncharted territory of virtual, hybrid and/or physical re-entry after an extended school closure.

Congress has made three separate appropriations from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund to schools, all of which include allowable uses of funds for early childhood activities:

• Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act (ESSER);
• Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act of 2021 (ESSER II); and
• American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021 (ESSER III).

This brief offers information about the allowable uses of funds as well as the continued need and multiple opportunities to prioritize early childhood education to ensure the youngest learners and their families are supported and included in all local education planning.

Brief overview of the Region 6 Comprehensive Center.