Fidelity Assessments: Part 2

High-Quality Data-Informed Decision-Making

The data nerds amongst us love the fact that data is the lifeblood of informed decision-making in an MTSS framework. In fact this can be a problem for some school leaders when they find themselves inundated with an abundance of data. If you’re an MTSS coach or coordinator or really anyone working in schools today you know about ALL the data, ranging from student performance metrics to intervention efficacy. It’s great to have data but it doesn’t you, your students, or your teachers if you don’t have the expertise to properly interpret it and then make action plans based on the interpretation. 

Fidelity assessments provide school leaders with a lens through which they can be confident in data interpretation

This is an important point so read this one twice if you need to or even if you don’t - fidelity assessments provide school leaders with a lens through which they can interpret data accurately. If you’ve got a group of students underperforming in an intervention group you might ask yourselves a number of questions. Are the students placed properly? Did we align the student need to the content of the intervention? Is the student’s attendance good? If you can answer yes to those questions then you gotta bring up the f-word - FIDELITY! You can’t be confident in student progress data if you don’t know that the instruction/intervention is being implemented as designed. 

Fidelity is Critical for Tier 1, not Just Tiers 2 and 3

If you’ve made it this far I know you can handle this truth I’m about to state.  Although most of the time we talk about fidelity when referring to Tiers 2 and 3 interventions, it is even more essential for school leaders to focus on fidelity of instruction in Tier 1 settings. This is what principal walk-throughs should be about - the delivery of high quality instruction in Tier 1 classroom settings. You know why? Besides the obvious, every school leader and MTSS coach should know that high quality explicit instructional practices should take place across all tiers and that they can be placed on an easy to use observation sheet and it can be used in peer-coaching or by MTSS coaches or teacher mentors. When you have these consistent fidelity data you can be confident in your decision-making about student outcomes about professional learning goals, and about the quality of your purchased instructional materials.

Fidelity data is essential to data-based decision making at the core of a Healthy MTSS framework

You can identify patterns, trends, and areas for growth for teachers, coaches, and all instructional staff based on reliable data. When you feel confident that teachers and interventionists are delivering consistent high-quality instruction and interventions then you can focus on adjusting student plans and placements.

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