Student Assistance

  • General education intervention occurs when a child demonstrates needs that are not currently being met within the general education setting. The process begins as early as preschool and requires schools to have data-based documentation of appropriate instruction in general education settings delivered by qualified personnel, repeated measures of academic achievement showing progress during instruction, and the general education interventions and strategies implemented for each child.

    General education intervention can be conducted using two models:

    • A school-wide approach to providing multi-tiered systems of support to all children to achieve more successfully
    • Individual child problem-solving often referred to as Student Assistance Teams

    Components of Student Assistance Team

    While schools are transitioning to a Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework, the Student Assistance Team (SAT) may continue to function as a single, separate team. However, the Student Assistance Team is the student-level problem-solving component of the collaborative data team structure of MTSS. Once a building/district has fully implemented the MTSS framework, Student Assistance Teams will be embedded within existing processes.

    Student Assistance Teams carry out the steps of a problem-solving sequence that results in the development of an intervention plan. The plan documents the child’s: areas of concern, the interventions implemented, data reflecting the child’s response to the interventions, and recommendations based on the child’s response to the interventions. Although academic and behavioral concerns rely on inherently different data and perspective, both can be addressed through the problem-solving sequence.

    Student Assistance Teams support the following core beliefs:

    • All children can learn
    • Parents are partners
    • We can effectively teach all children
    • Early intervention is critical
    • The best decisions are guided by data
    • A team problem-solving model is critical

    The SAT or MTSS coordinator:

      • Schedules Student Assistance Team meetings
      • Collects relevant data
      • Takes meeting minutes
      • Distributes resources

    Steps of the SAT Process

      1. Problem Identification - Review existing data to identify the gap between expected performance and student level
        • Clearly define skill deficits
        • Operationally define behaviors of concern
        • Identify lagging skills
      2. Problem Analysis - Problem-solve based on data to develop hypotheses for root cause
      3. Intervention Implementation - >Develop intervention support plan for monitoring student progress and fidelity of implementation
      4. Response to Intervention/Instruction - Review student progress and adjust intervention as indicated by the data