Literacy Leadership Team

The Literacy Leadership Team is the central "cog" that turns the gears of the multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) for literacy. The team should be made up of individuals representing a range of perspectives, including classroom teachers, literacy and second-language learning specialists, school leaders, and the site-based instructional leader in charge (Lesaux, Galloway, & Marietta, 2016). Through its tiered and responsive approach, MTSS has tremendous promise for supporting beginning reading for all (Leonard et al., 2019); in order to do so, strong system leadership and oversight must be in place (Balu et al. , 2015). In managing all the pieces of the school's literacy program, the Literacy Leadership Team makes clear what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, what resources need to be (re)allocated, and why. Specifically, the team:

sets short-term and long-term Literacy Outcome Goals for each grade and the school
develops a multi-year MTSS implementation plan
implements and monitors the success of the plan (Leonard et al., 2019).

When the Literacy Leadership Team sets goals and creates an implementation plan, they are doing critical work to help realize the Team's purpose. Without a clear roadmap linking actions to goals, a plan can become ineffective or unused (Coyne et al., 2016).

MTSS leadership, from Massachusetts MTSS Blueprint (video)
Literacy leadership, from University of Oregon's Center on Teaching and Learning (resource)
The Role of a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) in Screening for Risk of Dyslexia and Providing Appropriate Instruction , from the Massachusetts Dyslexia Guidelines (resource)

Setting Literacy Outcome Goals

The ultimate goal in PreK-3 is for ALL children to develop grade-level Literacy each year they are in school. By setting Literacy goals for each grade and for the school overall, the Literacy Leadership Team sets a bar by which progress can be measured. Evaluating progress continually allows the Literacy Leadership Team to adjust course when needed and keep moving towards the ultimate goal.

Literacy outcome goals can be measured in two primary ways: summatively (e.g., reading at grade level by end of year) and formatively (monitoring progress along the way toward a summative goal).

Oregon K-12 Literacy Framework from the Center on Teaching and Learning and Oregon Department of Education, (see District-Level Framework, pp. D1–D22; School-Level Framework, pp. SC1–SC13; and Goals, pp. G1–G3).

Culturally Responsive Practice and Literacy Leadership

In setting Literacy goals for the school, the Literacy Leadership team should set goals for progress towards equity in literacy achievement, in addition to progress overall.

Massachusetts students display disproportionality in reading achievement by race. Black and Latino children are less likely to be proficient readers on grade 3 MCAS; on formative and screening assessments, Black and Latino children also score below benchmark more often than white and Asian children in many schools. Students with identified disabilities and English Learners also display lower reading achievement than their counterparts. This difference is not the result of different student ability, but rather of differences in opportunity to learn.

The Literacy Leadership Team should first explore and determine whether there is disproportionate literacy achievement in the school. The Team may ask questions such as:

How does students' literacy achievement compare across racial groups—and in particular, comparing Black and Latino students to white students?
How does the literacy achievement of students with disabilities compare to students without disabilities?
How does the literacy achievement of English Learners compare to native English speaking students?
How satisfied are families with the literacy progress of their children?

The team may use various sources of data, including:

grade 3 MCAS
early literacy screening assessments (by grade, by classroom)
classroom writing assignments
surveys or focus groups with families and caregivers.

These questions may be considered in relationship to other related issues, including disproportionality in discipline and in special education identification. If the team does uncover different levels of literacy achievement among different groups of students, the next step is to explore and identify strategies to advance equity by increasing or improving the learning experience for groups that are performing below others.

Jackson, D., (2021). Leveraging MTSS to Ensure Equitable Outcomes . American Institutes for Research.
Meeting the Needs of English Learners with and without disabilities, Brief 5: Promoting Leadership and Collaboration for an Effective Multitiered System of Supports for English Learners (grade3+) , from Project ELITE³, Project LEE, & Project ELLIPSES. (2021).
Meeting the Needs of English Learners with and without disabilities, Brief 1: Multitiered Instructional Systems for Els (grade 3+) , from Project ELITE², Project ELLIPSES, & Project LEE. (2018).

Developing the MTSS Implementation Plan

The Literacy Leadership Team makes a plan to implement the complex multi-tiered system of support across grades preK–3. The Literacy Leadership Team puts instructional leadership routines into place, such as building supportive instructional schedules, creating collaboration and problem-solving time for teacher teams, conducting regular learning walks with feedback cycles, and dedicating time for ongoing implementation reflection to document progress and maintain the plan as a "living "document. As such, building an effective MTSS is a multi-year effort for the Leadership Team, and the plan will impact numerous features of the school, including:

"Teachers are the most reflective professionals in the world. We constantly reevaluate what we do because we don't want to leave any students behind. There's not one teacher that I've ever met in my 19 years that said, 'well, it's okay that Johnny isn't getting this.' We never say that. We say, 'what can we do better to help our students?' And there is so much new research out there now that needs to be brought to us."

Beth Villani
Reading Specialist
Sweetsir School, Merrimac, MA

Monitoring the Plan's Success: Is Our Plan Working for Our Students?

The Literacy Leadership Team holds the critical responsibility of reviewing grade-wide and school-wide progress data periodically to evaluate progress. If evidence-based assessments indicate all students are not making sufficient progress toward the ultimate goal, the Literacy Leadership team leads the charge to investigate this data and adjust the school's plan to get students back on track to meet goals.

Additional Information About Literacy Leadership in a Multi-Tiered System of Support

Roles and Responsibilities of Implementation Team Members from IES Regional Education Laboratory at Florida State University
Planning and Evaluation Tool for Effective Schoolwide Reading Programs - Revised , from Institute for the Development of Educational Achievement, University of Oregon
Self-Study Guide for Implementing Early Literacy Interventions from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast at Florida State University
MTSS Overview page on Massachusetts Tools for Schools.
McIntosh, K., & Goodman, S. (2016). Integrated multi-tiered systems of support: Blending RTI and PBIS. Guilford Publications.
Vaughn, S., & Fletcher, J. M. (2020). Identifying and teaching students with significant reading problems. American Educator.

References

Balu, R., Pei, Z., Doolittle, F., Schiller, E., Jenkins, J., & Gersten, R. (2015). Evaluation of response to intervention practices for elementary school reading (NCEE 2016-4000). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

Coyne, M. D., Oldham, A., Leonard, K., Burns, D., & Gage, N. (2016). Delving into the details: implementing multi-tiered K-3 reading supports in high priority schools. In B. Foorman (Ed.), Challenges and solutions to implementing effective reading intervention in schools. New directions in child and adolescent development, Number 154 (pp. 67–85). New York: Wiley.

Coyne, M. D., Oldham, A., Dougherty, S. M., Leonard, K., Koriakin, T., Gage, N. A., … Gillis, M. (2018). Evaluating the effects of supplemental reading intervention within an MTSS or RTI reading reform initiative using a regression discontinuity design. Exceptional Children, 84(4), 350–367.

Leonard, K., Coyne, M.D., Oldham, A., Burns, D., & Gillis, M. (2019). Implementing MTSS in beginning reading: tools and systems to support schools and teachers. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice. 34. 10.1111/ldrp.12192.

Lesaux, N., Galloway, E., & Marietta, S. (2016). Teaching advanced literacy skills: a guide for leaders in linguistically diverse schools. New York: Guilford Press.

Last Updated: October 17, 2022