If your Tier 1 is healthy, these answers come fast. If it isn’t, you’ll feel it in your gut
Most school leaders can’t tell you with confidence whether their Tier 1 instruction is healthy. They can tell you their benchmark scores, their intervention rosters, their PD calendar. But the foundational question, is core instruction strong enough to serve 80% of students well? Is one most leaders haven’t been given the tools to answer. Here’s a 60-second self-test. Five questions. If you can answer ‘yes’ to four out of five, your Tier 1 is in good shape. If not, you’ve just identified your school improvement plan.
The 5 Questions
1. Can every teacher in K–3 articulate the daily routine for phonemic awareness, phonics, and decoding instruction in the same words?
Shared language signals shared practice. Different language signals different rooms running different programs.
2. Is at least 80% of your benchmark population reading at or above grade level?
If the answer is no, your Tier 1 is not doing what it should be doing. No amount of intervention will compensate. The math doesn’t work.
3. Do walkthroughs in K–3 consistently show explicit, systematic phonics instruction in every classroom?
Not ‘sometimes.’ Not ‘in most classrooms.’ In every classroom. Tier 1 is not Tier 1 if it depends on which teacher a child gets.
4. Do your intervention teachers use the same instructional language and scope as your classroom teachers?
If Tier 2 is teaching something different from Tier 1, you’re not running an MTSS you’re running parallel reading programs that confuse students.
5. Has every K–3 teacher completed Science of Reading aligned training in the past 24 months?
If your teaching staff doesn’t share a research base, your instructional consistency is luck, not design.
| Five yes answers means your Tier 1 is healthy. Three or fewer means your school improvement work needs to start here before another intervention, another program, or another initiative. |
Why This Test Matters
School improvement is often described as complex, multifactor, and slow. It is. But the diagnostic doesn’t have to be. These five questions cut through a hundred pages of strategic plans and tell you, in 60 seconds, where to point your attention next.
Most failed school improvement efforts aren’t failures of strategy. They’re failures of diagnosis. Leaders try to improve something other than what’s actually broken. This test puts you in front of the right problem.
What to Do With Your Score
- 5/5: Sustain. Codify the practices that got you here. Document, mentor, replicate.
- 4/5: Identify the gap, address it precisely, and re-test in 60 days.
- 3/5 or below: Pause peripheral initiatives. Concentrate resources on Tier 1 health.
- 2/5 or below: Time for outside help. This is structural, not surface.
You don’t need a 200-page improvement plan to know where your school is. You need a one-minute diagnostic, an honest answer, and the courage to start where the real problem is.
| Want CSAS to run this diagnostic with you and your leadership team and help you build the plan that follows from your answers? Book a free 30-minute Tier 1 Health Check call. |