Do Policies Matter?
Authors:   , Bilotti Sarah , Phillips Joy C. 
Published: December 2024

The evolving educational landscape of our students' needs post-Covid has highlighted that student response to intervention must be of concern to all educators. Our student population has experienced an event that is like no other in our shared educational histories and our response to the aftermath of this event and how we assist students who are struggling will determine their success in the future. Policy set forth in the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) states that all states shall adopt and implement a Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) to guide their student intervention systems. Do national policies such as this help to give us a solution to assist struggling learners? Did this national implementation of an MTSS system have an impact on student achievement outcomes? Current research on student response to intervention primarily focuses on early grades and school specific intervention practices. There are two gaps in the research, one for students at the secondary level, and one for the success of national policies addressing intervention frameworks. This study seeks to fill those gaps by addressing and assessing student achievement outcomes at the secondary level, specifically focusing on the impact of a national policy on student intervention services. Using aggregated test score data from state SAT, ACT, and NAEP testing as well as graduation rates, we sought to investigate this policy by looking at the correlation between pre- and post-implementation scores. This study focused on states within the Northeast United States, specifically, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont. This study aimed to address this pressing and urgent need for data on the impact of a national policy outlining frameworks for intervention strategies for struggling secondary learners by conducting an analysis of aggregated publicly available and comparable data sets to determine if student outcomes changed before and after the 2019 deadline for MTSS implementation. This study found mixed results regarding the impact of a national policy requiring the implementation of Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) on student achievement outcomes in Northeast U.S. states between 2017 and 2022. Key findings include: • No significant differences were found in SAT scores (total, Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, or Math) before and after MTSS implementation. • PSAT NMSQT total scores and math scores decreased significantly between 2017 and 2022. PSAT 10 math scores showed a near-significant decline. • ACT Composite, English, and Reading scores increased significantly, while Math scores remained stable. • High school graduation rates increased significantly from 87.12% in 2017 to 91.06% in 2022. • NAEP results were inconclusive due to limited data availability. These mixed results suggest that while MTSS may have contributed to improved graduation rates and some standardized test scores, its implementation has not uniformly boosted academic achievement across all measures and a causal relationship between this national policy and student outcomes cannot be determined by the data utilized in this study. The study was limited by the confounding effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which disrupted education and testing during the examined time period. Further research is needed to better isolate the impacts of MTSS implementation from other factors affecting student outcomes.