How Tech Tools Can Simplify and Improve Your Multi-Tiered System of Supports

There was a time when the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) meetings at my middle school were roughly as chaotic as building a plane in midair.

Data was everywhere: spreadsheets, screenshots, emails, assessment reports, and notes from counseling sessions. We struggled to keep track of attendance check-ins, Response to Intervention (RTI) meetings, behavior huddles, and informal counseling conversations, all of which were happening in parallel. When our student support team gathered to talk about a child, we were still asking basic questions: What’s actually happening for this student right now? What have we already tried, and for how long? Who is doing what after this meeting, and did we ever follow up on that plan from last month?

Over the last few years, our team has come up with a much clearer, calmer system thanks to shared spreadsheets, simple forms, and predictable routines.

Start With Pain Points, Not Platforms

Before changing anything, I first brought our student support team together. That included myself as an assistant principal, as well as other administrators, school counselors, and psychologists, as well as a bilingual social worker who supports many of our newcomers. Most of us felt like we had a solid problem-solving process for MTSS meetings: clarify the concern, review relevant data, generate supports, choose a plan, and set a follow-up date. But there were four pain points during the process.

1. There was no single picture of a student. Attendance, grades, screener scores, discipline data, and staff observations lived in different places. Every meeting began with a scavenger hunt.
2. There were too many forms, but not enough clarity. Depending on the concern, teachers were filling out different referrals, sending emails, and informally raising issues in team meetings or in the hallway.
3. Meetings often generated ideas, but not action. We cared deeply and had lots of good thinking, but we didn’t always leave with clear owners, timelines, or a central record.
4. Follow-ups depended on memory. If someone was out sick or buried in emails, then a next step could easily stall.

Build a Home Base and a One-Page ‘Student Snapshot’

We decided to redesign our workflow. Step one of our new process was to create a shared spreadsheet as our MTSS home base. We landed on Google Sheets. Everything links back to the spreadsheet, which is easily searchable.

Then we created a “student snapshot” that pulls together what we need to know about a student at a glance. We were already experimenting with “learner profiles”—documents that captured strengths, needs, and supports. But we combined the essentials into a single, shared one-sheet Google Doc template, which includes the following:

• Basic information: Name, pronouns, grade, team, primary language at home
• Context: Newcomer or Student with Interrupted/Inconsistent Formal Education (SIFE) status; individualized education program, 504, and/or English language learner services; key adult connections
• Attendance trends: Overall percentage and recent patterns
• Academic indicators: Screening scores, recent grades, progress monitoring
• Interventions to date: What, when, and for how long
• Behavior or social and emotional learning (SEL) patterns over time
• A brief summary of the current concern

Every student who comes to the MTSS table gets a snapshot, which is on the screen during the discussion. As we talk, someone on the team updates the snapshot with new information and next steps. By getting everyone to look at the same, clean page, we’ve drastically cut down on side conversations, duplicate questions, and the “Wait, where did you see that?” moments that used to eat up time. A link to each student’s snapshot is added to the MTSS spreadsheet.

Use One Short Digital Form for Referrals

Previously, a teacher with a concern might send a long email, fill out a paper form, or mention something in passing. The same student could end up “on the radar” in multiple places without a coordinated plan. We replaced that system with a short digital referral form. Key fields of the Google Form include the following:

• Student name and grade
• Area(s) of concern: Academic, behavior, attendance, SEL
• A brief description of what the teacher is seeing, in their own words
• Strategies the teacher has already tried in the classroom
• How urgent the concern feels
• Relevant context: Did they recently move? Do they have caregiving responsibilities? Are there language considerations?)

Form responses automatically populate in our shared MTSS spreadsheet. From there, we can filter by grade, content area, or type of concern. We’re also better able to prioritize which students come to the next problem-solving meeting, and crucially, we can spot patterns. Teachers like the referral form system because it saves them time and prevents lots of back-and-forth emails.

Allow Tech to Shape the Meeting

Each grade level at our middle school has a scheduled problem-solving block. Around the table, you’ll typically find an assistant principal, the grade-level counselor, a psychologist, one or two teachers, and our bilingual social worker or community liaison. Here’s our basic flow for a 45-to-60-minute meeting:

1. Start in the shared MTSS spreadsheet: We filter the tab to the students on that day’s agenda. Everyone sees the same list and the same history of referrals and follow-ups.
2. Open the student snapshot: For each student, we pull up their snapshot and briefly highlight trends. Examples might include “Attendance dipped in November” or “Reading scores have been flat despite intervention.”
3. Run the problem-solving process with a time limit: Within a defined window, we move through our steps. We clarify the concern, review data, brainstorm, select one or two supports, and define what success will look like in four to six weeks.
4. Record decisions in real time: As we decide on actions, we type them directly into the snapshot and the MTSS spreadsheet. We clarify what we’re going to do, we establish which team members are responsible for the chosen actions, and we mark down a date to check back in.
5. Confirm before moving on: Prior to going to the next student, we ask, “Is it clear who is doing what, and by when?” If not, we clarify and type it in.

Stay Accountable

To keep plans from drifting, we’ve connected our spreadsheet to our calendar and email routines. Recurring MTSS meetings include the link to the shared sheet in the invite. At the end of each meeting, we send a short summary email with three or four bullets and a link back to the updated sheet. In the MTSS sheet itself, we have basic columns like “Check-in date,” “Status,” and “Outcome.”

With simplified tools and tightened workflows, the MTSS meetings at our middle school no longer feel like paperwork management. We spend less energy wrestling with data and more energy understanding students. If your MTSS process feels overwhelming, you don’t have to rebuild everything at once. You can start small and go from there. Try this:

1. Choose one grade level or team to pilot.
2. Create a basic student snapshot template that fits on one screen.
3. Build a short digital referral form that feeds into a shared sheet.
4. Run a few meetings where the sheet is the agenda and decisions are recorded in real time.
5. Ask the team what’s helping and what feels like busywork, then adjust.