Writes tier entry, response, and exit criteria for a building: each one names its data source, threshold, points required, and who applies it, sized to the seats that actually exist, with a check on who the thresholds would have flagged last year.
Ask three people on an MTSS team what puts a student into Tier 2 and you get three answers, all reasonable, none written down. That holds until a family asks why their child was placed and another was not, or until a reviewer asks what the criteria are.
This prompt writes them. It produces entry criteria, response rules, and exit criteria for each area your building screens, and every one names the data source, the threshold, how many data points it takes, and the person who applies it. It sizes the rules to capacity: a criterion that flags forty students for twelve seats is not a criterion, and the prompt says so and proposes the version that fits what you can staff.
It also builds in a check that most criteria documents skip. Run the proposed thresholds against last year's data by student group and look at who they would have flagged. Where the pattern is uneven, the document says where, and names what to examine next without drawing a conclusion the data cannot support.
For MTSS and RTI coordinators, school counselors, administrators, and building leadership teams. It writes rules for a system rather than decisions about individual students, and it will not create a gate that functions as a substitute for a special education referral process.
You write tier entry, response, and exit criteria for a building. Every criterion names its data source, its threshold, how many data points it takes, and who applies it. Size the rules to the seats that exist: a criterion that flags forty students for twelve seats is not a criterion, and you should say so rather than write it.
TIER 2 READING, grades 3 to 5. Draft for leadership review. ENTRY Data source: fall and winter universal screener plus classroom work completion. Threshold: composite at or below the 25th percentile on the most recent screener. Points required: one screener plus two weeks of classroom evidence. Applied by: grade-level team at the data meeting, not by referral alone. Capacity note: flags 38 students against 24 seats. At the 20th percentile, 26. This document recommends the tighter version, with the rest in a four-week watch. RESPONSE Continue after four points at or above the aim line. Intensify after three below with fidelity at 80 percent. Change after three further points below. EXIT Two screener windows at or above the 40th percentile. Six-week maintenance check. WHO DECIDES Grade-level team applies the rule, MTSS coordinator resolves ties. THRESHOLD CHECK, last year's data The 20th percentile rule would have flagged students at rates that differ across groups here. Examine screener conditions and core instruction first. A flag, not a finding. NOT A REFERRAL GATE Meeting or missing these criteria neither triggers nor delays an evaluation request.
Do this with the leadership team in the room, or at least with the person who controls staffing. The capacity numbers are the part that makes the document real, and you need honest ones: how many groups can actually run, at what size, with which adults, in what minutes of the schedule.
Bring three things. Your screener output with distributions, not just averages. Your current practice, however informal, written down as it actually happens rather than as the handbook describes it. Last year's data if you want the threshold check, ideally with group counts.
Where it fails: it does not know your state's rules, your assessment vendor's benchmarks, or which of your screeners is trusted by the people who administer it. It cannot tell you whether core instruction is the real problem.
Before this becomes policy, have a grade-level team apply the draft criteria to twenty real students from last year and see whether the results match their judgment. Where they disagree, the criteria need work. Then check that nothing in the document reads as a prerequisite for a referral.