When I walked into that school with the low math scores, what I really felt wasn’t just urgency—it was burnout. The data looked bad. Teachers were drained. Kids had already checked out. And it wasn’t because people didn’t care. There were great teachers giving everything they had and still feeling like they were losing. In so many schools, the story sounds the same: students are coming in with big gaps, you’re under pressure to move math scores quickly, and the pacing guide k

Schools are investing more than ever in dashboards, early warning systems, and predictive analytics to strengthen MTSS. But numbers alone don’t capture the full picture of a student’s life. Data can tell us what is happening — slipping grades, rising absences — but only human judgment can uncover the why. When educators pair analytics with professional expertise, family insight, and student voice, MTSS becomes not just a system of reports, but a pathway to equity