Tier 3: A student with academic and behavioral needs — Grace Smith

The student

Grace is a seventh grader identified with an emotional disturbance. Her IEP documents two areas of specialized instruction: academic instruction in a resource setting, 45 minutes a day, and a behavioral support service delivered across her general-education classes. She also receives counseling as a related service, 30 minutes a week. Her IEP carries academic goals in reading and written expression, two behavior goals tied to a behavior intervention plan, and a counseling goal for emotional regulation. It documents no communication, independent-functioning, or personal-care supports, and no dedicated paraprofessional.

Rating the domains

Two domains carry a direct service. Both come out Significant.

Curriculum & Instruction — Significant

• Factor A — Moderate. Specialized instruction runs multiple times a week against multiple goals.
• Factor B — Significant. Her academic instruction requires highly individualized design from staff with specialized competencies.
• Factor C — Moderate. A reduced ratio is required during specific instructional blocks.
• Factor D — None. She uses standard materials.

Behavior — Significant

• Factor A — Significant. Her behavior intervention plan is implemented across most routines, with staff response and adjustment embedded through the day.
• Factor B — Significant. The supports require specialized behavioral expertise to design and adjust.
• Factor C — Moderate. A planned reduced ratio is required at predictable high-need times.
• Factor D — Minimum. She uses low-tech regulation tools.

The other three domains have no direct service.

Service groups

Service groups follow from two separate things: a student's related services, and any dedicated one-to-one staffing. Grace's counseling and behavioral support are both related services — counseling 30 minutes a week plus behavioral support 90 minutes twice a week — which total 1,260 minutes over a six-week period. That is past the 540-minute threshold for Service Group 3. She has no dedicated one-to-one aide, so no service group above that applies.

Whether the behavioral support counts here depends on how the district documents it. If it is documented as a related service, as in Grace's IEP, its minutes count toward the related-services total. If a district documents it as specialized instruction instead, only the counseling minutes count, and the service group changes.

The determination

Grace has no override, so the domain ratings set the tier. Two Significant domains, with the other three carrying no service, place her at Tier 3. How the domain scores produce a tier.

The Tier 2-to-3 boundary is the first place the rubric calls for a judgment two careful raters might make differently. Grace's case is not close to that line — her Behavior domain reaches Significant on two separate factors, not one. The harder call is a student whose second domain reaches Significant on a single factor with the others at Minimum or Moderate; there, the rubric asks the rater to state the uncertainty rather than assert a false precision.