Tier 4: A transition-age high schooler with needs across several domains — Christian Garcia

The student

Christian is a ninth grader identified with autism, taught across general-education and resource settings. His IEP documents specialized academic instruction five days a week, 50 minutes a day, and speech therapy 30 minutes a week. His goals reflect his transition planning: academic goals in written expression and reading, communication goals for workplace and self-advocacy communication, and independent-functioning goals for managing his own schedule and materials. He uses a text-to-speech and word-prediction system across his academic classes, documented in his IEP as assistive technology he relies on to access instruction and produce work. His IEP documents no behavior intervention plan beyond classroom-level support, no personal-care or health supports, and no dedicated paraprofessional.

Rating the domains

Four domains carry a direct service. At his age, intensity is judged against same-grade peers, and the live needs show up as self-advocacy and adult-communication supports rather than early-skills instruction.

Curriculum & Instruction — Significant

• Factor A — Moderate. Specialized instruction is delivered 250 minutes a week against his written-expression and reading goals.
• Factor B — Moderate. It requires a special education teacher's targeted competencies.
• Factor C — Minimum. A reduced ratio is required intermittently.
• Factor D — Significant. His academic access depends on the text-to-speech and word-prediction system integrated across his classes; without it he cannot access instruction or produce work.

Communication — Significant

• Factor A — Moderate. Direct communication instruction is delivered multiple times a week against his communication goals.
• Factor B — Significant. His workplace and self-advocacy communication supports require specialized provider expertise.
• Factor C — Minimum. Partner support is needed intermittently.
• Factor D — None. He uses no communication equipment beyond his peers.

Behavior — Moderate. Regular, planned behavioral support across predictable times, without the crisis-level intensity that would reach Significant.

Independent Functioning — Minimum. Light but real transition-oriented self-management instruction.

Personal Care/Health has no direct service.

Service groups

Service groups follow from two separate things: a student's related services, and any dedicated one-to-one staffing. Christian's speech therapy is a related service, because his specialized academic instruction is his instructional service and the speech supports it. Speech is delivered 30 minutes a week, which is 180 minutes over a six-week period — enough to meet the threshold for Service Group 1. He has no dedicated one-to-one aide, so no service group above that applies.

The determination

Christian has no override, so the domain ratings set the tier. Two Significant domains, one Moderate, and one Minimum, across four domains carrying service, place him at Tier 4. He does not have the pattern of four Significant domains that the higher tiers require, so his tier comes from the combined domain scores. How the domain scores produce a tier.

The same 30-minute speech service is treated differently depending on the rest of the IEP. For a speech-only student, speech is the instructional service and counts toward no service group. For Christian, whose instructional service is his academic instruction, the same speech is a related service and counts toward Service Group 1. The speech-only example shows the other side of this.