Tier 5: A high schooler with needs across four domains — Grace Parker

The student

Grace is a tenth grader identified with autism, served across general-education and resource settings. Her IEP documents specialized academic instruction five days a week, 50 minutes a day, along with speech therapy 30 minutes a week and a behavioral support service 30 minutes a week. Her goals span four areas: academic goals in reading comprehension and written expression, communication goals for conversational and self-advocacy language, behavior goals for managing frustration during academic tasks, and independent-functioning goals for organizing her own materials and transitions. She relies on a text-to-speech system across her academic classes. Her IEP documents no personal-care or health supports, and no dedicated paraprofessional.

Rating the domains

Four domains carry a direct service, with intensity judged against same-grade peers.

Curriculum & Instruction — Significant

• Factor A — Moderate. Specialized instruction is delivered 250 minutes a week against her reading comprehension and written-expression 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. Her academic access depends on a text-to-speech system integrated across her classes, without which she cannot access instruction.

Communication — Significant

• Factor A — Significant. Direct communication instruction is delivered frequently and structures how she participates across the day.
• Factor B — Moderate. Services require a licensed speech-language pathologist.
• Factor C — Minimum. Partner support is needed intermittently.
• Factor D — None. She uses no communication equipment beyond her peers.

Behavior — Significant

• Factor A — Moderate. Planned behavioral instruction is delivered across predictable high-need times.
• Factor B — Significant. Her behavioral support requires specialized staff to design and adjust.
• Factor C — Moderate. A reduced ratio is required at specific points in the day.
• Factor D — Minimum. She uses low-tech regulation tools.

Independent Functioning — Moderate. Planned self-management instruction across specific routines, regular but not pervasive.

Personal Care/Health carries no direct service, and that absence is what places her at Tier 5 rather than higher.

Service groups

Service groups follow from two separate things: a student's related services, and any dedicated one-to-one staffing. Grace's speech and behavioral support are both related services — speech 30 minutes a week plus behavioral support 30 minutes a week — which total 360 minutes over a six-week period, within the band for Service Group 2. She has no dedicated one-to-one aide, so no service group above that applies.

The determination

Grace has no override, so the domain ratings set the tier. Tier 6 requires a specific pattern: four domains at Significant and the fifth at Moderate. Grace has three domains at Significant, one at Moderate, and one carrying no service, so the pattern does not match and she is placed at Tier 5 from the combined domain scores. If her Personal Care/Health domain carried any service that brought it to Moderate, the pattern, and the tier, could change. How the domain scores produce a tier.

A student with service in four domains is placed at Tier 5 rather than 6 because Tier 6 depends on the pattern across all five domains, not on how many domains carry service. A fifth domain with no service keeps Grace below that pattern. Her substantial support without a dedicated one-to-one aide also keeps her out of Service Group 4 or 5, which measure one-to-one staffing rather than the overall amount of support.