Why Executive Function Belongs in MTSS Tier 1

A District Leader's Perspective:

What if 65 to 80 percent of students in reading and/or math interventions never qualified for an intervention at all, or exited interventions successfully much sooner? What if there is a skill that makes up that 65 to 80 percent, and why is almost no one measuring it or developing it?

MTSS runs on an assumption: if core instruction with a high-quality curriculum is solid, somewhere between 80 to 90 percent of students should respond to it and won't need an intervention to get on grade level. That leaves about 10 to 20 percent of students who need a Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention. In some schools, though, the number of students who need an intervention is above 50 percent — and a school can't just add a separate reading or math intervention on top of everything else for half its students; there isn't enough time or staff. So schools extend reading to 90 or even 120 minutes a day for all students, pushing other important subjects and activities aside.

What if we can fix part of what drives that number up so more students respond to core instruction?

What if just 10 to 20 percent of students needed interventions, just like the model predicts? That would change much of what's happening in schools right now.

Core instruction is built on the idea that reading and math skills develop in a specific order, where one skill has to be in place before the next one can build on it. When students are behind, the skill deficits are identified from benchmark assessments and those skills are targeted. But what if the academic skill itself — like sounding out a word, holding onto each sound long enough to blend it with the next — isn't the only issue? What if something underneath the skill is getting in the way and interfering with the student's ability to benefit from instruction and the curriculum?

That something has a name, and you already know it, even if you've never thought of it this way. It's core executive function — and that word “core” matters, because without it, executive function (EF) can be a generic term that's easy to nod along to but hard to act on. Core executive function means three specific skills: working memory, self-control, and cognitive flexibility. These three work like a set of gears in the brain that make learning possible in the first place. Working memory is what lets a child hold onto information long enough to use it — the same skill that lets a child sound out a word by holding onto each sound long enough to blend it with the next, or remember “get your folder, turn to page seven, and underline the vocabulary word” all the way through. Self-control is what lets a child hold up a hand instead of blurting out the answer, or wait for a turn even when waiting is hard. Cognitive flexibility is what lets a child shift from silent reading to a partner discussion, or try a new strategy after the first one didn't work.

Here's the piece that gets missed:

When a student can only hold one piece of information in mind at a time instead of three or four, a normal set of directions stops being simple. By the time that student finds page seven, the rest of the instruction is gone. That's not defiance. It's not poor listening. It's not bad teaching. It's biology. The same is true for behavior. A student who can't stop an impulse long enough to think isn't choosing to be difficult — the “stop” signal in the brain just isn't reliable yet. We tend to blame the teacher, the curriculum, or the student's behavior, without ever asking whether the real barrier is neurological readiness — how ready the brain is to benefit from instruction, curriculum, and school routines. When a student enters school with deficits in executive function, those skills still have to develop. Brain development doesn't skip steps just because state standards say it's time to learn letter-sound associations or sit through 30 minutes of instruction. It takes activation to build the pathways in the brain that let a student do those things (Diamond, 2013; Best & Miller, 2010). We already know that skipping steps in reading instruction keeps students from developing reading proficiency — it's one of the reasons the science of reading was developed. The same is true for brain development.

And the research on this is not new or shaky. It's decades deep. Working memory measured at age five predicts a child's reading and math skills better than IQ does (Alloway & Alloway, 2010), and it keeps predicting achievement all the way out to age fifteen (Ahmed et al., 2019). Self-control measured in children ages 3-11 predicts a person's health, financial stability, and life outcomes decades later (Moffitt et al., 2011). And children who enter school behind in core executive function typically do not catch up on their own. Children with weak early math skills but high core executive function tend to close the gap over time. Children with weak early math and weak core executive function tend to stay behind, year after year (Ribner et al., 2017; Ribner et al., 2023). Core executive function outpredicts IQ — and right now, in most schools, nobody is measuring it, not as a benchmark, an underlying factor for low or no academic growth, and definitely not as a skill in your MTSS model.

Here's why that “prevent 65 to 80 percent” number isn't made up.

When our district directly measured core executive function in students already in Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions — using a performance task, not a rating scale or a teacher's observation — that was the percentage of students with measurable EF deficits. We got the same numbers every time we assessed students in interventions or not responding to core curriculum. For most, their core EF deficits showed up as academic deficits; for others, as behaviors too. Many had been receiving interventions for more than a school year and still weren't on grade level. These students didn't have a learning disability (that's part of the 10 to 20 percent) — they had core EF deficits that had never been identified or addressed, and needed a core EF program alongside their academic interventions to close the gap.

Preschool and lower elementary are the best window we have to develop core EF skills and make sure students are neurologically ready. The brain is building these three core skills faster during this age span than at any other point in life (Diamond, 2013; Garon et al., 2008). Right now, though, no MTSS or RTI framework includes core executive function past preschool. Once a student enters kindergarten, it disappears from the assessment schedule entirely. Even when it shows up as part of a special education evaluation, a deficit rarely leads to a direct intervention for the executive function skill itself. Instruction starts, the student struggles to remember directions or shift between tasks or manage frustration, and we say “she's not ready for kindergarten” — when what we mean is that her working memory or self-control is not yet adequate. She's then placed in an intervention that targets the reading or math skill, and our systems never ask, “I wonder if her core EF skills are developed?” That question matters most in lower elementary, because it's when the brain is primed to develop the skill — and when achievement and behavior gaps begin.

Imagine if core executive function were simply part of MTSS. Every student's core EF skills would get assessed when they entered school, with a score that's actionable, not just another number. Every classroom would use a core curriculum built to strengthen working memory, self-control, and cognitive flexibility for all students, not just those struggling. Students with low scores would get checked again mid-year and given more opportunities to develop those pathways if they weren't responding. Schools would assess through third grade — where core EF gives way to higher-order skills like planning and problem-solving, already addressed in most self-regulation curricula — so no student gets missed, one of MTSS's key ideas. After that, only students who still need a core EF intervention would keep getting assessed and supported through Tier 2 or 3. Once that happens, the conversation changes: it's no longer only about the teacher or the curriculum, but includes a third question — are this student's core EF skills adequate for them to benefit from the instruction being provided?

Including core executive function in MTSS means every student gets core instruction in it, the same way every student already gets core reading and math instruction — and the students who still need more get a targeted or intensive intervention built for that specific gap, just like we already do for reading and math. Do this, and most of that 65 to 80 percent may not need an intervention at all, or won't need to stay in one as long — research already shows that students who enter school behind in core EF but go on to develop it tend to close the gap over time, while students who don't develop it tend to stay behind, year after year (Ribner et al., 2017; Ribner et al., 2023). And the students who do need support are far more likely to respond to the reading and math interventions we already have — the ones that were working all along — instead of a school buying a brand-new program every few years hoping for a different result.

That's what this comes back to: 65 to 80 percent isn't just a number about a skill gap. It's a number about neurological readiness — and right now, that idea isn't built into any MTSS model.

References

Ahmed, S. F., Tang, S., Waters, N. E., & Davis-Kean, P. (2019). Executive function and academic achievement: Longitudinal relations from early childhood to adolescence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 111(3), 446–458.

Alloway, T. P., & Alloway, R. G. (2010). Investigating the predictive roles of working memory and IQ in academic attainment. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 106(1), 20–29.

Best, J. R., & Miller, P. H. (2010). A developmental perspective on executive function. Child Development, 81(6), 1641–1660.

Diamond, A. (2013). Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168.Garon, N., Bryson, S. E., & Smith, I. M. (2008). Executive function in preschoolers: A review using an integrative framework. Psychological Bulletin, 134(1), 31–60.

Moffitt, T. E., Arseneault, L., Belsky, D., Dickson, N., Hancox, R. J., Harrington, H., Houts, R., Poulton, R., Roberts, B. W., Ross, S., Sears, M. R., Thomson, W. M., & Caspi, A. (2011). A gradient of childhood self-control predicts health, wealth, and public safety. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(7), 2693–2698.

Ribner, A. D., Willoughby, M. T., Blair, C. B., & Family Life Project Key Investigators. (2017). Executive function buffers the association between early math and later academic skills. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 869.

Ribner, A. D., Ahmed, S. F., Miller-Cotto, D., & Ellis, A. (2023). The role of executive function in shaping the longitudinal stability of math achievement during early elementary grades. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 64, 84–93.