Multi-Tiered Systems of Support for Young Children

Judith J. Carta, Ph.D., is a Senior Scientist in the Institute for Life Span Studies, Professor of Special Education, and the Interim Director of the Juniper Gardens Children's Project at the University of Kansas. Her research focuses on developing strategies to minimize the effects of poverty on children's outcomes, designing practices that teachers and parents can use to promote children's early learning and social-emotional development, methods for monitoring the progress of young children, and strategies for promoting family engagement in early intervention programs. She has been the PI of several multi-site research projects and centers funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Educational Sciences, and the Administration on Children and Families. She currently co-directs an IES-funded project to develop the Infant-Toddler Pyramid Model, a three-tiered model to promote social-emotional outcomes for infants and toddlers, based on the TPITOS. She was a member of the Federal Advisory Panel on Head Start Research and Evaluation, Division of Early Childhood's Commission on Recommended Practices, and served as the Editor of Topics in Early Childhood Special Education as well as the boards of numerous scientific journals. She received the Mary E. McEvoy Service to the Field Award from the Division for Early Childhood. Robin Miller Young, Ed.D., NCSP is currently an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Northern Illinois University where she prepares future teacher leaders to employ evidence-based practices to identify assets and meet the needs of children and families. Prior to her present position, Dr. Young guided development of MTSS frameworks while serving on classroom and administrative leadership teams at Prairie Children Preschool (Aurora, IL). The community preschool has operated as an ECE/ECSE blended program since 1998 and has won awards for developing and operating system-wide practices that effectively integrate early learning and social-emotional tiered-instructional models. Her professional partnership work includes direct services and consultative supports for moving programs into MTSS frameworks, and ensuring professional pre-service and in-service training and licensure efforts to create a workforce prepared to provide effective and efficient services in this framework. Dr. Young's scholarship includes grant-funded work resulting in numerous presentations, published curricula, book chapters, and data-based and practitioner-oriented articles. She is currently examining methods to prepare EC educators to design and deliver multi-week, inter-disciplinary instructional units that develop children's vocabulary skills within proactive social-emotional settings. Dr. Young is also examining preparation of directors/principals and teacher-leaders who can engage in leadership behaviors that will continue moving early learning programs into effective and efficient MTSS frameworks.