Use of Evidence-based Practice (EBP) is a principle tenet of MTSS. Many disciplines, organizations, and services that we consider to be highly effective use EBP because doing so empowers their practitioners with abilities needed to accomplish more today than was possible even yesterday. Adoption and implementation of EBP offers the potential of gaining greater effectiveness over time, as new research findings bring greater knowledge and capability compared to the recent past. This pathway to greater knowledge and effectiveness holds true to the extent that an organization’s standard practices are replaced as soon as new practices with stronger evidence arrive on the scene.
If what practitioners do in the name of service provision is guided by:
- Syntheses of rigorous intervention research studies (literature reviews) that report which practices have the largest effects on the child outcomes of greatest interest
- The evidence (data) that practitioners collect, analyze, and interpret based on benchmarks and rules for differentiating treatment (Data-Driven Decision Making)
Then, evidence-based practices are being implemented.