When I work with schools and districts, I often hear leaders talk about MTSS and UDL as two separate initiatives. They have an MTSS team. They have UDL professional development. They have interventionists working on Tier 2 and Tier 3. They have instructional coaches working with teachers on Tier 1.
And then they ask, “How do we connect all of this?”
The answer starts with understanding what MTSS actually is.
MTSS stands for Multi-Tiered System of Supports, but I find it helpful to separate the MT from the SS.
The multi-tiered part describes how we organize increasingly intensive support for learners. Tier 1 is the foundation and must be designed to meet the needs of the full range of learners. When data show that some learners need additional support, we supplement Tier 1 with targeted Tier 2 supports and, when necessary, more intensive Tier 3 supports. When MTSS systems operate as they should, students remain in Tier 1 classrooms with their peers while also receiving these additional tiered supports.
Tier 2 and Tier 3 should not become alternative pathways that remove learners from strong core instruction. We build from Tier 1 up. If Tier 1 is not designed to meet the needs of all learners in our classrooms, we cannot simply keep adding interventions, interventionists, paraprofessionals, and programs. As I often say, we cannot intervene our way out of a weak Tier 1 foundation.
That is where UDL comes in.
If Tier 1 is intended for all learners, it has to be designed for all learners. UDL provides the framework for doing that. UDL helps us proactively design inclusive, flexible learning environments that anticipate variability and remove barriers so all learners can work toward firm goals and high expectations while building independence and learner agency.
This matters because learner variability is not limited to students receiving interventions or special education services. Variability exists in every classroom, every day. A strong Tier 1 does not wait for learners to struggle before determining how to make instruction accessible. That is why UDL is not something we layer on top of MTSS. UDL helps us build the Tier 1 foundation that an effective MTSS requires. But even excellent Tier 1 instruction and supplemental supports and interventions are only a part of MTSS.
This is where the SS, the system of supports, becomes critical.
We often draw MTSS as a triangle and spend so much time talking about what happens at Tiers 1, 2, and 3 that we forget to ask a much bigger question: What has to be true across the system for educators to successfully meet the needs of learners at every tier while ensuring that students always have access to Tier 1?
Think about any successful organization. Success requires strong leadership, people who can create a clear vision, develop and support the implementation of a strategic plan, and build buy-in for transformative change. The people responsible for doing the work need the knowledge and skills to do it well. They need ongoing opportunities to learn, practice, receive feedback, collaborate, and improve. They need access to the right tools, resources, structures, time, and meaningful data to determine whether what they are doing is actually working.
Those aren't unique needs in education. They are fundamental conditions for successful implementation in organizations.
Competency drivers focus on building the knowledge and skills of the people doing the work. Educators need high-quality professional learning, coaching, collaboration, feedback, and opportunities to apply new learning until new practices become increasingly effective and sustainable.
Implementation drivers focus on the tools that make the work possible. Educators need high-quality instructional materials, useful data systems, protocols, resources, and technology that support implementation.
Leadership drivers focus on creating the conditions for all of this to happen. Leaders need to establish a clear vision for change, align priorities, allocate resources, staff and schedules, remove systemic barriers, respond to technical and adaptive challenges, build collective responsibility, and continually communicate why the work matters.
A strong system of support ensures that these drivers are in place so that schools and districts have what they need to implement their priorities effectively, study their impact, and continuously improve. MTSS, therefore, is not simply a way to organize interventions for students. It is a coherent system that is designed to ensure that learners receive the support they need providing strong leadership, ongoing professional learning, and the resources that educators need to do their best work. But as shared previously, the foundation of the system is a Tier 1 environment that is universally designed and meets the needs of all learners.
When Tier 1 does not anticipate learner variability and remove barriers, more learners may be referred for additional support when what they actually need is greater access and support within core instruction. As those numbers grow, Tier 2 and Tier 3 resources are stretched increasingly thin, making it harder to provide targeted and intensive support to learners who truly need it. Simply put, we cannot provide increasingly intensive support to an ever-increasing number of learners.
This is why building educator capacity to universally design Tier 1 matters. A 2026 quasi-experimental study published in Frontiers in Education found that educators who participated in UDL-based professional development significantly improved their ability to design and deliver accessible lessons, developed more growth-oriented beliefs about learner variability, and expanded their use of collaborative teaching practices. This matters because when educators are better equipped to address learner variability within Tier 1, the system is better positioned to reserve increasingly intensive supports for learners who truly need them.
If UDL provides the foundation for Tier 1, educators need opportunities to build the knowledge and skills to design a more inclusive and flexible learning environment. That makes UDL professional development part of the competency drivers within a strong system of support.
UDL professional development is so much more than handing educators a collection of strategies or providing them examples of what UDL looks like in practice and hoping they are inspired enough to incorporate new ideas into their practice. It builds educators’ capacity to proactively design for learner variability. Educators learn to establish firm, grade-level goals and high expectations, anticipate barriers, and provide flexible pathways so learners can engage with learning, access rigorous content, and demonstrate what they know and can do. This shifts the focus from reacting when learners struggle to designing more intentionally from the start.
But that capacity can not develop through a one-and-done workshop. Designing for variability takes time, practice, collaboration, feedback, and ongoing support. A professional learning may kick off the improvement cycle, but it is the coaching, collaborative planning, and opportunities to reflect on practice that truly help educators become more purposeful in their design decisions and more responsive to the learners in front of them.
When professional learning is connected to the other implementation drivers, the impact extends beyond individual classrooms. Leaders can align UDL with collaborative team structures, data cycles, learning walks, coaching, instructional resources, and other strategic priorities so educators have the support and conditions they need to continually strengthen Tier 1 instruction.
Learning about UDL is only the very beginning. Educators need ongoing opportunities to apply what they are learning, collaborate with colleagues, receive feedback, reflect on the impact of changes, and refine their practice. Designing for learner variability develops over time, not in a single workshop.
That is why UDL professional development must be supported by the larger system. Coaching, collaborative planning, PLCs, learning walks, and data cycles create opportunities for educators to move from understanding UDL to implementing it consistently and effectively. These structures also help teams continually ask an important question: Is our Tier 1 instruction designed to reduce barriers for the full range of variability in our classrooms?
Professional learning itself should model the practices we want educators to use with learners. If we are asking educators to reduce barriers, we should reduce barriers to their learning too. Clear goals paired with flexible opportunities to engage, collaborate, practice, reflect, and demonstrate learning allow educators to experience UDL while learning about it. Flexible delivery options, including in-person, virtual, hybrid, facilitated, and self-paced learning, can further support different needs, schedules, and contexts.
Leadership is a critical part of that system. Professional learning alone cannot create lasting change. Leaders have to create the conditions that allow educators to put what they are learning into practice.
That means looking beyond the professional development itself into the system designed to support it. Do educators have time to collaborate and plan? Do they have high-quality instructional materials and tools? Are PLCs examining the impact of instructional design on learners? Does coaching provide opportunities for practice and feedback? Are learning walks and data cycles helping teams understand the quality and impact of Tier 1 instruction?
Leaders also need to participate in the learning themselves. When leaders understand UDL, they can recognize it in practice, provide meaningful feedback, remove systemic barriers, allocate resources, and ensure that schedules, structures, and priorities support implementation. Novak Educational Consulting offers leadership support that helps administrators build the capacity to create these conditions and sustain UDL implementation as part of a strong MTSS.
Ultimately, this brings us back to the question we started with: How do UDL and MTSS work together across a school?
The answer is that each makes the other stronger. You cannot build a strong MTSS without a universally designed Tier 1 that anticipates learner variability and removes barriers. And you cannot sustain effective UDL implementation without the system of supports that provides educators with the professional learning, collaboration, resources, data, coaching, and leadership they need to continually improve their practice. With that foundation in place, data can help teams determine which learners need additional support and layer increasingly targeted and intensive Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports on top of, rather than in place of, strong Tier 1 instruction.
When we stop treating UDL and MTSS as competing initiatives and intentionally connect them, we create a more coherent system for educators and, ultimately, better learning experiences and outcomes for students. A strong MTSS needs UDL, and effective UDL implementation needs a strong MTSS.
UDL professional development helps educators build the knowledge and skills to proactively design for learner variability, anticipate and reduce barriers, and provide flexible pathways toward firm goals and high expectations.
Novak Educational Consulting offers UDL professional learning in facilitated, self-paced, and hybrid formats designed for educators at every stage of implementation.
UDL strengthens Tier 1 by helping educators proactively design for learner variability, reduce barriers and increase access to strong core instruction. When Tier 1 is universally designed, fewer learners need additional support, allowing Tier 2 and Tier 3 to provide targeted, intensive support to learners who need it most.
Yes. Novak Educational Consulting designs online and hybrid UDL courses using the same inclusive principles the courses teach, making professional learning accessible for busy educators.
Flexible formats help schools scale UDL training across buildings and districts without pulling everyone out of the classroom at once.
Yes! We offer coaching cycles to small groups of early adopters to help them put UDL into practice and reflect on its impact on learners. These educators can then share concrete examples of UDL’s effectiveness while building capacity for more consistent implementation across the school or district.
Contact us for a proposal that combines professional development, ongoing leadership support, and instructional coaching.
Leaders create the conditions for effective UDL implementation by aligning professional learning with time, resources, collaborative structures, coaching, data cycles, and ongoing feedback.
Novak Educational Consulting supports administrators with leadership coaching that helps them build and sustain a coherent system in which UDL and MTSS strengthen one another.
Meaningful shifts in instructional practice develop over time, not from a single workshop. Sustained professional learning, coaching, collaboration, feedback, and opportunities to apply new learning help educators strengthen and refine their practice over time. In many cases, this is multi-year work. For example, Guo and Wang (2025) reported a 37.4% improvement in overall learner outcomes and a 42.8% improvement for previously disengaged learners after 24 months of high-fidelity UDL implementation.