- 5 mins
This article is an excerpt from a presentation given by Amanda Abernathy (Warren Consolidated Schools) and Dr. Kari Stubbs(Stages Learning) at MAASE 2025.
At the MAASE 2025 Conference, Amanda Abernathy of Warren Consolidated Schools and Dr. Kari Stubbs from Stages Learning shared how one district turned its Tier 3 interventions from a compliance-driven “check-the-box” process into a proactive, data-driven, and sustainable system. The catalyst behind this transformation? The Academic Readiness Intervention System (ARIS) — a research-based toolkit from Stages Learning that builds the foundational skills students with autism and related needs need to access learning: joint attention, engagement, and communication.
“I can’t teach a child to read if the student never engages with me. ARIS gave us the tools to get them to look at us, connect, and participate.” — Amanda Abernathy
Why Tier 3 Needed Change
Too often, students who enter Tier 3 interventions stay there indefinitely. As Amanda described, “Once a student landed in Tier 3, it’s like they bought themselves a home until age 26.”
Warren Consolidated refused to accept that reality. By embedding ARIS into their Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), they redefined Tier 3 supports:
- Closing instructional gaps not addressed in the general education curriculum.
- Delivering real-time, actionable data to inform instructional adjustments.
- Aligning academic and behavioral supports so students could generalize skills across settings.
Results That Speak for Themselves
In just a few years, the district achieved outcomes that many educators might consider extraordinary:
- Zero para turnover for three years in a building with 21 aides — remarkable in a field with 20–30% annual turnover.
- Growth from 1 to 7 classrooms serving students with autism and related needs.
- Every student demonstrated measurable growth, tracked and visible through ARIS.
- One student successfully transitioned from Tier 3 to Tier 2 in less than a year.
- A nonverbal 4-year-old progressed to completing 10 minutes of independent academic work daily.
- 100% of paras trained alongside teachers, becoming fully integrated members of instructional teams.
Stories of Student Success
From Nonverbal to Engaged: A preschooler with no functional communication began the year completely disengaged. By spring, he was independently completing 10 minutes of academic tasks — and moving from Tier 3 to Tier 2.
Opening Doors to Inclusion: A student with significant behavioral challenges began participating in general education activities for the first time. Even while remaining in Tier 3, ARIS gave her access to experiences she would not have had otherwise.
As Amanda explained, “Sometimes growth isn’t visible in standardized assessments. With ARIS, we can track and show progress in ways that matter to educators, parents, and decision-makers.”
Why ARIS Works
ARIS succeeds because it focuses on the readiness skills that unlock access to academics: engagement, communication, and joint attention. Integrated into MTSS, it ensures:
- Academic and behavioral supports are unified.
- Teachers and paras share a common language and consistent tools.
- Real-time visual progress monitoring drives better-informed placement decisions.
- Paras are empowered and invested, leading to stability and program fidelity.
Staff Stability as a Foundation for Student Growth
Perhaps one of the most striking outcomes of Warren Consolidated’s ARIS journey is the complete elimination of para turnover. For three years, not a single aide left. That stability not only sustains the program but also empowers paras to lead small groups, understand the “why” behind strategies, and become valued contributors to each student’s learning story.
“Our aides are an important part of our kids’ learning story.”
The Next Chapter: ARIS Digital
Looking ahead, Warren Consolidated is preparing for the district-wide rollout of the new ARIS Digital Platform in Fall 2025. This shift from inconsistent, handwritten notes to real-time digital data collection promises to:
- Standardize progress tracking across classrooms.
- Give supervisors instant access to student growth trends.
- Lighten teacher workloads while making data more actionable in IEP meetings, MTSS cycles, and parent conferences.
As Amanda put it, “We’re moving from 1999 to real-time visibility. I can sit down with a teacher, pull up the data, and know exactly how students are growing — consistently and comparably across the district.”
A Model for Sustainable Change
For Warren Consolidated, ARIS is no longer just a curriculum — it’s a Tier 3 transformation tool. It has helped the district:
- Move students out of Tier 3 when appropriate, with the data to support those decisions.
- Sustain staff capacity through shared ownership and consistent practices.
- Unite general and special education teams around a common process and language.
The Warren Consolidated story demonstrates what’s possible when schools combine a high-fidelity instructional system like ARIS with systemic alignment and collaborative monitoring: Tier 3 becomes not a final destination, but a launchpad for student growth.
