Recommendations Don't Implement Themselves
As part of our work with schools, BHII helps districts make sense of their data and use it to guide improvement. Recently, a district asked us to help plan a meeting where school administrators would review fidelity results for their multi-tiered systems of support for behavioral health (MTSS-B) and decide how to move the work forward.
We reviewed the district- and school-level results, looked for strengths and challenges that showed up across schools, and organized the recurring findings into district-wide themes with slides to guide the discussion. Two stood out: using data more consistently to guide intervention decisions, and bringing greater consistency to how Advanced Tier behavioral health supports are delivered and monitored.
We suggested administrators weigh each theme on two questions: how much improvement in that area would matter, and how feasible progress was right now. Each administrator would rate the themes independently, then compare responses, with themes rated highly on both impact and feasibility emerging as the strongest candidates for shared priorities.
The two themes presented different trade-offs. Improving data use could influence decisions across the whole system but require changes to established progress-monitoring routines. Strengthening Advanced Tier practices could provide more consistent support for students but require changes to how interventions are selected, delivered, and documented.
Once the group identified one or two priorities, we suggested that the conversation shift to what was getting in the way and where schools were already succeeding. The meeting was designed to send administrators back to their schools with shared priorities and a clearer focus for action planning.
We provided the themes, slides, and suggested process, but we did not facilitate the meeting, and we never learned how the materials were used. The materials were offered as a resource, and district leaders had their own priorities and sense of how to spend their time. But the experience illustrates the limit of the traditional handoff: delivering a recommendation does not ensure it will be understood, used, or implemented.
When evaluators hand over a process, we give up control over how it is used. My view is that recommendations that depend on discussion, prioritization, or collective decision-making rarely take hold through materials alone. A thoughtful process handed off and left alone tends to stay on the slide deck. Facilitating the conversation does not mean owning implementation; it means staying involved long enough to help the process take hold. Partners should still have room to adapt guidance to their own context. The handoff should be clear from the start about who owns the next steps, which parts are essential, which can be adapted, and how the evaluator will learn what happened.
A carefully designed agenda or set of materials may be enough when a partner has the capacity and ownership to put the guidance into practice. In other cases, the handoff needs more support: coaching a partner facilitator, developing more detailed guidance, joining the first conversation, or scheduling a brief follow-up focused on what was useful and what should change. The specific support will depend on the partner and the context. A recommendation is not fully delivered when the email is sent.
Dylan Gatta is an Evaluator at the Behavioral Health Improvement Institute (BHII) at Keene State College.
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