Outcomes of Equity-Based Multi-Tiered System of Support and Instructional Decision-Making for Autistic Students

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Your title suggests a focus on individuals with autism, whereas your abstract pertains to individuals with disabilities. Becuase your sample consists of individuals with autism, you need to direct your focus on individuals with autism in the second or third sentence of your abstract. 

p.1.17 Individuals with ADHD also face unique challenges. It can be challenging for both. Therefore, be careful with comparing. 

p.1.21 In what areas do they excel? And what academic areas are considered challenging?

p.1.32 "or" = and/or (for a more nuanced and complete view). 

p.2.41 You refer to staff. Later you refer to educators or teachers. Please keep this as consistent as possible. I am also wondering if you refer to special needs school/education or "regular" education. This has to be clarified. 

In section 1.2, you have added a space too much (see e.g., p.2.62). Please check the remainder of your manuscript as well. 

p.2.67 Behavioural challenges, such as? 

p.2.72-75 This requires a reference. 

p.2.76 I would say that this equity-based is an addition to the existing framework? You discuss as a completely new framework, which--how I read it--isn't the case.

p.2.81 You refer to a school culture, but later on in your work you refer to climate. Keep this as consistent as possible. 

p.2.85 I am wondering what kind of workload this gives to teachers. It is known they have a high workload and unfamiliarity with this framework might lead to more work. 

Research questions: you have closed-end questions. I advice against that (it is only common with replication studies). Can you rephrase these as open-ended questions?

p.5.205- Numbers up till twenty are completely written.

p.5.216 Structure the six main practices with (a), (b), (c). 

p.7.Figure1 I would use patterns instead of colours. In a similar vein, Figure 2 contains--under the lines--space that is redundant. You can start the y-axis higher to make the image larger. Figure 3 contain two shades of orange. Use more contrasting colours, or replaces the colours with patterns to make it easier to distinguish. You might want to take a look at your manuscript in greyscale to make sure the distinction between the colours is there. 

p.7.Table1 The N needs to be placed in italics. Also apply this to the remainder of your manuscript. You might want to replace a comma with a semicolon when you report on the ANOVAs. A semicolon is easier to spot than a comma, making the distinction between the statistics more pronounced.

p.8.Table2 The significance is the p-value. Write this down as such. Also write it with two decimal numbers, so it is consistent with the rest. Furthermore, the df and F-values need to be placed in italics.

p.9.355 Be careful with words such as "trends". You observed an increase in scores.

The biggest concern I have is about knowing that the majority of your sample is a English language learner, whilst not opting for a contorl variable measuring this. You could have controlled for this variable.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is a very well-written paper that demonstrates again the need for whole-school models of support for all students. In general, the writing and research was well explained and developed I have very little to comment on. The only part I needed to re-read several times was in 3.2.1. the first paragraph, it is confusing that you have written 100% of students were in mainstream classes in 2015-16 but that it is only 2 out of 2- whereas the previous year it was 13 out of 21-  I'm not sure how you have calculated the numbers here and that could use some clarification. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf