abstract: Schools are challenged to respond to the rise in student needs by offering more support for academics, behavior, and social-emotional needs. A Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) framework aims to support continuous school improvement for all students and provide robust interventions and programs to support students in multiple areas of education. Scholars report that while MTSS is increasingly adopted by schools as an improvement model, little is known about how well MTSS is implemented. Although implementation may vary from state to state and from district to district, understanding the challenges and anticipating barriers will support continued implementation. This study examined educators’ reports of MTSS implementation. Differences between elementary and secondary implementation and individual MTSS essential components implementation were also explored. Participants included nine administrators and 38 teachers in a rural school district in a subregion of the Great Plains of the United States. Educators reported moderate rates of implementation of the MTSS essential components. Significant differences in overall MTSS implementation scores were found between elementary and secondary respondents, with elementary participants reporting higher levels of implementation.

Reviewed by: Adapting to the Land: A History of Agriculture in Colorado by John F. Freeman with Mark E. Uchanski Pamela Krch Adapting to the Land: A History of Agriculture in Colorado. By John F. Freeman with Mark E. Uchanski. Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2022. ix + 277 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $44.00 cloth In spite of the region's lack of water and variable soils, the area we now know as Colorado has a lengthy and extensive history of agriculture, beginning with the Ancestral Puebloans' early efforts, reintroduction during the mid-19th century by farmers in the San Luis Valley, and the still flourishing, albeit challenged, statewide industry today. While farming and ranching methods have adapted over the centuries, sustainability of these extraordinarily fragile resources has continued as an ongoing theme for the state's agriculturalists. Here, historian John F. Freeman and horticultural scientist Mark E. Uchanski have combined their considerable expertise to argue that a reinvigorated focus on sustainability and an acknowledgment of the land's limitations offer Colorado, and the American West more generally, our best chance at a future that supports both this area's growing population and its farmers and ranchers. By looking at the trajectory of agriculture throughout Colorado—including the Eastern Plains, the Front Range, and the Western Slope—Freeman and Uchanski [End Page 135] trace a circular path from 19th-century beginnings that were by necessity dependent upon traditional methods working in harmony with the earth's limitations, such as crop rotation, natural soil amendments, and conservative water use, through the post–World War II more-equals-better embrace of chemical pesticides and herbicides, to today's turn toward organic farming. As well, employing a variety of sources including the records of county extension agents and experiment stations, they demonstrate the important roles that agricultural scientists, the federal government, and organizations such as the Farm Bureau and the Farmers Union have played in shaping Colorado's farming and ranching throughout the decades. Through their examination of New Deal policies of the 1930s Dust Bowl era, for example, the writers reveal a schizophrenic federal government that encouraged all-out food production during World War I and then, a decade later, essentially paid farmers not to grow crops or run livestock on soils exhausted by overplowing, overplanting, and overgrazing. The Dust Bowl, primarily affecting the state's southeastern plains, forced farmers and ranchers to work closely with extension service agents and to take advantage of President Roosevelt's relief programs in order to survive. By necessity, farmers returned to tried-and-true methods of revitalizing the soil and conserving water. While the area's agriculturalists enjoyed another economic uptick with the advent of World War II and benefited from the postwar glut of chemicals to amend soils and eradicate weeds and pests, the population boom beginning in the 1970s has proven as great a challenge as the Dust Bowl as farmers lose acreage and water rights to urban developers. It is only through good stewardship of the land, argue Freeman and Uchanski, that farmers will continue to thrive, combining advanced technology and age-old methods alongside a healthy respect for nature's limits. While Colorado historians will undoubtedly value this work, Freeman's and Uchanski's book will appeal to a wide range of readers, from backyard gardeners to environmental scientists and scholars of the American West and the Great Plains. As an Americanist primarily interested in the United States West, I found this monograph fascinating, particularly the discourse on new technologies and methodologies such as agrivoltaic farming (216–17). Although this is a minor point, I do feel that the book would have benefited from the inclusion of more maps. Unless one is very familiar with the geography of Colorado, the various counties and towns may prove difficult to immediately locate during a discussion of, say, Delta County onions or Palisade peaches. Overall, though, and in spite of this quibble, Freeman and Uchanski have produced a masterful narrative of Colorado agriculture that holds relevance for anyone interested in the state's history as well as our western landscape more generally. Pamela Krch Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences Colorado Mesa University Copyright...

The Perkins County Canal Anthony B. Schutz (bio), Michael Jess (bio), and J. David Aiken (bio) The South Platte River is one piece of Professor Wishart's Rainbelt. Its headwaters lie in the Rocky Mountains, extending from the continental divide through various tributaries coalescing into an appreciable river in the Denver area, as it moves north and east across Colorado to Nebraska, near Julesburg. From there, it flows through Nebraska to a confluence with the North Platte River, and the two form the Platte River (Fig. 1). The 1920s Compact Development As readers of Professor Wishart's work will be quick to realize, fortune and heartbreak in the Rainbelt have a long history. Those seeking to secure irrigation in the South Platte River Basin were those who remained after the decades depicted in Wishart's work. Was irrigation the rainmaker of the 1910s and 1920s (if not the much larger irrigation of the last eight decades), or was it the only durable answer to the lack of rainfall and the attendant financial and social consequences? The development of irrigation in the South Platte Basin leading up to the South Platte Compact involved surface-water diversions throughout the basin. By the time of the South Platte Compact in the early 1920s, disputes were brewing between Nebraska and Colorado, with Nebraska interests representing the Western Canal filing a lawsuit against Colorado diverters. That lawsuit served as a catalyst for an interstate compact, at a time when such agreements (often thought of as treaties) were just starting to come into use among states. Lawyer and Colorado state senator Delph Carpenter (Fig. 2) helped create the South Platte Compact around the same time as he was helping develop the historic agreement on the Colorado River. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. Basic map of the basin and its tributaries, along with cities. The context of the compact is important, and Carpenter provides that context in a report to Governor [End Page 99] Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Delph Carpenter. Photo courtesy of Carpenter (Delph E. and Family) Papers, Archives and Special Collections, Colorado State University. [End Page 100] Sweet in 1923 (Colorado River Commission 1925, 18–28). Importantly, irrigation development in the Colorado portion of the South Platte Basin had transformed the river. Before 1859, the river had roared with floods in the early spring and became dry during the summer months, when irrigation demand was highest in the eastern part of the basin. But as irrigation developed in the western parts of the basin, water infiltrated alluvial aquifers and resulted in "return flows" to the river. Those return flows persisted throughout the year, effectively storing and retiming the river's flow. Important studies of the hydrology of the basin, including those of Parshall and Hosea, informed compact negotiations. "The once 'disappearing' flood stream has been converted into one of constant flow making possible the development in both states" (Colorado River Commission 1925, 22). At the time of the compact, Carpenter noted that the South Platte "irrigates about 1,500,000 acres in Colorado, and furnishes the domestic, municipal and industrial supplies for Denver and other cities, towns and villages in northeastern Colorado" (Colorado River Commission 1925, 23). The future was uncertain, and development in Colorado and Nebraska could not proceed without a compact securing the states' rights: Colorado appropriators and users cannot finance the construction necessary to a more complete use of the waters in the face of adverse claims by Nebraska and her citizens. Nebraska cannot reclaim the arid lands in Perkins County without obtaining the privilege of constructing and operating the Perkins County canal, with its diversion and a considerable portion of its canal line in the State of Colorado. (Colorado River Commission 1925, 24) However, compact drafters seemed to have one thing they were all counting on for future development: increasing perennial flows, especially at the state line, attributable to storage and irrigation activities, especially in Colorado. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 3. Original Perkins County route—from LB 1012 Report (Zanjero 2022). Carpenter's reference to Nebraska's reclamation efforts encapsulates thirty years of work preceding his entrance. Irrigation...

Reviewed by: The Search for the First Americans: Science, Power, Politics by Robert V. Davis G. Richard Scott The Search for the First Americans: Science, Power, Politics. By Robert V. Davis. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. ix + 145 pp. Notes, bibliography. $45.00 cloth. Davis, a nonspecialist in the field of First American studies, breaks his book into three parts: (1) First American Theories, Myths, and Evidence, (2) First American Science, and (3) Community. Each part includes several chapters that cover a range of topics from American Indian creation myths and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to how archaeologists, linguists, bioanthropologists, and geneticists address the issue of First Americans. On several occasions, Davis quotes Jim Adovasio, who says the basic problem is "who the hell are these people, where did they come from, and when did they get here" (ix). Davis adds that "Although much has been documented, science is no closer today to finding an answer than at any time since the arrival of Columbus. In short, it has been a failed endeavor" (ix). I have many colleagues who would take umbrage with such a pessimistic view of progress in the search for the First Americans. A short review cannot do justice to the strides made in this endeavor, and these strides are in every field Davis discusses, from archaeology and linguistics to dental anthropology and genetics. Perhaps Davis is thinking there should be a dramatic paradigm shift like plate tectonics in geology. The impact of genomics on this problem comes close and may reach that status at some point. Davis focuses attention on the Clovis culture, with special reference to Blackwater Draw in New Mexico, and how the technology of this culture with its distinctive lanceolate fluted points evolved to serve as the bellwether of First Americans. Following in the footsteps of Paul Martin and Vance Haynes, a Clovis-first position developed in the 1960s and hardened over several decades. I have known and worked with Clovis-first archaeologists, but they are not wedded to the "fact" that the Clovis tradition represented the earliest peoples in the Americas. They are "wedded" to the position of "show me the evidence." For many early claims of pre-Clovis, the evidence was questionable, and many sites were dismissed as pre-Clovis. In recent times, things have changed—there are now sites most agree are pre-Clovis, so the "Clovis police" is shrinking. Moreover, many scholars who thought First Americans arrived via the Bering Land Bridge and then traversed an ice-free corridor through Canada now acknowledge that a maritime route is likely given the late opening of the corridor. Granted, I am a First American scientist, but I appreciate the space Davis devotes to American Indian creation myths. Unfortunately, some pit these creation myths against science, but that is not a position with which I am familiar. Most of us in the field are anthropologists, so we understand the nature of creation myths. They are a cultural universal that meets a human need to know how everything was created, including specific groups of humans. They have no empirical basis and cannot be falsified, and none of us are in the business of doing that. As a nonspecialist, Davis does a good job summing up alternative viewpoints on the question of First Americans. His sections on history are useful and enlightening but his treatment of First American science is dated. He discusses mtDNA and Y chromosome variation, but these have been supplanted by genomic studies that analyze thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms. The human footprints found at White Sands in New Mexico that are older than 20,000 years were reported after the book was published. I mention this because it adds another notch in the pre-Clovis belt [End Page 59] and generates a whole new set of questions on when and by what route the First Americans arrived in the "New World." For readers unfamiliar with the history of First American science and Native American creation myths, this book is a good starting point. Davis is to be commended for taking on such a thorny issue. It brings to the forefront the Native American position of...

During the spring of 2020, Nebraska's 983 public schools sat vacant, and Nebraska's 329,290 Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 students were learning in environments other than school. Educators were expected to pivot quickly from traditional classroom instruction to remote experiences. Understanding the effects of the pandemic on educators is necessary to effectively meet their needs and the needs of students. The purpose of this study was to identify and describe the experiences of Nebraska's urban and rural PreK–Grade 12 educators during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. In surveys collected in July 2020, participants (i.e., superintendents, principals, and teachers) completed both fixed-response items and one open-ended question that assessed experiences during the initial pandemic-related school closings. The results indicate educators identified lack of family help and inability to engage students as a top concern about student academic progress. Educators reported dramatic increases in stress during school closures. Many reported coping only somewhat well or worse. Educators also reported personal challenges with remote instruction, including mental health issues and blurred work- and home-life boundaries. Significant differences were found between rural and urban educators, as well as between elementary and secondary educators. Direct quotes from participants vividly describe their lived experiences.

Reviewed by: Clovis Mammoth Butcher: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology by L. Adrien Hannus Christopher W. Schmidt Clovis Mammoth Butcher: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology. By L. Adrien Hannus. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2018. ix + 243 pp. Illustrations, references cited, contributors, index. $60.00 cloth. The volume Clovis Mammoth Butcher: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology by L. Adrien Hannus provides a comprehensive analysis of Lange/Ferguson, a Great Plains Clovis–mammoth interaction site in South Dakota. The 13,000-year-old site yielded two butchered mammoths, although it remains unclear if they were hunted or scavenged. Hannus makes a compelling case that the Lange/Ferguson site, which also produced three Clovis points, has tools manufactured from the mammoth bones. The chapters follow an intuitive progression from site formation and paleoenvironmental reconstruction to detailed study of the material culture and mammoth remains. Several of the chapters are written by Hannus, who excavated the site, but other chapters are written by collaborators, many of whom are well known to Great Plains archaeologists. The first chapter provides a succinct and engaging overview of the site, the author’s 1980s excavations, and a summary of the excavated localities and strata. Chapter 2, by Grimm and Fredlund, explores the site’s pollen and phytolith assemblages. Their important contribution shows that, at the time of the butchery, the Lange/Ferguson site was dominated by spruce and deciduous forest which included at least one boreal species of shrub, wetland sedges, and grasses. Chapter 3, by Haynes, provides an exhaustive summary of the geochronology. Drawing from a sizable radiocarbon date sequence and extensive stratigraphic data, he determined the butchery area was a spring-fed wetland or pond that may have trapped the mammoths. Chapters 4 and 5, by Palacios-Fest and Leonard, respectively, investigate the site’s paleoecology and climate via diatoms, ostracodes, and mollusks. Palacois-Fest found the pond’s nature changed frequently over time. Leonard determined that the pond would have been marshy, and the area’s rainfall was likely greater and more widespread than today. Chapter 6, by Hannus, gives the reader a detailed overview of bone biology and taphonomy. It sets up the analysis of the mammoth bones in subsequent chapters. In chapter 7, Hannus notes the distribution of the mammoth bones is consistent with a low-energy aquatic environment. In chapter 8, Shipman uses scanning electron microscopy to determine if in fact the site had mammoth bone expediency tools. Using a variety of criteria, she determined the mammoth bones bear evidence of flake scars and usage. The next three chapters are all by Hannus. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss disarticulation and the butchery process, and chapter 11 provides critical analysis of the lithic and bone tools. Thorough and detailed in terms of analysis and interpretation, this chapter, along with Shipman’s, make the case that the Lange/Ferguson mammoth bones were used as tools. In chapter 12, Kay determines the Clovis points were used for mammoth butchery, reworked, and discarded. In my opinion, the heart of the volume consists of several late chapters dedicated to determining if the mammoth bone implements are actually human-made or simply the result of taphonomy. I found this book entrenched in data analysis and the case for mammoth bone tools soundly developed. Even those unconvinced by their arguments will surely agree Hannus and colleagues have adeptly crafted their case. The size and look of the book are pleasant, although in some instances the lighting on photos is less than optimal and the labels are small on some of the figures and tables. But these are minor distraction in a volume that is richly written, well researched, and generously illustrated. All told, this volume provides a valuable and [End Page 177] welcome addition to Great Plains archaeology and to the study of human–mammoth interaction sites. Christopher W. Schmidt Department of Anthropology University of Indianapolis Copyright © 2023 Center for Great Plains Studies