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Tiered Instruction and Intervention - General Questions

We have been doing intervention at an increasing level each year since 2005. Each year, we refine and extend. However, we have never developed an RTI Model that states clearly the entry and exit criteria, duration, etc. We know what we do and how we do it, but it is not stated formally on paper. Is there a sample or template for an RTI model that we could use to get started?


Response from Bob Heimbaugh:

The environment you have described in your question is typical in many schools.  Gearing up for RtI takes a lot of work.  Once the RtI framework is started in a school, it is hard to get all the components required for full implementation in place.  In the case of your school, a little tweaking will go a long way.  While a template for an RtI model will be helpful, the critical decisions you are looking for are specific to your school, your assessments, your interventions, your students and your teachers.  There are two critical questions that you need to answer:

  1. For your  norm referenced and valid screening, progress monitoring, and diagnostic assessments,  have cut scores been established by the test authors?
  2. When considering intensity and duration, review current progress monitoring data at your school to determine how and when current decisions about students are being made.  From that data, see if you can establish general decision patterns for screening data and for progress monitoring data for Tiers 2 and 3 that your school is currently demonstrating.  From that data, formalize the process as a school to be used at your collaborative team meetings.

There are two resources that will help you in your school discussions:

Both of these tools will guide your discussions and help you develop a protocol decision making document for your school based on research-based best instruction and valid assessment instrument
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