RTI Action Network

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Over-Representation: Refers to over representation of students in specific disability-related categories that is above state and national averages. More »

Voices From the Field

"If you don't have data you believe in, look for ways to gather data you can use. Once you are confident in the data, look at how you can best use the resources you currently have in place." [Read full story »]

— Brian Miller, Principal, IA

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Ask the Experts

Why should we undertake Response to Intervention (RTI) when we already have several other initiatives going on in our district?

Response from Ann Casey, Ph.D.: RTI is a framework that could be used as an organizing tool for all of our work in education. The main intent of RTI is to ensure students receive targeted instruction early so all students can be successful. In RTI, we integrate measurement/data systems to focus instruction by using a problem solving process. These components are the framework...[read full response]

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RTI is For Tier 3, Too

Results 1 - 5 of 7

Posted by John Humphries, on April 22, 2008

Dave:
Thanks for an excellent article. Always interesting to listen/read your work. You raise an interesting issue, "...continue participating in core reading instruction to the extent appropriate..."

This seems to be an issue that has become surrounded by some dogmatic thinking. Could you expound about how schools make the decision about what is appropriate in the general ed classroom?
Thanks,

Posted by John Humphries, on April 22, 2008

Dave--do you see running records providing at least a part of the necessary data for instructional alignment at Tier III? You write, "we’ll do assessments looking at things like word reading, phonics, oral language vocabulary, monitoring meaning while reading, making inferences, literal understanding and the list goes on." What types of assessments do you use in this arena?

Some psychs are getting beat up in the field on this issue, and their reading folks are very concenred that they won't have a role in an RtI system.

Posted by David Tilly, on April 22, 2008

I know what you mean about the General Education instruction thing. We know pretty clearly that students with significant learning challenges need MORE instruction, not less. However, given schedules and historical structures in schools, our most frequent response to reading problems has been to pull kids out of general education reading instruction to give them different reading instruction, often in different skills in different curricula. Most kids can benefit from some parts of the Core, and many of them should if we are to ever have a chance of catching them back up and reintegrating.

Posted by Christine Miller, on April 23, 2008

The world of education is an ever changing world, as it should be. RR teachers have been the greatest resource for RTI. Teaching individual students and small groups has been the model we have implemented with first grade. No funds from general budget will be used to support grant programs next year. So RR teachers are cut. My fear is that title funds will be used for remediation and training instructional assistants. We will be putting the needs of these at-risk students into the hands of caring, but unqualified personnel and cutting the highly skilled and trained teachers. Make sense?

Posted by Dave Tilly, on April 27, 2008

I share you concern that students may be subjected to less than effective instruction. In some cases, it seems like the most in-need students are taught by our least experienced folks. I am also sensitive to the issue of budget cuts and priorities. One strategy I have found powerful is to continue monitoring students progress when policy-based instructional changes are made. We can treat these changes as different phases in a single-case research design. If we make changes that result in poorer student progress, we can use the data to argue for a return to more effective instruction.

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