RTI
Featured FAQs
Question:
My daughter is reading below grade level and she is the second grade. I was told that her reading level will be a level L in June. Her peers will be on level N. She is receiving RTI. What is the difference between special education and RTI? How long doesAnswer:
RTI has three distinct levels of services: the general education program, small-group tutoring conducted using the resources and personnel available in general education, and more intensive tutoring usually conducted with the resources available in special education. So, special education is a level of services provided within an RTI prevention system.
Question:
I am a reading specialist and I teach in an elementary school. We began a 3-tier model of support last year. My question is about assessment. What assessments are the best cocktail for progress monitoring and benchmark assessment? We use DIBELS and CORE.Answer:
The Center on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (formerly the National Center on Response to Intervention) provides technical information on progress monitoring and screening assessments.
Question:
Responding to intervention has been prioritized in my district. How do I convince teachers that technology is an appropriate intervention tool?Answer:
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tiered approach to identifying and supporting struggling students. In this approach, all students receive the same high quality instruction and assessments. Students who do not respond to this instruction (as revealed by frequent in-class assessments) will then receive more targeted and intensive instruction. Students who continue to struggle will receive further interventions, possibly in the form of direct one-on-one instruction. For some students these tiered interventions may be enough to accelerate their learning and help them catch up with their peers. For others, their lack of response to the intervention may signal a need for an evaluation for special education services. Because data on each student is collected at every stage, much of this data can then be used to help determine the presence of a specific learning disability. Technology can play a key role in the response to intervention process, both as a means of assessment, and as a means of intervention. It might be helpful to check out the CITEd webinar on the Role of Technology in Response to Intervention. There are two national centers providing technical assistance to schools and districts, see the National Center on Response to Intervention and the RTI Action Network. A critical part of response to intervention is ongoing student assessment and progress monitoring, often through the use of curriculum-based measurement. This data can help teachers make decisions about student learning and identify areas of difficulty right away. A variety of progress monitoring tools are software based, allowing teachers to quickly assess individual students and keep track of student data. The relative ease of using technology to track, monitor and graph student assessment data may be an enticing benefit for teachers. It allows them to quickly determine student achievement and level without having to deal with data collection and recording themselves, leaving them more time to focus on teaching. The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring has a helpful chart of tools and the content areas they cover. Technology tools can also be used as a part of the intervention process with individual students. Students who are identified as needing extra help may benefit from the use of skill-building technology tools. The use of these tools can help teachers differentiate instruction, which can be especially helpful when students require extra help in a particular area. CITEd has an online module on differentiating instruction using technology that may be helpful; they also include a discussion forum and a number of helpful resources. The CITEd webinar on the same topic may also help teachers see how technology can assist in the teaching of different students at different levels. Each of these resources provides practical advice on using technology in the classroom to address the diverse needs of students. Once teachers are comfortable that technology is an appropriate intervention tool, you can direct them (or technology coordinators for your school) to the Tech Matrix to find tools that match specific student needs. Because evidence-based instruction is a critical component of RTI, be sure to check out the research support articles listed with each tool.Question:
What is RTI and what are the essential components that must be present for it to be implemented with fidelity?Answer:
A multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) is a proactive and preventative framework that integrates data and instruction to maximize student achievement and support students social, emotional, and behavior needs from a strengths-based perspective.
MTSS offers a framework for educators to engage in data-based decision making related to program improvement, high-quality instruction and intervention, social and emotional learning, and positive behavioral supports necessary to ensure positive outcomes for districts, schools, teachers, and students. Depending on state law, MTSS data may also support identification of students with learning or other disabilities.
The MTSS framework is comprised of four essential components: screening, progress monitoring, multi-level prevention system, and data-based decision. Learn more about each of the essential components of MTSS at the Center on Multi-Tiered System of Support.
Question:
What is the relationship between RTI and special education?Answer:
The relationship or what the relationship should be between RTI and special education is a very important issue. Some people believe that special education should have little role in RTI, others believe that special ed should have a predominate role in RTI. Some believe that special education's proper role or function should be sprinkled, if you will, across and among the RTI tiers so that special educators are working at tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 and so forth. Others believe that special educators should be only at the most intensive tier in an RTI system.
So, there's considerable confusion at the moment as to what special ed's proper role, function, set of responsibilities should be in an RTI system. What the professional role of the special educators should be in an RTI system. Importantly, a related concern or question is what constitutes most intensive instruction? States and districts and other stakeholders are relatively clear about what should go on at tier 1 and tier 2.
What general education can do to contribute to a well-functioning, high-performing RTI system. There's relative confusion, uncertainty as to what the nature of instruction should be for the children who are chronically unresponsive to tiers 1 and 2. What do we do for the kids, with the kids who are not responding to quote unquote best evidence practices and secondly who should deliver that most instructionally intensive treatments or interventions. So, I wish I could give you a clear, persuasive, consensual sense or opinion as to what special education's role should be but there really isn't a consensus at this point.
What would I personally like to see? I would personally like to see special educators providing most intensive instruction. Special educators don't exclusively need to be those providing that most intensive instruction, but I think that's in principle, that's what special educators role should be primarily. They should be working with kids who are the most instructionally needy children in a given school.
— Dr. Douglas Fuchs
Question:
Why is RTI an important strategy for addressing disproportionality of racial and language minorities in special education?Answer:
Disproportionality or the over and under representation of racial and language minorities in special education is an extension of the achievement gap in that we typically see high numbers of students of color, low-income students and English language learners in certain disability categories and we also see low numbers of these same groups when we look at indicators that are linked to academic success including gifted and talented programs, high school graduation, college enrollment and rates of proficiency on state achievement tests. So, similar to RTI, or Response to Intervention, it's important to view disproportionality in the context of what supports are available in general education and not just looking at it as a problem specific to special education.
RTI becomes very important for educators to use as a tool for addressing disproportionality because of its focus on data-based decision making. Starting with a district by district, school by school review of data on special education referrals and identification we can drill down and identify specific groups of students that are at the highest risk levels for being identified as having a disability. The goal then becomes to make sure that these students have access to coordinated early intervening supports that can prevent the escalation of learning or behavioral challenges.
Now the use of early intervening supports for high-risk students extends to other components of RTI that we consider to be essential. Screening and Progress Monitoring allow teachers to identify any learning or behavioral challenges while students are still in the regular classroom setting and they also allow them to modify or differentiate their core curriculum to focus on the identified areas for improvement. The use of tiered interventions is part of a multi-level prevention system, which is also an essential component, provides teachers with the instructional resources to respond to student learning or behavioral challenges in a regular ed setting. This system of support then becomes an alternative to a quick or unnecessary referral for special education evaluation.
Finally the use of tiered instructional interventions that are evidence-based and culturally responsive ensures that the RTI framework provides students with supports that are appropriate for their learning or behavioral needs. All of the resulting data on students response to instruction or to intervention then becomes useful data that can help identify those students who need additional support from special education. In this way we reduce the number of students that are inappropriately identified for special education and reserve that level of support for those students that need it most.
— Dr. Darren Woodruff, Principal Research Analyst at the American Institutes for Research
Question:
What role can a school psychologist have within an RTI framework?Answer:
I think that school psychologists are in a unique position and a really important position to help implement RTI at multiple levels. Because of their training, school psychologists tend to have a little bit more expertise in assessment and interventions, and how to look at data as far as reliability and validity when we're looking at collecting data with assessments as well as implementing interventions, it needs to be done with fidelity.
We also need to be picking appropriate assessments so all of that information is very important to look at and I think a school psychologist could contribute greatly to RTI efforts and being that person to examine that evidence and information. Then I also think that they also have some great training to help teachers and educators look at the data, so once they've identified specific assessments to use, sometimes you get bogged down in the numbers and information and school psychologists have that training to sift through that and look at the evidence and how students — individual students and groups of students — are responding to the instruction based on the data that's being collected.
They can be an additional set of eyes and ears and really help at those critical moments. Lots of times when schools and teachers get stuck at a point of — "What do I do next?", "What assessment should I be looking at giving?", "What intervention might be appropriate for this student or group of students?" — I think a school psychologist could really step in and help them look through that information, get through the research to find those evidence-based practices that are going to be potentially most beneficial to a larger group of students or a particular set of students, and really help them streamline and get through some of those difficult questions and points in the RTI process that I think are difficult and people get overwhelmed with. School psychologists can really contribute greatly to the whole process from the beginning to the end.
— Dr. Michelle Hosp, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Question:
How can I get teachers and staff to buy in to the RTI process?Answer:
Larry Summers is quoted as saying “in the history of man, nobody has ever washed a rental car.” The point of that quote is that without ownership school staff probably isn't going to buy in, 100%, to the RTI process. And without that ownership of the process they are much less likely to implement it well, and its much less likely therefore to be successful. And one way that we found to get teacher buy-in is to really ensure that all staff have an opportunity to voice their concerns about the process, and to express their concerns about the changes in their roles that they make counter as a result of implementing the RTI process.
We need to ensure that as schools shift from using data to make decisions about students, that the one component that is not lost is also getting the teacher's experience and knowledge base in their personal relationship with their student — not taking that part out of the equation. In other words, we want to respect what teachers bring to this process, and if we don't do that then you are not likely to get the level of buy-in and ownership of RTI that you probably need in order for it to work well.
— Dr. Evelyn Johnson, Boise State University
Question:
We hear a lot about fidelity of implementation when talking about RTI. What does this really mean?Answer:
Fidelity of implementation, I think can best be explained this way. RTI, the people who first promoted RTI, were very much interested — and I think rightly interested — in promoting best evidence practices in schools. Promoting the idea that teachers and ancillary personnel should be using research backed or research validated instruction. When I say research backed instruction I mean instruction that was developed through a process, usually directed by researchers, a very carefully conceptualized and operationalized process of instruction to determine its effects on student performance.
As someone who has developed instructional programs I know that this process is often iterative, it's sometimes trial and error, you work very hard, you try to develop programs, and you find out that they don't work, you go back to the drawing board, you try again, and over time you develop a program, an explicit, carefully delineated program that through research you can say that if this program is implemented as the researcher implemented it you can expect X, Y, or Z student outcomes. The researchers then share these instructional programs with practitioners and they should be saying to practitioners, "Look, this is how we developed the program, this is the program. If you deliver the program the way we have detailed it, it's a good bet that you will get results as we did." So what we're really saying is, we're encouraging fidelity of treatment implementation, meaning we're encouraging you to implement our program the way we implemented it when we validated it. Importantly, this doesn't mean that practitioners can't take a validated instructional program, customize it to their own students and circumstances and do better and have their children do even better than the children who participated in our research. But it's also possible that if they customize it, change it in some fashion, their students could also do worse.
The point is, we don't know. When practitioners take validated programs and customize them, change them, we simply don't know what the effects of those changes will be on students. So, I suppose you could say a prudent course of action would be to take a researcher's validated program of instruction, use it as closely as possible to or as in similar a fashion as possible to the way the researcher did and then over time customize it, change it. See if you can tweak it in ways that make sense to the practitioner given considerations of students — types of students — that are involved and school systems and policies and so forth. As long as you continue to take data on children, you can determine whether the tweaking, the customizing, enhances or diminishes the effectiveness of the validated program.
— Dr. Douglas Fuchs
Question:
What role do parents play in the RTI process, including when do they become involved, are they on the decision making team, and where can they learn more about RTI?Answer:
First, an observation: we conducted a national study involving some 60 elementary schools and their implementation of RTI. Those parents were uniformly complementary about the improvement in their children's education as part of RTI. They gave examples such as, well, they felt like they were more aware of what was happening in the schools, they felt like there was better communication among the school's staff and with them about the activities involving their youngster — their youngster's progress, and they felt like they were more connected to that academic program with more engagement. Which in turn, was translated into the students feeling like they were more engaged in school as well. Parent involvement in planning of RTI, that seemed to be another part of your question, that is, how do we involve.
My hunch is I'd want to involve parents very early as my district and as my school are moving to implementation, because I want to hear the parental concerns. What are those concerns about our current delivery of education that parents would like to see improved? Parents can be involved in helping us develop the language around response to intervention because heaven knows screening and progress monitoring and tiered levels of services may not be too familiar with most parents. Parents also are important for building the support for the change, the system enhancement that's going to be part of RTI. I can think of four studies that linked parent involvement to the school's effectiveness in implementing a reform and I can think of one study that linked the lack of parental support and that reform effort's failure to get implemented or to be sustained in the schools. If you stop and ask yourself, "How many bond issues do we get passed without parental support?" you think, "I don't know of any where that played out," so parents do have an important role in that development of that RTI model.
When it comes to that planning and working for implementation, when would I involve the parents? More formally, after we've got the RTI model implemented, well, parents are going to choose to be involved in varying levels, but as a school person I'd encourage parents to be involved as we look at the results of our screening whether we're screening annually, or maybe even three times a year, when we're looking at those academic benchmarks that would indicate how well a youngster is performing in class and then when we're conducting the progress monitoring so that students who are part of more intensive interventions will have their progress monitored, or will conduct those formative assessments to inform us how well that intervention is working. And I'd certainly want to involve them as well when we consider next steps. That is, what do we think of as being an appropriate placement for a youngster? Whether that's maintaining the current placement or current level of performance in a tier or changing that.
One of the resources that parents might find helpful is a booklet we prepared a couple years back called "The ABCs of RTI for Parents." This short booklet is available free, it gives parents a description of RTI and includes the description of those components of RTI such as screening and progress monitoring but also includes questions that parents might bring to a school staff when you're reviewing the results of screening or progress monitoring or a student's participation in different tiers or levels of services so that they get a better sense of dialog about their child's participation within the school. Another advantage of the booklet is that it helps educators understand what the expectations are from a parent's perspective, this helps you explain roles and responsibilities of what those expectations might be as well as an opportunity for the school staff to describe the procedures, that is, share with them about the workings — the steps — of RTI within the school. A different document that's available from the National Center on Learning Disabilities is called "A Parent's Guide to RTI," this booklet is also available free of charge, it can be downloaded from the internet, and provides another view — a little different framework — about implementation of RTI and how a parent might be involved in that implementation as well. The booklet is a good resource for parents as they consider the schools implementation of RTI framework.
— Dr. Daryl Mellard, University of Kansas
Question:
Responding to intervention has been prioritized in my district. How do I convince teachers that technology is an appropriate intervention tool?Answer:
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tiered approach to identifying and supporting struggling students. In this approach, all students receive the same high quality instruction and assessments. Students who do not respond to this instruction (as revealed by frequent in-class assessments) will then receive more targeted and intensive instruction. Students who continue to struggle will receive further interventions, possibly in the form of direct one-on-one instruction.
For some students these tiered interventions may be enough to accelerate their learning and help them catch up with their peers. For others, their lack of response to the intervention may signal a need for an evaluation for special education services. Because data on each student is collected at every stage, much of this data can then be used to help determine the presence of a specific learning disability.
Technology can play a key role in the response to intervention process, both as a means of assessment, and as a means of intervention. It might be helpful to check out the CITEd webinar on the Role of Technology in Response to Intervention. There are two national centers providing technical assistance to schools and districts, see the National Center on Response to Intervention and the RTI Action Network.
A critical part of response to intervention is ongoing student assessment and progress monitoring, often through the use of curriculum-based measurement. This data can help teachers make decisions about student learning and identify areas of difficulty right away. A variety of progress monitoring tools are software based, allowing teachers to quickly assess individual students and keep track of student data.
The relative ease of using technology to track, monitor and graph student assessment data may be an enticing benefit for teachers. It allows them to quickly determine student achievement and level without having to deal with data collection and recording themselves, leaving them more time to focus on teaching. The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring has a helpful chart of tools and the content areas they cover.
Technology tools can also be used as a part of the intervention process with individual students. Students who are identified as needing extra help may benefit from the use of skill-building technology tools. The use of these tools can help teachers differentiate instruction, which can be especially helpful when students require extra help in a particular area.
CITEd has an online module on differentiating instruction using technology that may be helpful; they also include a discussion forum and a number of helpful resources. The CITEd webinar on the same topic may also help teachers see how technology can assist in the teaching of different students at different levels. Each of these resources provides practical advice on using technology in the classroom to address the diverse needs of students.
Once teachers are comfortable that technology is an appropriate intervention tool, you can direct them (or technology coordinators for your school) to the Tech Matrix to find tools that match specific student needs. Because evidence-based instruction is a critical component of RTI, be sure to check out the research support articles listed with each tool.
