Looking at the Response to Intervention Framework

Looking at the Response to Intervention Framework
By Pete Christopherson

RtI, also known as Response to Intervention, is a school-wide academic and behavioral framework currently used in many school in the United States. The purpose of RtI is to use an evidence-based approach to effectively target the needs of all students in your school. RtI relies on a multi-tiered approach to instruction, and provides systematic and targeted interventions to students who are performing below grade-level.

Response to intervention is supported by more than 35 years of research, and when implemented correctly can be used as a replacement to the out-dated discrepancy model for student referral. It is also common to hear the discrepancy model referred to as "wait to fail." By this they mean that by the time we actually get around to addressing a student's needs, they are so far behind they have no where to go but the special education program. RtI hopes to avoid this approach by identifying those students who need support as early as possible, and using a targeted and systematic approach to aid them in reaching grade-level.

There are many components to the RtI program, but some of the most important include strong leadership, ongoing assessment, collaborative teaming, using an evidence-based curriculum and instruction, data-based decision making, fidelity, training and professional development opportunities, and community and family involvement. Each of these play a very important role to effectively implementing the response to intervention program in your school, and are pivotal to its success!

It is hard to say which of these categories is the most important, but if I had to choose a place to start I would probably look at fidelity to implementation first. Fidelity plays a major role to the RtI process, and is critical to ensuring that all students are receiving the best instruction possible. Fidelity starts in the classroom, where students receive the bulk of their instruction. Considering most kids spend the majority of their day in their primary classroom, doesn't it make sense to ensure that curricular fidelity is taking place there first? This means that all of the classroom teachers in your school are teaching a high quality, research-based curriculum, are following their programs correctly, and are collaborating across grade-levels. Once you are confident that all of this is in place, you can begin looking at the other areas necessary to implementing response to invervention.

The next component you may want to tackle is chosing a universal screener for assessing your students. This can be something like DIBELS Next, or EasyCBM. These programs provide a method for benchmark testing every student in your school three times a year, and then offer options for progress monitoring students who have been identified as needing additional supports. There is a ton of great information out there on choosing the best universal screeners, and I would encourage you to conduct your own research to determine which of these may be the best for you.

In my next article I hope to address some of the other components of RtI, and how they can be utilized to put you on the path towards implementation!

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