How does response to intervention work

RTI is effective for lots of reasons. For one, it can help more kids thrive in general education classrooms. It can also help schools save special education resources for kids who truly need them. Through the RTI process, they can make progress without special education services. Students continue to get their core instruction in the general education classroom with their peers. Students can start to get extra help before falling so far behind that they have to go to summer school or repeat a grade.

But it might not be provided as extensively or as systematically as it would in a school that uses RTI. All the school needs to tell families about RTI is:. But many schools provide much more information. In fact, some schools are already in the habit of giving parents a written intervention plan. It might include:. A description of the skills the child struggles with, and documentation about these challenges, like assessment results or work samples.

Details about how often the intervention will be provided and for what length of time — how many minutes per day over how many weeks. Get answers to other common questions about RTI. Requesting a written intervention plan can help you take an active role in RTI. But there are other ways you can be involved in the process:.

Remember that RTI is a fluid process. At any time during the school year, you can talk to the teacher and find out which interventions are available to help your child. Ask the school for more information about the intervention your child is receiving, like which studies show it is effective. Give the intervention time to work. Remember that you can make this request at any time. Together, the RTI team and parent s determine what is best for the student. This process involves collaboration, so keep a paper trail of communications to ensure proper follow through.

Utilizing email is ideal because it timestamps and dates important exchanges. Timelines are important in this process because public schools have 30 days from the time of your request to hold a meeting, and a total of 60 days to complete the process of determining if a student is eligible for a or an IEP. Interventions and accommodations are extra effort for the school to put forth, so they want to make sure that it is necessary and appropriate to proceed with the RTI process.

A body of evidence includes a variety of things. RTI uses a three-tiered model to allocate resources where they are most effective. For the sake of illustration, RTI can be thought of as a pyramid with three levels of interventions.

This assessment or progress monitoring is used to inform instruction at each tier and to identify in a timely fashion the increasingly intense level of instruction a student needs. The base of the pyramid, or Tier 1, represents core instruction all students should have equitable access to. Typically, we want percent of students successfully learning the core curriculum.

Strategic instruction is provided to students who display poor response to group instructional procedures used in Tier 1. Tier 2 instruction is in addition to the Tier 1 core instruction. Tier 3 typically includes use of a different program or instruction from Tier 1 or 2 because those data show students are not making progress given previously tried interventions.

A note of caution: Tier 3 is not simply special education. Rather, it is where interventions are tailored to likely include long-term intensive instruction that may or may not include special education services. For example, a student whose diminished performance is the result of lack of instruction may need to be provided ongoing, intensive instruction delivered in more substantial blocks of time to help him or her catch up to peers. Another example might include a student whose performance problems are directly related to limited English proficiency.

Again, the student may need a longer-term set of interventions that do not include special education. Putnam Jr. Three years of running a response to intervention project in Oregon has taught us much about what factors affect successes and disappointments. In both Long Beach and the Portland Public Schools, we started by examining the success of students in core instruction. If you find when looking at your data that 50 percent of students are not at proficiency in Tier 1, or core instruction, you do not simply put these students in Tier 2 interventions.

You must go back and examine the instruction in your core. If you have high rates of students referred for special education or in special education, you must look at core instruction and ask: Is it the instruction or is it the student?

The problem-solving model provides educators a consistent step-by-step process to identify problems, develop interventions and evaluate the effectiveness of those interventions. It is important to ensure all factors curriculum, effective instruction, school and classroom environment have been examined prior to assuming that student factors or disability are responsible for student performance.

The problem-solving process occurs within each tier of the pyramid. The overarching format for these assessments is curriculum-based assessment. These procedures have a year history and have been used across curriculum areas and grade levels. These assessments share several characteristics. Curriculum-based measurements or formative assessments are administered frequently and are more closely aligned to day-to-day instruction. They help teachers answer two key questions: What to teach and how to teach.

State assessments that students take regularly are not sensitive to daily instruction and serve an entirely different purpose. That is, they set out to determine, for example, how all 4th graders or 10th graders are performing on a large scale across a state.

Secondary Levels Some think that because there is little research at the middle or high school levels that RTI is not valid in the secondary level. This is not so. The principles and components of RTI are the same at all grade levels. The challenge in secondary schools involves identifying the multiple measures or universal screens you will use to decide which students need more intensive instruction or intervention.

As the teacher collects and studies data for all students, decisions will be made about moving students to more intensive small group teaching as needed Tier 2. You should be informed of the progress your child is making—data which is collected via progress monitoring. Progress monitoring is a key part of the RTI process. If your child has been identified as a struggling learner and is receiving targeted help, the teacher will assess skills weekly or every other week and keep notes about how your child is doing.

Read more about how RTI monitors progress. Research-based instruction is another important element of the RTI process. The idea is for teachers to use a program or intervention that has been proven to work with a specific group of children. Different researchers have studied the program or method, found it to be effective and published the results.

RTI is not a replacement for special education. Schools are only required to let you know your child is participating in RTI and that you have a right to request an evaluation at any time.

Some states have regulations that require schools to let you know which interventions the school is using to help your child, how progress monitoring works and under what circumstances your child will be given additional support.

A written plan is a not a requirement of RTI. However, some schools provide one as a way to keep parents involved. A written plan may include details about how the school is planning to help your child, especially during Tier 2 and Tier 3.

An intervention plan might include:.