The One-Stop Guide to Implementing RTI

Academic and Behavioral Interventions, K-12

Maryln S. Appelbaum

• Publisher: Corwin
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781452295992
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Evaluation & Assessment in Education

Use this nuts-and-bolts guide to implement RTI schoolwide and help all your students succeed!

Concise and reader-friendly, this resource walks administrators and teachers through the complete process of implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) in classrooms and schoolwide. Packed with how-to’s and reproduciblesfor instruction and developing collaborative teams, this book provides more than 100 easy-to-use academic and behavioral interventions andincludes information on:

• Progress monitoring and universal screening basics
• Current research and examples of tiered instruction in action
• Clearly defined team responsibilities
• Techniques for differentiating instruction
• Research-based interventions for literacy and mathematics
• Data collection, fidelity of implementation, and professional development

Response to Intervention (RTI)	1
The Major Shift in Education

RTI has the potential to revolutionize education so that no child really ever falls behind.

—Maryln Appelbaum

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Throughout the years there have been many innovations in education; however, I believe none can compare to Response to Intervention (RTI). RTI has the potential to totally transform the face of education. When I do seminars all over the country, I hear over and over again statements like, “Students can’t sit still anymore,” “I have to play the part of policeman,” “I have more students than ever before who are defiant and disinterested,” and “Students today just don’t learn like they used to.” Educators are complaining. They tell me they want to be able to reach students so they can learn. RTI is the process that will help this happen.

RTI started with the reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 2004 (Bradley, Danielson, & Doolittle, 2007). Up until this law was passed, students with learning disabilities were generally first identified using the “discrepancy model.” If there was a discrepancy between a student’s IQ and the student’s achievement, this was cause for alarm. Often this discrepancy was not found until the student had been in school for several grades.

This discrepancy model for learning disabilities (LD) evaluation led to misidentifying students with LD (Harry & Klingner, 2007). A student with a higher IQ who had insufficient knowledge of English would often score lower on achievement tests. Students who had a hard time focusing, students who were unmotivated, and students with limited vocabularies were also at risk of being identified as learning disabled because of their low achievement scores.

The reauthorized IDEA changed all of this. The discrepancy model was not forgotten, but now there was new wording—wording that spoke about using a process to help students through scientific research-based interventions as part of an evaluation procedure (Wedl, 2005). The reauthorized act now said that to determine a Learning Disability the local education agency did not need to take into consideration a discrepancy between achievement and intellectual ability (IDEA, 2004). Now local education agencies (LEAs) could adopt alternative models of identification (Wedl, 2005).

OUT WITH THE OLD—THE DISCREPANCY MODEL

Can you remember starting kindergarten? There was probably some fear, and yet there was a feeling of being grown up and a hope for the future. Students with learning disabilities start school alongside their peers with that same fear and hope. But then something happens along the way. The students with learning disabilities begin to struggle. Their teachers in kindergarten and the early grades may notice something is wrong, but usually nothing is done until third or fourth grade (Fletcher, Coulter, Reschly, & Vaughn, 2004). That is when students take tests. Their scores from IQ tests do not match up with achievement test scores. Now these students are noticed and referred for testing. After extensive and expensive testing, many of these students are often diagnosed as having learning disabilities and are referred for special education. This was the process and is still the process in many schools.

It is a “wait to fail” model because it relies on academic failure to trigger the need for help. Valuable years in which students could have been helped earlier have been lost. The saddest part is that because it took so long to get help, many students have established patterns of thinking they cannot learn. They develop learned hopelessness (Firmin, Hwang, & Copella, 2004). It takes a lot of hard work by faculty members to convince these students that there are ways to succeed. Some students have gone on like this even longer. They completed elementary school, middle school, and high school undetected. Their teachers thought they were lazy, unmotivated, and disinterested. They often developed negative behaviors to cover up their fear of failure. They would rather have their teachers and peers think of them as “bad” than as “dumb.”

RTI changes all of this. The RTI process is designed to help all children succeed, to catch students early if they have problems, and to teach in a scientifically research-based method to ensure success for all learners.

IN WITH THE NEW—THE RTI PROCESS

RTI is a step-by-step tiered process that includes systematic, research-based instruction and interventions for struggling learners. It starts in kindergarten (and in some cases, preschool) and continues through the grade levels to ensure that no child falls behind. The first tiers of the process all take place in the general education classroom with the general education teacher (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2007). It is a safe and familiar setting for students.

It is a process of providing testing to determine if students need help, the intervention, and then further testing to ensure the interventions are working (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2007). The instruction and interventions are matched to the needs of students. It is designed to be an early intervention process to prevent long-term academic failure and to help children adapt to the general education classroom.

The RTI process has two completely different aspects. There is Academic RTI, which is designed to help students with academic difficulties succeed, and there is also Behavioral RTI, sometimes called Behavioral PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention Supports) (Fairbanks, Sugai, & Guardino, 2007).

Figure 1.1 Response to Intervention

UNIVERSAL SCREENING

The RTI process begins with universal screening of all students (Mellard & Johnson, 2008). The purpose of universal screening is to determine which students need help. RTI cannot begin without this screening. It lays the groundwork for the entire process. It is recommended that it take place at the beginning of the school year, and be repeated again in the winter and spring.

All students in the district are assessed. Each district chooses its own screening instruments for measuring both academics and behavior. There are screening tools that are for entire groups of students, and there are other screening instruments that are administered to individual students. The testing needs to be brief, easy to administer, reliable, and valid. The ideal universal screening is research-based. Many districts use Curriculum-Based Measurement (CBM) for academic screening (Shinn, 2007). Using CBM, the teacher gives students timed short probes of academic material in reading, writing, or math taken from the school curriculum. CBM has the advantage of being tied into the individual district’s curriculum. Behavioral RTI requires different universal screening. One research-based instrument schools have used is Systematic Screening for Behavior Disorders (SSBD).

Universal screening instruments need to satisfy several important criteria. As stated before, it needs to be efficient, which means it cannot be too time consuming or expensive. Administering and scoring the instrument needs to be short and accurate. This requires that the data is not difficult to interpret.

Another important criteria is that it needs to be a good instrument for classifying students at risk or not at risk in whatever area is being screened. It must also determine cut scores to be used. Cut scores are cut points that represent the dividing line between students who are not at risk and students who are potentially at risk (Mellard & Johnson, 2008).

Screening instruments may be criterion-based or norm-based (Aviles, 2001). Criterion-based instruments show a level of proficiency on the skill being measured, such as reading. The criterion referenced is to a standard rather than to the achievement of other students. Normative referenced screening compares results to other similar peer groups. For example, students in a class in a grade level may be compared to peers in the same grade level. Criterion-based screening instruments are generally preferred because they are thought to give more comprehensive and accurate information about specific skills.

Ideally there would be more than one instrument used for screening. A battery of screening instruments would enhance the accuracy of the screening (Jenkins & O’Connor, 2002). When teachers rate the behavior and attentiveness of students, this too enhances accuracy (Davis, Lindo, & Compton, 2007). In addition, the instrument used would match the instruments used for monitoring progress of students.

I would like very much to tell you about a specific Web site that organizes all of the universal screening instruments, describing the research that has been done on them. However, at the time of this writing, there was no specific Web site available. The main reason for this is that research is still in progress. This is especially true in secondary schools. Many secondary schools have opted to use the state standardized test scores for the basis of their academic universal screening. Some combine this with attendance, previous grades, and teacher rating scales. There are several excellent sources listed in the back of this book, including the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities, the National Center on Response to Intervention, and the RTI Action Network, that will hopefully soon have information for referrals. More information and new Web sites are continually added to keep up to date with research to meet the needs of implementing RTI.

Universal screening is an important part of the RTI process. It is a comprehensive method for knowing where students stand. Once you know where they stand, you can help them. Now you can tier instruction.

TIER 1

RTI is usually described using a triangle that has three layers (Batsche, 2005). The bottom layer is Tier 1 for both academics and behavior management. This is where students are identified as needing help after the universal screening. Typically, eighty to ninety percent of students are learning fine and can continue to be taught in the regular prescribed manner. The other ten to twenty percent of students are identified as being at risk and need academic or behavioral interventions or both. These numbers can vary within school districts with some numbers being larger and some numbers being smaller. The students who need extra help (interventions) are all taught within the general education classroom using research-based interventions (Batsche, 2005). Research-based interventions are those interventions that have been validated through scientific studies.

The interventions need to be targeted to the areas that students need help with. For example, if a student needs help with reading, writing, or math fluency, the intervention needs to be designed to help the student. If the student needs help with behavior management, the intervention needs to be designed to help.

Each school has an RTI team that collaborates on interventions (Wright, 2007). The team meets and looks at data from universal screening as well as other data from the classroom teacher. After studying the data, the team, together with the general education teacher, decides on interventions for the general education teacher to make within the classroom.

Figure 1.2 RTI Tiers

The General Education Teacher

One of the most important team members is the general education teacher (Daly, Martens, Barnet, Witt, & Olson, 2007). The general education teacher has a huge responsibility. It is the general education teacher who will be implementing the Tier 1 interventions and, in some cases, the Tier 2 interventions too (Johnson, Mellard, Fuchs, & McKnight, 2006). In order to do this, instruction for students needs to be in small groups. This is more easily accomplished through differentiated instruction. (Chapter 7 has information on how to differentiate instruction.)

It is the general education teacher that identifies students who need attention to the RTI team, establishes relationships with students, and then monitors and tracks data to determine if individual progress is being made. This is all accomplished at the same time while providing quality instruction to the rest of the class. The general education teacher is on the forefront for implementing RTI.

The Special Education Teacher

Special education teachers play an important part in the implementation of RTI as well. They have the rich experience and information needed to help design the interventions necessary for the student, and in many states, this is part of their responsibility (Johnson et al., 2006). In some districts they also help decide and/or develop measurement instruments and help collect assessment data. It is the job of special education teachers and specialists to collaborate with general education teachers to ensure the interventions are implemented correctly and with fidelity. The special education teacher is very much involved in helping students and serves as a valuable resource for general education teachers. In cases where students have not progressed satisfactorily in the first tiers, the special education teacher is generally very involved in writing and helping to implement Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) for students.

Progress Monitoring

In order to know if the interventions are effective, the progress of the students needs to be continuously monitored (Johnson et al., 2006). Interventions are only as good as the progress that is seen in students. An intervention that works for one student is not necessarily the best one for another student. Progress monitoring involves using scientifically based assessments to determine efficacy of the interventions. It begins in Tier 1 and occurs in all tiers of instruction (Mellard & Johnson, 2008).

There are two components of RTI: academic and behavior. For academic RTI, it is best if progress monitoring assesses the specific skills that are found in state and local academic standards that are therefore part of the academic content (Johnson et al., 2006). Behavioral RTI also needs to meet the behavioral objectives of the school and district. Both academic and behavioral progress monitoring needs to be relevant to the creation and use of instructional strategies that students need (National Association of State Directors of Special Education, 2005). The end result for both academic and behavioral RTI needs to be teacher-friendly so that it is easy to interpret. All progress monitoring needs to be predictive and demonstrate longitudinally what will happen in the future. It needs to be applicable to the instructional strategies that are being used to correct deficits and able to be administered repeatedly and efficiently to students over a period of time.

Ideally the instrument used for progress monitoring should match the instrument used for universal screening; however, this is not always the case. At the back o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Response to Intervention (RTI): The Major Shift in Education
• Chapter 2. Framework for RTI Collaboration and Teamwork
• Chapter 3. Academic Interventions: Literacy and Math
• Chapter 4. Academic Interventions to Improve Learning in All Subject Areas
• Chapter 5. Differentiating Instruction
• Chapter 6. Positive Behavior Intervention and Support
• Chapter 7. Antecedent Interventions
• Chapter 8. Alternative Skill Interventions
• Conclusion
• Resources
• References
• Index