Since , researchers have made good progress in developing a second generation of reading passages that rely on state-of-the-art equating methods. This is illustrated by Vaughn and Fletcher , who organized passages, based on a Lexile text measure of word frequency and sentence length Lexile Framework, , into 10 sets of five expository and five narrative texts.
They then equated passages to control for form effects see Francis et al. Results showed that equating is needed to deal with form effects but that difficulty level has less impact at middle than elementary school. Such information helps RTI implementers as they struggle to operationalize responsiveness. It is important to note, however, that this line of work does not speak to the issue of ongoing progress monitoring for formulating predictions before the end of the school year, for which additional research is required to assess the contribution of slope.
It also does not speak to the need for slope in helping teachers recognize, before the end of the school year, when high-risk students are failing to respond to the present instructional intervention and how to optimize timing of instructional adjustments.
A research program of randomized control trials see D. Therefore, additional research is needed to understand optimal data collection and decision-making rules within the context of ongoing progress monitoring for such formative development of instructional programs. All in all, there has been more research in screening than in progress monitoring over the past decade. This may be the case because screening research is easier to conduct.
In fact, over the past decade, screening research has relied heavily although not entirely on extant databases available through schools, districts, or states. In any case, screening research is less costly and logistically easier because it requires fewer measurements than progress-monitoring studies.
A decade after progress monitoring was deemed an essential component of RTI, pressing questions remain about how to enhance its feasibility for routine implementation, how to ensure adequate technical features, and how to use the resulting data to optimize RTI decision making. When considering instruction for students with LD, providing appropriate remediation i.
Yet core classroom instruction i. Research suggests that well-implemented and effective classroom-based instruction leads to fewer students requiring intervention initially and over time D.
It is important to note, however, that the vast majority of studies documenting improvements from implementing Tier 1 approaches have been conducted at the primary grades e. Incorporating effective instructional practices in the general education classroom with the goal of promoting reading, writing, and math outcomes for students representing a range of learning challenges has been a focus of special education since the category of LD was recognized by the federal government in the early s.
Special education has participated in initiatives such as RTI as a means of enhancing overall screening, ongoing assessment, and instructional decision making for all students—recognizing that implementation of these practices should benefit students at risk and with disabilities who spend considerable instructional time in general education.
But just how classroom teachers can or should do this has proved challenging. This seemingly obvious form of instructional differentiation is complex and requires extensive knowledge of reading instruction as well as classroom management. Fulfilling the need for differentiated instruction at the classroom level is often beyond the skill set of even the most proficient teachers.
Even so, tools for making this task easier are available through classwide peer tutoring practices e. Nevertheless, improving overall Tier 1 classroom instruction so that students with LD are appropriately instructed is an ongoing problem that becomes increasingly challenging after the primary grades. Essentially in Tier 1 we are attempting to maximize two important determinants of student success: opportunity to learn and quality of instruction Gerber, Accomplishing student success includes two topics we discuss next: a ongoing, sustained, and high-quality professional development and b more powerful classroom practices that are associated with improved learning and are feasible to implement.
High levels of intensive and ongoing professional development for teachers related to progress monitoring, instruction, and intervention are required in both reading and mathematics. The need to provide sustained, focused, meaningful, and situated professional development for teachers is so consistently requested as to be almost reduced to a trivial concern e.
Professional development conducted within the framework of an RTI approach is likely to be effectively implemented if benefits from screening, progress monitoring, and interventions are linked to all students.
So how can the ongoing level of expertise required of practicing teachers be developed and sustained? Descriptive literature on professional development identifies several factors for promoting effective schoolwide change, including a establishing environments in which teachers participate in decision making and problem solving Gersten et al.
All of these factors make sense and appear doable for a year or two. For example, Vaughn and colleagues conducted a 4-year study in all of the elementary schools i. This resulted in positive student outcomes for students including improved reading scores and reduced numbers of students requiring intensive intervention Vaughn, Linan-Thompson, et al. However, sustaining such an effort is difficult and expensive, and new district initiatives often sidetrack previous accomplishments.
The field needs powerful instructional practices that are both feasible and impactful in general education classrooms even as they reflect the realistic constraints of classroom instruction and management. Most progress in instructional practices has affected typically achieving students or those at risk for learning difficulties. Considerably fewer studies have addressed improving outcomes for students with identified LD, with even fewer for older students with LD. Without sufficiently powerful interventions that classroom teachers can readily implement with demonstrated efficacy for students with LD, educational outcomes for these students will be compromised.
Within an RTI framework, secondary intervention i. This need may be determined based on benchmarks established by the local education agency or based on standardized normative data. At Tier 2, effective interventions are explicit and systematic and occur from 3 to 5 days a week for at least 20 minutes each day. The group sizes are small usually fewer than 6 students, with one teacher or well-trained and supervised paraprofessional and focus on the specific skills the students need e.
These interventions are associated with improved outcomes, primarily in kindergarten through second grade, as illustrated by Denton , with some work in mathematics as illustrated by L. Fuchs, Fuchs, and Compton Prevailing issues about effective Tier 2 programming, which relate directly to students with LD, are a what intervention is used and with what duration and frequency, b what personnel provide it, and c when, how often, and on what basis students move in and out of intervention i.
Selecting an appropriate intervention and determining who will provide it and how often it will be delivered are nagging issues. The extant evidence favors more standardized approaches for early reading e. In addition to demonstrated efficacy, standardized approaches offer several advantages in that schools can a document what students have been taught, b better use resources to assemble materials and training, and c monitor and bolster fidelity of implementation.
In addition to determining what intervention will be used, schools must decide who will implement the intervention. Needless to say, Tier 2 interventions are substantially more difficult to implement when the responsibility falls to the classroom teacher than when those services are provided by a Tier 2 intervention specialist. And what about formulating decisions about moving students in and out of Tier 2?
On what basis do we move students from secondary Tier 2 to tertiary Tier 3 interventions? Should students stay in Tier 2 interventions for long periods of time several years?
This assistance is called targeted intervention. Targeted intervention includes the teaching method or strategy the teacher will use, how often the intervention will be provided and for how long the intervention will be provided.
Within the RtI model, targeted intervention is provided with increasingly intense levels or tiers of support. Most RtI models provide three tiers of support. What is Tier 2 Intervention? Tier 2 intervention usually means that a student is:. For example, a student having difficulty reading may receive instruction in a small group students for 30 minutes per day with a reading teacher. This Tier 2 intervention may be provided by a reading or math specialist.
What is Tier 3 intervention? For students who are still not progressing with Tier 2 intervention, Tier 3 intervention may be provided. Tier 3 may utilize materials or programs which focus specifically on skills with which the student may be having difficulty. The team will recommend what type of instructional support the student needs and how often and for how long the instructional support will be provided. How often does progress monitoring occur? RTI is defined as an assessment and intervention process for systematically monitoring student progress and making decisions about the need for instructional modifications or increasingly intensified services using progress monitoring data.
The following is the fundamental question of RTI procedures: Under what conditions will a student successfully demonstrate a response to the curriculum? The goal of this manual is to help school think about implementing RTI in terms of manageable concrete steps. They first present overviews, definitions, and features of the relevant RTI component to orient the reader to each RTI component and develop an understanding of its critical features and role within the larger system of RTI.
In , when regulations were first adopted for implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the method by which SLD would be identified was a controversial issue. The discrepancy approach had advantages from an administrative point of view: The simplicity of the approach made it efficient. Such calculations offered an assumed level of precision that had appeal. Both the assessments themselves and the formulas for calculating the discrepancy could look pretty sophisticated, and in many ways they were sophisticated.
In our desire to simplify the complex, labor intensive, and costly assessment process, aptitude-achievement discrepancy offered a solution! The model looked good on the surface.
However, in practice, researchers and educators made a terrible mistake in that they failed to realize the limitations of the aptitude-achievement discrepancy. From an SLD perspective, the model was clearly insufficient.
The research literature suggests that students with SLD are underachieving Swanson, , but not all underachieving students have SLD. A medical analogy might be helpful here. Elevated temperature is a common, measurable symptom of illness. The discrepancy is the product of a large number of influences, some of which are intrinsic to the student, such as, limited aptitudes for reading acquisition, short attention span, difficulties with pattern recognition, poor working memory, or low self-regulating or self-monitoring performance; and others that are part of the home, instructional, and curricular opportunities, including lack of exposure and practice with pre-academic skills such as rhyming words, inconsistent or insufficient practice with academic skills, lack of a sufficiently organized instructional environment, or changing schools and curriculum due to family relocations.
Insufficient time is spent trying to understand the basis for the discrepancy. RTI has two applications. The first application is that of a prevention model to limit the amount of academic failure all students experience, not just those who have an SLD. Or, stated in a more positive view way, RTI helps to ensure that, at the first sign of problems, a student receives the academic supports he needs to be successful.
Both applications are very important, but clearly the second application requires a higher degree of integrity and precision because the outcome — judging whether or not a student has a disability — has important life-long implications for that student and his family.
The fundamental RTI concept is that students receive the high-quality instruction and intervention that enables them to be successful. As soon as a student starts to lag behind his peers in any academic or behavioral area, he receives more intense instruction in that area.
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