Response to intervention or instruction (RtI) models are to be employed in southeastern Pennysylvania (US), according to a story by Robyn Meadows of the Lancaster New Era. The concepts in this story are related to those described in earlier posts on LD Blog, including “IDEA regs examined” and “LD regs and RtI.”
As the references to the earlier posts imply, the publicity for the models stems, in part, from the announcement earlier in August of regulations for the implentation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004; those regulations describe how RtI models can be used as a part of the process for identifying students with Learning Disabilities. However, the concept for RtI are also closely connected with the Reading First initiative of the 2001 revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, now known as the No Child Left Behind act. The big idea is to provide primary prevention with supplemental services for those students who are found to experience difficulty, based on frequent and direct assessments of important reading components (phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension); for students who continue to have difficulty, even when they have received supplemental services, there should be an even-more intense and focused level of instruction with continuing monitoring of progress.
What are the tiers?
In these multi-tiered models, general educators should provide evidence-based instruction that has the greatest likelihood of preventing problems (this is often called “tier 1”). When some students do not acquire important skills and knowledge, as indicated by direct and systematic monitoring of pupil progress, general educators should implement appropriate measures to help those students (what is often called “tier 2”); examples of appropriate measures are (a) additional practice opportunities (including more than additional time devoted to instruction, more opportunities to respond or practice, etc.), (b) enriched reinforcement schedules, and (c) reduced latency between student errors and teacher provision of correction of those errors.
- Tier 1 should be predicated on a broad, general literacy curriculum (akin to what’s sometimes called a “basal”) that provides explicit and intergrated instruction in all of the five basic areas. Ideally, the curriculum should have been tested by researchers and found to be effective. Literacy instruction should occupy at least 90 minutes of each student’s time each school day. Students’ progress should be monitored frequently. The educators with the greatest responsibility for instruction at this tier should be the general education teacher.
- Tier 2 should include additional time devoted to reading instruction, with supplemental materials focused on each student’s needs. The instruction should occur in smaller groups, afford the students more frequent opportunties to respond, and use strong reinforcement techniques. Again, frequent progress monitoring should be built into the instruction. The educators with the greatest responsibility for instruction at this tier should be the reading specialists.
- Tier 3 should be available to those students who have not succeded in the first two tiers. It should be even more intense and expressly geared to a student’s unique educational needs. Students’ performance should be monitored closely and interventions that do not result in clear progress should be discarded. In most RtI models, this is comparable to special education, though some reserve a fourth tier for special education; many people and professional organziations advocate full evaluations for special education as a part of advancement to tier-3 services.
What constitutes a “response” and how is it measured?
Students’ response to intervention, regardless of the tier, would be reflected in growth on measures of reading performance in the five areas. Measures should be direct, collected frequently, and used to make instructional decisions.
- Direct measures are those that assess students’ actual performance on tasks that are the most closely related to the relevant skill or content of concern. Examples include (a) words read correctly from a list, (b) words read correctly per minute from a passage, (c) percentage of key concepts from a passage reiterated in a retell, and so forth. These direct measures need to be fine-grained and objective.
- Frequent measurement is critical. Students’ performance should be assessed two or three times per week, if not daily. Perforce, then, the measures need to be easily and quickly administered.
- Educators should employ decision rules rather than subjective judgments. Discussions about alternative rules (e.g., “three days below aim line requires change in instruction”) are available in the literature on precision teaching and curriculum-based measurement.
A response to intervention should not be stated in terms of percentages or similar measures. Although objective, clear, and complete measurement is a necessity, the evaluation of the resulting data must still involve expert clinical judgment. Because students who are not responding may be performing a marked low levels, sometimes even a 100% improvement is insufficient.
Response should be predicated on a change in slope that is sufficient to predict reaching a given level of performance within a relatively brief period of time. The accompanying figure shows insufficient progress relative to the goal of reading 80 words per minute.
Goals should be predicated on a combination of local norms and empirical data from nationally representative samples. For example, if data from large-scale studies show that students should read at 120 wpm from grade-level material by the end of third grade and local norms show that the mean rate of reading for ending third graders is 112 wpm, then a reasonable aim would be somewhere between those two standards (tilting toward the former).
How long should students spend at each tier?
It is probably not sensible to specify an exact amount of time, because it is important that decisions be made on the basis of students’ performance. However, it is important that (a) interventions are used for long enough that students have time to respond, but (b) not so long that the student’s non-response wastes his or her time, delaying access to more intensive services. In my opinion, no process be allowed to continue for more than 90 days before referral for special education is initiated, and in no case should a student be subjected to more than two iterations of RtI procedures before referral for special education is initiated.
There are many other important aspects of the Reading First and the RtI concepts. There are many examples of resources available about Reading First from states (see, e.g., Florida, Oregon and Texas, ) and from university-affiliated facilities such as the Florida State’s Florida Center for Reading Research, University of Oregon’s Big Ideas in Beginning Reading, and University of Texas’ Vaughn Gross Center.
Here are some links related to Reading First and effective early reading instruction:
- Put Reading First: Helping Your Child Learn to Read; A Parent Guide (pdf) is a booklet that presents evidence-based reading research in a way that is accessible to parents. Get a copy here: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/PFRbrochure.pdf
- Put Reading First: The Research Building Blocks for Teaching Children to Read (pdf) is aimed at classroom teachers in the primary grades; it describes the National Reading Panel’s findings in the five areas of reading instruction. Get a copy here: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/PFRbooklet.pdf
- Featured Reading First Websites: U.S. Department of Education Reading First site. These pages provide a lot of information about the Reading First initiative, which was primarily a set of grants to states that showed how they would implement multi-tier early literacy programs. The idea was to reduce reading failure by establishing high-quality, comprehensive, evidence-based reading instruction. See the site here: http://www.ed.gov/programs/readingfirst/.