Teach Effectively!

Everyone’s talking about it, but not everyone’s convinced that response to intervention will prove as helpful as we hope. In “‘Response to Intervention’ Sparks Interest, Questions: Critics say approach depends on too many complex factors,” Christina A. Samuels of Ed Week presents some of these concerns. In a news piece that is unusual in its balance (Ed Week does better with balance in education issues than its popular siblings, in my view), Ms. Samuels starts with the usual anecdote—the Tigard-Tualatin (OR, US) local education agency has a program that has attracted many visitors—and quickly goes to the controversy.

As educators in Tigard-Tualatin and elsewhere are learning, a lot of people want to see what they are doing. Response to intervention—an educational framework that promises to raise achievement through modification of lesson plans based on frequent “progress monitoring”—is one of the most-discussed education topics today.

“People are hungry” for information, said Maurice McInerney, a co-project director for the newly created National Center on Response to Intervention. The technical-assistance center, based in Washington, is funded by a five-year, $14.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s office of special education programs.

While supporters are urging widespread adoption of RTI, saying it can transform educational practice, others are offering cautions.

Although RTI has shown success with children just learning how to read, skeptics note that the research base is less solid for older students and students in other academic subjects. Some parent groups also are concerned about how RTI fits into the legal process created by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the federal law that guides educational practice for special education.

To be sure, RtI is more than frequent monitoring of progress (one has to use those data to modify instruction), but Ms. Samuels captures many of the perspectives on RTI. She talked to some of the top folks and mentioned many of the important ideas. It’s a very important topic, and her article reflects this.

I count among those in the with-reservations group on this issue. I would greatly like to see evidence-based instructional practices faithfully implemented in general education classes. I cling to the idea that such a turn or events would reduce the need for supplemental services. If we could just teach it right the first time….

However, I strongly suspect that, even in such an optimal school situation, there would still be some students who would not succeed readily. Indeed, even hot-house instructional conditions arranged by researchers who could bring substantial resources to bear on services that students received have failed to make every child succeed. Data from projects directed by eminent experts such as Randi O’Connor, Joe Torgeson, and Shari Vaughn have revealed that some (2%? 4%?) of students still need additional help after the top levels of RTI-like processes have been exhausted.

Link to Ms. Samuels’ article. Also, see Ms. Samuels’ “Embracing ‘Response to Intervention’” for coverage of the widely discussed Heartland (IA, US) example of RtI. Be sure to read the comments. It’ll be interesting to see opinions about this unfold.

Be sure to check our page entitled “RtI Commentaries” (linked at the top of each page here) for excellent content from experts on this topic. For earlier posts about RTI from Teach Effectively!, see here. Also, for another perspective, please see the Division for Learning Disability booklet, Thinking about Response to Intervention and Learning Disabilities: A Teacher’s Guide.