Responsiveness to Intervention Model

Responsiveness to Intervention Critical Features

RTI as an assessment method is designed to match students with appropriate instruction, thereby helping learners who are experiencing difficulty. Therefore, RTI may be one of the best new approaches for linking assessment with instruction. The core features of RTI include:

• 1.
  High-quality classroom instruction. Students receive high-quality instruction in their general education setting. Before students are singled out for specific assistance, one has to have assurance that the typical classroom instruction is of high quality. The quality of instruction is based on numerous considerations including that the instructor is adequately prepared with appropriate background education, delivers the curriculum as intended, uses appropriate instructional and assessment methods, and is consistent in instruction. Comparing students' learning rates and achievement in different classrooms at the same grade level is one means of assessing the quality of instruction.
• 2.
  Research-based instruction. General education's classroom practices and the curriculum vary in their efficacy. Thus, ensuring that the practices and curriculum have demonstrated validity is important. Research-based instruction means that appropriate experiments have been completed that demonstrate the efficacy of the particular instructional methods and curriculum. If not, one cannot be confident that a student's limited gains are independent of classroom experiences.
• 3.
  Universal screening. School staff conducts universal screening of all students' academics and behavior three times per year (e.g., fall, winter, and spring). This feature focuses on specific criteria for judging the learning and achievement of all students, not only in academics but also in related behaviors (e.g., class attendance, tardiness, truancy, suspensions, and disciplinary actions). The screening results are useful in two ways. First, the results can indicate the quality of classroom instruction and possible changes in teaching, curricula, or instructional methods. Second, those screening results are applied in determining which students need closer monitoring or an intervention.
• 4.
  Continuous progress monitoring. Students' classroom progress is monitored continuously. Thus, staff can readily identify the learners who are not meeting the classroom-level benchmarks or other expected standards. Progress-monitoring data are collected weekly or during alternate weeks. Various curriculum-based assessment models are used in this role (e.g., number of words read correctly from the reading curriculum or arithmetic problems correctly solved within a fixed time interval, such as one or two minutes).
• 5.
  Research-based interventions. When a student's screening results or progress-monitoring results indicate a deficit, an appropriate instructional intervention is implemented, perhaps an individually designed instructional package or a standardized treatment. The decision whether to use an individually designed instructional package or a standardized treatment is made when the school or school district is setting up their procedures. In some school districts, both approaches are used in a fixed sequence. If the student doesn't respond to the standard treatment protocol, an individually designed intervention is determined and implemented.

The standardized treatment protocols are the interventions that researchers have validated as effective, meaning that the experimental applications were completed with the proper experimental controls to demonstrate that the intervention works. School staff is expected to implement specific, research-based interventions to address the student's difficulties. These interventions might include a “double dose” of classroom instruction and/or different instructional method. These interventions are not adaptations of the current curriculum or accommodations, because one would expect those procedures to be implemented already. Research-based interventions are 8 to 12 weeks [Page 462]in length and are designed to increase the intensity of the learner's instructional experience. These protocols include specific information about the number of minutes per day, the number of days per week, the number of weeks that an intervention will be implemented, as well as the specific skills addressed, where the instruction will be provided, who will provide the instruction, and the materials used for instruction and assessing progress. Furthermore, the following two procedures should be implemented to ensure that a robust outcome is obtained and that it is directly related to the

...