RTI for Middle and High Schools: Cohorts 1 & 2 Update Jim Wright interventioncentral

1. RTI for Middle and High Schools: Cohorts 1 & 2 UpdateJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

2. Technical Assistance: Reading Comprehension Fix-Up Skills; Defensive Behavior Management; Data Collection RTI Planning Time Sharing With Other Secondary Schools Updates Regarding NYS RTI Expectations: Guidance Document Updates Regarding RCSD District Implementation of RTI Workshop Goals…

3. Promoting Staff Understanding & Support for RTI • Verifying that Strong ‘Core Instruction’ and Interventions Are Being Delivered in Classrooms • Using Screening Data to Identify Students at Risk for Academic or Behavioral Problems • Establishing a Strong RTI Team for Students Who Need a Problem-Solving Approach • Developing & Implementing Effective Tier 2/3 Intervention Programs • Ensuring That Interventions Are Carried Out With Fidelity Key RTI Challenges

4. RTI for Cohorts 1 and 2: What Are Your Questions? At your tables: • Discuss the key questions that you still have about RTI implementation in your school. • Write down the TOP 1-2 questions that you would like to have answered (or discussed) at today’s workshop.

5. RTI Assumption: Struggling Students Are ‘Typical’ Until Proven Otherwise… RTI logic assumes that: • A student who begins to struggle in general education is typical, and that • It is general education’s responsibility to find the instructional strategies that will unlock the student’s learning potential Only when the student shows through well-documented interventions that he or she has ‘failed to respond to intervention’ does RTI begin to investigate the possibility that the student may have a learning disability or other special education condition.

6. Secondary Students: Unique Challenges… Struggling learners in middle and high school may: • Have significant deficits in basic academic skills • Lack higher-level problem-solving strategies and concepts • Present with issues of school motivation • Show social/emotional concerns that interfere with academics • Have difficulty with attendance • Are often in a process of disengaging from learning even as adults in school expect that those students will move toward being ‘self-managing’ learners…

7. Overlap Between ‘Policy Pathways’ & RTI Goals: Recommendations for Schools to Reduce Dropout Rates • A range of high school learning options matched to the needs of individual learners: ‘different schools for different students’ • Strategies to engage parents • Individualized graduation plans • ‘Early warning systems’ to identify students at risk of school failure • A range of supplemental services/’intensive assistance strategies’ for struggling students • Adult advocates to work individually with at-risk students to overcome obstacles to school completion Source: Bridgeland, J. M., DiIulio, J. J., & Morison, K. B. (2006). The silent epidemic: Perspectives of high school dropouts. Seattle, WA: Gates Foundation. Retrieved on May 4, 2008, from http://www.gatesfoundation.org/nr/downloads/ed/TheSilentEpidemic3-06FINAL.pdf

8. School Dropout as a Process, Not an Event “It is increasingly accepted that dropout is best conceptualized as a long-term process, not an instantaneous event; however, most interventions are administered at a middle or high school level after problems are severe.” Source: Jimerson, S., Reschly, A.L., & Hess, R. (2008). Best practices in increasing the likelihood of school completion. In A. Thomas & J. Grimes (Eds). Best Practices in School Psychology - 5th Ed (pp. 1085-1097). Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.. p.1090

9. Student Motivation & The Need for Intervention “A common response to students who struggle in sixth grade is to wait and hope they grow out of it or adapt, to attribute early struggles to the natural commotion of early adolescence and to temporary difficulties in adapting to new organizational structures of schooling, more challenging curricula and assessment, and less personalized attention. Our evidence clearly indicates that, at least in high-poverty urban schools, sixth graders who are missing 20% or more of the days, exhibiting poor behavior, or failing math or English do not recover. On the contrary, they drop out. This says that early intervention is not only productive but absolutely essential.” Source: Balfanz, R., Herzog, L., MacIver, D. J. (2007). Preventing student disengagement and keeping students on the graduation path in urban middle grades schools: Early identification and effective interventions. Educational Psychologist,42, 223–235. .

10. What Are the ‘Early Warning Flags’ of Student Drop-Out? A sample of 13,000 students in Philadelphia were tracked for 8 years. These early warning indicators were found to predict student drop-out in the sixth-grade year: • Failure in English • Failure in math • Missing at least 20% of school days • Receiving an ‘unsatisfactory’ behavior rating from at least one teacher Source: Balfanz, R., Herzog, L., MacIver, D. J. (2007). Preventing student disengagement and keeping students on the graduation path in urban middle grades schools: Early identification and effective interventions. Educational Psychologist,42, 223–235. .

11. What is the Predictive Power of These Early Warning Flags? Source: Balfanz, R., Herzog, L., MacIver, D. J. (2007). Preventing student disengagement and keeping students on the graduation path in urban middle grades schools: Early identification and effective interventions. Educational Psychologist,42, 223–235. .

12. Challenge # 1: Promoting Staff Understanding & Support for RTIJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

13. Tipping point: “any process in which, beyond a certain point, the rate at which the process increases dramatically.” (Tipping Point, 2010). “ ” “The tipping point is the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.” (Gladwell, 2000; p. 12) “ ” Sources: Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Little, Brown and Company: NY. Tipping point (sociology). (2010, February 17). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 02:52, March 1, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tipping_point_(sociology)&oldid=344548179

14. Q: What Conditions Support the Successful Implementation of RTI?: • Continuing professional development to give teachers the skills to implement RTI and educate new staff because of personnel turnover. • Administrators who assert leadership under RTI, including setting staff expectations for RTI implementation, finding the needed resources, and monitor ingthe fidelity of implementation. • Proactive hiring of teachers who support the principles of RTI and have the skills to put RTI into practice in the classroom. • The changing of job roles of teachers and support staff (school psychologists, reading specialists, special educators, etc.) to support the RTI model. • Input from teachers and support staff (‘bottom-up’) about how to make RTI work in the school or district, as well as guidance from administration (‘top-down’). Source: Fuchs, D., & Deshler, D. D. (2007). What we need to know about responsiveness to intervention (and shouldn’t be afraid to ask).. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22(2),129–136.

15. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: 7 Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Interventions

16. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: 7 Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Interventions • Lack of Skills. Teachers lack the skills necessary to successfully implement academic or behavioral interventions in their content-area classrooms (Fisher, 2007; Kamil et al., 2008). • Not My Job. Teachers define their job as providing content-area instruction. They do not believe that providing classwide or individual academic and behavioral interventions falls within their job description (Kamil et al., 2008).

17. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: 7 Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Interventions(Cont.) • No Time. Teachers do not believe that they have sufficient time available in classroom instruction to implement academic or behavioral interventions (Kamil et al., 2008; Walker, 2004). • No Payoff. Teachers lack confidence that there will be an adequate instructional pay-off if they put classwide or individual academic or behavioral interventions into place in their content-area classroom (Kamil et al., 2008).

18. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: 7 Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Interventions (Cont.) • Loss of Classroom Control. Teachers worry that if they depart from their standard instructional practices to adopt new classwide or individual academic or behavior intervention strategies, they may lose behavioral control of the classroom (Kamil et al., 2008). • ‘Undeserving Students’. Teachers are unwilling to invest the required effort to provide academic or behavioral interventions for unmotivated students (Walker, 2004) because they would rather put that time into providing additional attention to well-behaved, motivated students who are ‘more deserving’.

19. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: 7 Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Interventions (Cont.) • The Magic of Special Education. Content-area teachers regard special education services as ‘magic’ (Martens, 1993). According to this view, interventions provided to struggling students in the general-education classroom alone will be inadequate, and only special education services have the power to truly benefit those students.

20. Engaging the Reluctant Teacher: Seven Reasons Why Instructors May Resist Implementing Classroom RTI Literacy Interventions • Lack of Skills. Teachers lack the skills necessary to successfully implement academic or behavioral interventions in their content-area classrooms. • Not My Job. Teachers define their job as providing content-area instruction. They do not believe that providing classwide or individual academic and behavioral interventions falls within their job description. • No Time. Teachers do not believe that they have sufficient time available in classroom instruction to implement academic or behavioral interventions. • Insufficient Payoff. Teachers lack confidence that there will be an adequate instructional pay-off if they put classwide or individual academic or behavioral interventions into place in their content-area classroom. • Loss of Classroom Control. Teachers worry that if they depart from their standard instructional practices to adopt new classwide or individual academic or behavior intervention strategies, they may lose behavioral control of the classroom. • ‘Undeserving Students’. Teachers are unwilling to invest the required effort to provide academic or behavioral interventions for unmotivated students because they would rather put that time into providing additional attention to well-behaved, motivated students who are ‘more deserving’. • The Magic of Special Education. Content-area teachers regard special education services as ‘magic’. According to this view, interventions provided to struggling students in the general-education classroom alone will be inadequate, and only special education services have the power to truly benefit those students.

21. RTI Challenge: Promoting Staff Understanding & Support for RTI • Discuss the degree to which your staff currently understand the RTI model and support it. • What are some positive steps that your school has taken to improve staff understanding and support? • What are significant challenges that must still be addressed in the area of staff understanding and support to reach a positive RTI ‘tipping point’?

22. Challenge # 2: Verifying that Strong ‘Core Instruction’ and Interventions Are Being Delivered in ClassroomsJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

23. Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p. 12

25. RTI Challenge: Verifying that Strong ‘Core Instruction’ and Interventions Are Being Delivered in Classrooms • Discuss the capacity of general-education teachers in your school to provide ‘appropriate instruction and research-based instructional interventions’ in their classrooms. • What are some positive steps that your school has taken? • What are significant challenges that must still be addressed in helping teachers to understand and support their role as classroom interventionists?

26. Challenge # 3: Using Screening Data to Identify Students at Risk for Academic or Behavioral ProblemsJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

27. … Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p. 8

28. Middle and High School: Debate About the Utility of Basic Academic Screening Tools “At middle and high school…, academic deficits are well established. …at middle and high school, it no longer makes sense to allocate scarce resources to screening for the purpose of identifying students at risk for academic failure. It makes more sense to rely on teacher nomination or existing assessment data to identify students with manifest academic difficulties…” Source: Fuchs L. S., Fuchs, D., and Compton, D. L. (2010). Rethinking response to intervention at middle and high school. School Psychology Review, 39, 22-28.

29. Creating a School-Wide Screening Plan: Recommendations for Secondary Schools • Create a plan to review at least quarterly existing data (e.g., grades, attendance, behavior) to identify students at risk. • Analyze your student demographics and academic performance and select academic screeners matched to those demographics. • Consider piloting new screening tools (e.g., at single grade levels or in selected classrooms) before rolling out through all grade levels.

30. Creating a School-Wide Screening Plan: Recommendations for Secondary Schools (Cont.) • Establish a school-wide or grade-level Data Team (Tier 2) to review screening information and decide on appropriate interventions for at-risk students. • Allow sufficient time (e.g., 3-5 years) to adopt and implement a full implementation plan.

31. Creating a School-Wide Screening Plan: Recommendations for ALL Schools • Ensure that any discussion about grade- or school- or district-wide adoption of RTI screening tools includes general education and special education input. • When adopting a screening tool, inventory all formal assessments administered in your school. Discuss whether any EXISTING assessments can be made optional or dropped whenever new screening tools are being added. • If possible, use screening tools found by the National Center on RTI to have ‘technical adequacy’.

32. RTI Challenge: Adopting Schoolwide Screening Measures • Discuss your school’s current status in identifying and adopting screening tools to proactively identify students at risk for academic or behavioral problems. (Remember that existing data—grades, attendance, behavior—can be analyzed periodically and used to ‘screen’ students at risk.) • What are some positive steps that your school has taken? • What are significant challenges in the identification and use of screeners that must still be addressed?

33. Challenge # 4: Establishing a Strong RTI Team for Students Who Need a Problem-Solving ApproachJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

34. Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p25

35. RTI Team Consultative Process Step 1: Assess Teacher Concerns 5 Mins Step 2: Inventory Student Strengths/Talents 5 Mins Step 3: Review Background/Baseline Data 5 Mins Step 4: Select Target Teacher Concerns 5-10 Mins Step 5: Set Academic and/or Behavioral Outcome Goals and Methods for Progress-Monitoring 5 Mins Step 6: Design an Intervention Plan 15-20 Mins Step 7: Plan How to Share Meeting Information with the Student’s Parent(s) 5 Mins Step 8: Review Intervention & Monitoring Plans 5 Mins

36. RTI Team Roles • Coordinator • Facilitator • Recorder • Time Keeper • Case Manager

37. RTI Challenge: Establishing a Strong RTI Team for Students Who Need a Problem-Solving Approach • Discuss the current functioning of your RTI Problem-Solving Team. • What are some positive steps that your school has taken to improve this team? • What are significant challenges that must still be addressed to equip your RTI Team to work with teachers to create intensive and effective interventions?

38. Challenge # 5: Developing & Implementing Effective Tier 2/3 Intervention Programs Jim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

39. Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p. 13

40. Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p. 14

41. Supplemental Interventions in Secondary Schools: The Challenge • Research indicates that students do well in targeted small-group interventions (4-7 students) when the intervention ‘treatment’ is closely matched to those students’ academic needs (Burns & Gibbons, 2008). • However, in secondary schools: • students are sometimes grouped for remediation by convenience rather than by presenting need. Teachers instruct across a broad range of student skills, diluting the positive impact of the intervention. • students often present with a unique profile of concerns that does not lend itself to placement in a group intervention. Source: Burns, M. K., & Gibbons, K. A. (2008). Implementing response-to-intervention in elementary and secondary schools: Procedures to assure scientific-based practices. New York: Routledge.

42. Caution About Secondary Supplemental Interventions: Avoid the ‘Homework Help’ Trap • Group-based interventions are an efficient method to deliver targeted academic support to students (Burns & Gibbons, 2008). • However, students should be matched to specific research-based interventions that address their specific needs. • RTI intervention support in secondary schools should not take the form of unfocused ‘homework help’ or test preparation.

43. Tier 2/3 Interventions: Scheduling Strategies

44. Tier 2/3 Interventions: Scheduling Strategies

45. Tier 2/3 Interventions: Scheduling Strategies

46. Tier 2/3 Interventions: Scheduling Strategies Study Hall Schedule Coordinated with RTI Services. Using academic screening and/or archival records, the school identifies students who require RTI support. These students are scheduled as a bloc in a common study hall. The school then schedules RTI services at the same time as the study hall. Reading teachers, other trained interventionists, and/or tutors run short-term (5-10 week) Tier 2/3 group or individual sessions. Students are recruited from the study hall and matched to the appropriate RTI service based on shared need. They are discharged from the RTI service and rejoin the study hall if they show sufficient improvement. (NOTE: If the study hall meets daily, students in RTI groups who are in less-intensive interventions may be scheduled for alternate days between study hall and RTI groups.) This model is fluid: After each 5-10 week period, new RTI groups or tutoring assignments can be created, with students again being matched to these services based on need.

47. Tier 2/3 Interventions: Scheduling Strategies

48. RTI Challenge: Developing & Implementing Effective Tier 2/3 Intervention Programs • Discuss the current range of Tier 2/3 supplemental intervention programs that your school currently has in place to address the most frequent student academic problems. • What are some positive steps that your school has taken to develop and implement Tier 2/3 interventions? • What are significant challenges that still remain?

49. Challenge # 6: Ensuring That Interventions Are Carried Out With FidelityJim Wrightwww.interventioncentral.org

50. … Source: New York State Education Department. (October 2010). Response to Intervention: Guidance for New York State School Districts. Retrieved November 10, 2010, from http://www.p12.nysed.gov/specialed/RTI/guidance-oct10.pdf; p 42