Why RTI?

1. Why RTI? Dean Richards

2. Targets • Understand how the RTI system improves our current practices • Improving outcomes for all students • Systematic process • Intervene early • Provide tailored instruction to need • Improving our identification and instruction of students who may have a Specific Learning Disability • Review traditional special education evaluation system • Review RTI evaluation system • Improve parents understanding of their child’s skills

3. Purposes of RTI • To increase the achievement for all students • To better identify and instruct students who may have a learning disability • To help parents be better informed about their child’s skills

4. RTI Misconceptions…What it is and what it’s not

5. How does RTI increase outcomes of all students? • Builds a unified (collaborative) system • Identifies students who need help early • It helps students receive instruction that they need

6. How does RTI increase outcomes of all students? • Builds a unified (collaborative) system • Identifies students who need help early • It helps students receive instruction that they need

7. One Perspective on History Our education system has grown up through a process of “Disjointed Incrementalism” (Reynolds, 1988) Gifted SPED The current Education System’s Programmatic Evolution Title 1 K-12 Education Migrant At Risk ELL

8. Unintended Effects • Conflicting programs • Conflicting funding streams • Redundancy • Lack of coordination across programs • Nonsensical rules about program availability for students • Extreme complexity in administration and implementation of the programs

9. In The Past Title Reading or Other Reading Support General Education Special Education Some “Fell’” Through Some “Fell’” Through Heartland Educational Agency

10. Words Per Minute Consider Reading Achievement:Reading Trajectories of Low and Middle ReadersGrades 1-6

11. The way that we were coordinating resources was not working

12. Activity • As a teacher when do you feel that students were able to receive “help?” • How collaborative was the process of receiving “help” for a student? • Did students with low skills make good progress?

13. How is the process different in RTI? • There is one process to make instructional decisions that are: • Efficient • Proactive • Based on early intervention • Used to match resources to needs • Integrated • Focused on student learning

14. Shared Responsibility • Teacher • “RTI really advocates for the student. The data really needs to be gathered and assessed. Are the child’s academic needs really being met? Are they making progress? If not, what is the problem and what instructional strategies need to be changed? It seems that the child’s issues becomes one of the team’s and not solely the responsibility of the classroom teacher. Also, in many cases I am sure, some individual students just need some intervention to be successful and NOT special education!” • Nancy Greene, 2nd grade teacher

15. Shared Responsibility • Teacher • “RTI is designed to help target a specific deficit in a student’s learning and through collaboration with others design a plan to meet that particular need. This has helped to improve my teaching.” • Jeff Kelley, 4th grader teacher

16. How does RTI increase outcomes of all students? • Builds a unified (collaborative) system • Identifies students who need help early • It helps students receive instruction that they need

17. Words Per Minute Selecting screening measures to identify at-risk students early is key: Need for Screening

18. RTI prevents students from falling behind at the start.. • Reading is a crucial skill not optional • Teach reading early • Days and weeks matter

19. Reading Is Not An Optional Skill • Poor readers in 4th grade struggle in literacy in Kindergarten (Torgeson, 2004) • Children who struggle K-3 rarely achieve average reading skills (Torgeson, Rashotte, Alexander, 2001) • Children who cannot read drop out of school • Over 60% percent of people without a high school diploma do not currently have a job that raises them above the poverty line. (underemployed, incarnated, self employed, raising families, ect.) (Bureau of Labor Statistics) • Academic success or failure is strongly related to adaptive functioning as an adult

20. Days and Weeks Matter • Is it a skill deficit or developmental lag ? Can’t we wait for them to “bloom?” • Without intervention, kids who are behind stay behind (Juel, 1988; Francis, et al., 1996, Shaywitz, 1999) • Skill deficits can be erased—especially if you catch them early! • Good reading builds reading AND cognitive skills!

21. Reading makes you Smarter Independent Reading (4th grade) %tile Minutes Per Day Words Read Per Year 98 65.0 4,358,000 90 21.1 1,823,000 70 9.6 622,000 50 4.6 282,000 30 1.3 106,000 10 0.1 8,000 2 0.0 0 Adapted from Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988).

22. Really? How does that Work? “. . . students who get off to a fast start in reading are more likely to read more over the years, and, furthermore, this very act of reading can help children compensate for modest levels of cognitive ability by building their vocabulary and general knowledge. In other words, ability is not the only variable that counts in the development of intellectual functioning. Those who read a lot will enhance their verbal intelligence; that is, reading will make them smarter.” --Cunningham and Stanovich, 1998

23. How does RTI increase outcomes of all students? • Builds a unified (collaborative) system • Identifies students who need help early • It helps students receive instruction that they need

24. RTI helps you to really know what instruction students need. • Systematic process to identify student needs • Differentiation of instruction • Seamless “instruction focused” evaluation process

25. RTI: Full Continuum of Support Title Reading & Reading Support, Gifted Ed. General Education Special Education, Gifted Ed. I I I I I I I I Interventions all along the continuum! = I Heartland Educational Agency

26. Daisy is part of a class that is part of a school that conducts DIBELS screening three times a year—for EVERY child—and she isn’t doing well Systematic process Does Daisy progress? If not, should she be referred for a special education evaluation? Daisy’s intervention is intensified Daisy receives highly structured additional instruction—but she doesn’t progress

27. POP QUIZ!! • In the current system, which students are most likely to be identified with a learning disability?

28. Can’t Pre-Referral Fix it All? • Most referrals = placement, but. . . • If you don’t get referred, you don’t get placed, and • Pre-referral practices reflect poor quality • 80% not guided by a clear defintion • 80% do not have a direct measure in the natural setting • 75% do not compare pre and post intervention data • Do they prevent moving to evaluation? (Reschly)

29. RTI Process differs from Pre-Referral Process systematic Not Systematic

30. RTI helps you to really know what instruction students need. • Systematic process to identify student needs • Differentiation of instruction

31. We cannot intervene one by one • Overall, national longitudinal studies show that more than 17.5 percent of the nation's children--about 10 million children--will encounter reading problems in the crucial first three years of their schooling" (National Reading Panel Progress Report, 2000). • In a 250 student school: • 200 students will do fine with a good core curriculum • 38 students will need systematic, ongoing specialized instruction • 12 students will need intensive, individualized intervention • We need differentiation

32. RTI Differentiation • Screening assessment used to identify students needs • Core instruction is differentiated to meet all students needs • Students placed into intervention groups • Students progress is monitored to determine if instruction is working

33. Differentiation

34. RTI leads to improved outcomes

35. A Tale of Two Districts

36. A Tale of Two DistrictsDistrict 1: RTI 3rd Grade ORF

37. A Tale of Two DistrictsDistrict 2: Non RTI 3rd Grade ORF

38. RTI: what we know from a system perspective • It is a more collaborative process • It increases achievement of students • It helps all students to receive instruction that they need.

39. Targets • Understand how the RTI system improves our current practices • Improving outcomes for all students • Systematic process • Intervene early • Provide tailored instruction to need • Improving our identification and instruction of students who may have a Specific Learning Disability • Review traditional special education evaluation system • Review RTI evaluation system • Improve parents understanding of their child’s skills

40. RTI improves our identification & instruction of students who may have LD • Seamless “instruction focused” evaluation process

41. What do you really want to know when a student gets evaluated? What’s wrong with them? Vs. What can I do to instruct them effectively?

42. The Discrepancy Fallacy Is the difference big enough?

43. Discrepancy based evaluation • What did a discrepancy based evaluation tell you about what instruction a student needed to make progress?

44. The Psychological Processing Problem: • Performance on tests that measure psychological processing are biased • No patterns have been found that differentiate LD/not LD

45. The Psychological Processing Problem: • Patterns on psychological processing tests do not predict outcomes • Patterns on psychological processing tests do not lead to treatment

46. Psychological Processing Baseed Evaluation • What does a psychological processing based evaluation tell you if it does not. . . • differentiate LD students from non-LD students or • lead to recommendations that improve achievement?

47. Special Education Outcomes • Special education placements tend to stabilize the reading growth of students with reading disabilities rather than accelerate it. (Vaughn, 1998, Moody, 2000) • Students who enter special education 2+ years below age mates can be expected to maintain disparity or fall farther behind.

48. Doing What Works: the cost of waiting to fail • Modal age of identification is 10-12 years old! (Fuchs) • If word reading problems reach a moderate to severe level, interventions cannot bring students to an average level (Torgeson, 2004)

49. Is the Outcome Worth the Cost? • Students identified as having LD grew by 150% between 1975 and 2003 • Between 1985 and 1995, expenditures for special education nearly doubled – to about $32 Billion dollars • From 1996 to 2001, Federal funding nearly tripled from $2.3 to $6.3 billion dollars

50. Doing what works: after identification It’s been costing a lot and not working very well!