Response to Intervention
By Ellen Holmes, NBCT
Response to Intervention (RTI) is now Maine state law and every classroom teacher and educational technician in a general education classroom is responsible for the bulk of pre-referral duties outlined in Chapter 101 governing Unified Special Education. As of the latest legislative session, RTI is also now part of LD 1325, which requires every school district to define and implement a K-12 system of interventions.
RTI is a systemic approach providing targeted instruction - interventions- matched closely to student needs, as informed by meaningful assessment measures. Further, interventions are closely monitored through short measures closely matched to the specific intervention provided.
The purpose of RTI is to provide targeted, best practice instructions to students as soon as you recognize they may have an issue. RTI is designed to keep those students out of special education who have ended up there not because they have some innate learning or behavioral issues, but because they did not receive appropriate instruction.
RTI is a "tiered system of service delivery" designed to get students the help they need as soon as possible from the most appropriate source within a school:
Tier I: Pre-referral
Tier II: the beginning of intervention
Tier III: Curriculum Based Measurement
- Schools successfully moving towards RTI are:
- Providing school-wide experiences that allow all professionals to define what RTI; take stock of current practices that fit this definition; identify what needs to be developed to support RTI; and, create an implementation plan.
- Defining clear expectations about what students should know and be able to do and provide appropriate resources for professionals about how to teach and measure all students' progress towards learning expectations.
- Providing time within the school day for professionals to reflect on data, adjust practices, and plan instruction based on student data.
- Creating a structure within the daily schedule that allows students to have extended learning opportunities.
- RTI is not an initiative or a program; it is a systemic reform focused on individual student needs. The unit of reform is the school building level. An RTI plan will look significantly different from building to building because it is based on the particular students, their needs, and the professionals in that building.
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