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Faculty Development and Instructional Design Center

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Quality assessment is more than assigning a grade to your students. Truly effective assessments determine how much knowledge the student has and how well he or she can utilize that knowledge. Also, in addition to providing an evaluation of student progress, assessment can be used throughout the semester to guide instructional decisions.

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Response to Intervention Reluctant Teachers Response to Intervention Tiers Mike Mattos Response to Intervention Response to Intervention Humor Response to Intervention Strategies Response to Intervention Cartoon Basic Informative Response to Intervention Response to Intervention Scenarios RTI Intervention Pyramid

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RTI aims to identify kids who are struggling in school.

It uses targeted teaching to help them catch up.

An important part of RTI is measuring progress and providing more support to kids who need it.

If you look inside any general education classroom, chances are good that you'd see different students struggling for different reasons. It can be hard for a teacher to tell right away which students are struggling or why.

Response to intervention (RTI) aims to identify struggling students early on and give them the support they need to thrive in school. The word intervention is key to understanding what RTI is all about. The goal is for the school to intervene, or step in, and start helping before a student falls really far behind.

Teachers can provide targeted teaching - called interventions - to help struggling students catch up. A big part of the RTI process involves closely monitoring student progress. That way the school can see which students need more academic support.

RTI isn't a specific program or type of teaching. It's a proactive approach: RTI measures students' skills and uses this data to decide which interventions to use.

Dive deeper

The RTI process begins with a teacher assessing the skills of everyone in the class. This helps the school's RTI teams tell which students need instructional interventions. That's the term for focusing on specific skills in trying to improve them.

Interventions can be part of class-wide instruction. The teacher may break students into small groups. These groups are tailored for different skill levels or learning interests.

Students who don't make enough progress getting this kind of help during class may start to work on skills in small groups that meet during enrichment activities like music or art.

As part of the RTI process, schools help struggling students by using teaching interventions that researchers have studied and shown to be effective. Many of them deal with reading. But there are also some proven methods of improving writing and math skills. Some schools also use research-based behavior interventions.

Read more about instructional interventions .

Another essential component of RTI is called progress monitoring. That means that teachers frequently assess students' skills to decide whether an intervention is working.

During an intervention, a teacher or other member of the RTI team uses an assessment tool that measures certain skills. They assess the skills every week or every other week. That may sound like a lot of testing. But each assessment only takes a few minutes to complete.

Learn more about progress monitoring .

There's no single way of doing RTI, but it's often set up as a three-tiered system of support. Some school districts call this framework a multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS , instead of RTI.

Think of this tiered system as a pyramid, with the intensity of support increasing from one level to the next:

Get deeper information about the three tiers of support .

RTI isn't a special education program. But it can help general education teachers pick up on early signs that kids are struggling. It also plays a key role in helping schools figure out who qualifies for special education.

Federal law says that when deciding if a student is eligible for special education, the school district can use a "process that determines if the child responds to scientific, research-based intervention." That's one of the reasons many states use RTI.

If a student qualifies for special education, the RTI interventions used can help the school decide which services and supports to include in the IEP .

There are a few other key things to keep in mind about the relationship between RTI and special education:

RTI can't be used to reduce a student's workload. That kind of modification may be used for some special education students, but not for general education students.

If a student is getting extra help through RTI, it doesn't mean a family has to wait to request a special education evaluation. They have the right to ask for an evaluation at any time.

As part of the evaluation, the school can gather information from the RTI process, like screening and progress monitoring data. But they still have to follow the time frame of completing an initial evaluation within 60 days of getting parent consent.

Learn about evaluations for special education .

RTI is effective for lots of reasons. For one, it can help more kids thrive in general education classrooms.

It can also help schools save special education resources for kids who truly need them. Many students performing below grade level don't have disabilities. Through the RTI process, they can make progress without special education services.

Here are some other reasons why RTI is beneficial:

Students continue to get their core instruction in the general education classroom with their peers.

It's not a "wait and see" approach. Students can start to get extra help before falling so far behind that they have to go to summer school or repeat a grade.

If a student is referred for special education services, there's already documentation about which type of instruction has not been helpful.

If a school doesn't use RTI, families can still ask for extra help . But it might not be provided as extensively or as systematically as it would in a school that uses RTI.

Schools aren't required to give families a written intervention plan. All the school needs to tell families about RTI is:

But many schools provide much more information. That's because they know that parent involvement plays a big role in helping kids thrive in school. In fact, some schools are already in the habit of giving parents a written intervention plan.

If the school doesn't automatically provide a written plan, families can ask for one. It might include:

A description of the skills the child struggles with, and documentation about these challenges, like assessment results or work samples

A description of the research-based intervention the child is getting

Details about how often the intervention will be provided and for what length of time - how many minutes per day over how many weeks

Details about who will be providing the intervention and in which schoolroom

The criteria for determining whether the intervention is successful

A description of how progress monitoring works and how often progress will be measured

Get answers to other common questions about RTI .

Requesting a written intervention plan can help you take an active role in RTI. But there are other ways you can be involved in the process:

Remember that RTI is a fluid process. At any time during the school year, you can talk to the teacher and find out which interventions are available to help your child.

Ask the school for more information about the intervention your child is receiving, like which studies show it is effective.

Ask the school to give you a copy of your child's progress monitoring graph after every assessment.

Give the intervention time to work. To know if it's helping, the school needs data. Wait at least a few weeks before you ask the school if it's time to try something different.

Ask the school how you can help your child at home.

If you think your child's skills aren't improving, you may want to request an evaluation for special education. Remember that you can make this request at any time.

Use this list of questions to learn about your school's RTI process .

About the Author

About the Author

worked as a classroom teacher and as an early intervention specialist for 10 years. She is the author of Amanda Morin The Everything Parent's Guide to Special Education. Two of her children have learning differences.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Elaine M. Niefeld, MA, MBA is a consultant and former associate director of the RTI Action Network.

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RTI aims to identify kids who are struggling in school. It uses targeted teaching to help them catch up. An important part of RTI is measuring progress and providing more support to kids who need it. If you look inside any general education classroom, chances are good that you'd see different students struggling for different reasons.

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Response to Intervention - or RTI - is a "practice of providing high quality instruction and interventions that are matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying student response data to important educational decisions. RTI should be applied to decisions in general, remedial and special education, creating a well-integrated system of instruction/intervention guided by student outcome data." ( Response to Intervention: Blueprints for Implementation; National Association of State Directors of Special Education, Inc.)

Response to Intervention practices are used most frequently to document and monitor the progress of general education students, to serve as an indicator of the need for early intervention, and to inform the development and evaluation of interventions. In , this concept has been in place for some time. Many Ohioans know it as the Pyramid of Interventions, or OISM ( Ohio Integrated Systems Model).

There are two broad purposes of RTI. The overall RTI approach is intended to ensure effective instructional and other educational services for all children to:

RTI is used with academic and behavioral support, educational evaluations, services and supports, including scientifically based literacy instruction. It can also be used as an effective tool with behavioral evaluations, including positive behavioral intervention and supports.

RTI practices are to be implemented by educators and STAT teams. It is expected that the interventions used will be developmentally appropriate and standards based.

In going through this process, student outcome data is "crucial" to:

Several schools in are implementing the Ohio Integrated Systems Model, a comprehensive, school wide prevention and intervention model that establishes support systems for addressing both academic and behavioral needs of ALL students. OISM incorporates accountability practices, data-based decision making, access to and progress in the general education curriculum, systems of intervention, scientifically based practices and meaningful parental involvement. OISM is supported by federal and state legislative requirements. As educators embrace OISM and its activities to improve academic achievement outcomes for all students, mismatches between traditional roles, functions and related practices on the one hand and those associated with OISM on the other are manifesting themselves. Like many professionals involved in implementing OISM and OISM-related activities (e.g., curriculum-based measurement, progress monitoring and school wide positive behavior supports), school psychologists are being charged with rethinking their traditional roles in education.

The "pyramid" approach is based on a system of supports that encompass three tiers. Eighty of students normally fall into Tier 1 which involves universal classroom instruction for all. Supports commonly found in each and every classroom are used in this tier and include such familiar things as having a curriculum aligned to the standards, using formative assessments to guide instruction, having grade level meetings to analyze data and determine the best next steps for the classroom. Tier 2 is often needed for 20-30 percent of all students and includes more strategic targeted interventions such as short-term interventions in a specific area of need to enhance and support the core curriculum, more frequent monitoring, or referrals to a team for added help and diagnosis. Tier 3 is more intensive support and interventions that apply to 5-20 percent of students. Included in this tier are specifically designed intensive supports and interventions for individual students, including counseling support. It is in this top tier that students may receive special education placement.

The union has a role in helping members meet the challenges of RTI implementation. With the changing roles of general education and special education classroom teachers, specialists, paraprofessionals, support staff, related service providers, and administrators, OFT uses its website as a source of information and resources for members. Knowledge is a key to proper implementation and we want our members to be armed with knowledge. We will use this vehicle to communicate information that will help you understand the facts about RTI. Further, we will advocate for members when issues arise around the implementation of this process.

Currently, the AFT, NEA, and NASP ( National Association of School Psychologists) are in the process of developing a training module on RTI that will be available online and free to all members. In addition, teachers and related staff should access training that supports differentiated instruction and student progress monitoring. The IDEA partnership website. www.ideapartnership.org, provides excellent information. Further, the new national center on RTI www.rti4success.org was developed to provide information to states and districts that intend to implement RTI. Visit both of these websites for additional valuable information.

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Response to Intervention (RTI) - What is it and how can it help students?

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Response to Intervention - or RTI - is a "practice of providing high quality instruction and interventions that are matched to student need, monitoring progress frequently to make decisions about changes in instruction or goals, and applying student response data to important educational decisions.