![Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory](/cover_679455.jpg "Best Practices at Tier 1 [Secondary] - Gayle Gregory")
referred to as a multitiered system of support (MTSS), the three tiers of RTI traditionally take the shape of a pyramid, with each tier representing a different level of support based on student needs. See figure I.1.
Figure I.1: Traditional RTI pyramid.
Tier 1 of the RTI model represents a school’s core instructional program, in which all students receive effective instruction on grade-level essential curriculum. While Tier 1 should meet most students’ needs a majority of the time, invariably some students will need a little extra help to succeed in core instruction. This is the primary purpose of Tier 2—to provide timely, targeted supplemental academic and behavioral interventions to ensure that those students also succeed in mastering their essential grade-level curriculum. For students who enter the school year with significant deficits in reading, writing, number sense, English, and academic or social behaviors, Tier 3 supports provide intensive academic and behavioral remediation in these foundational skills.
The goal of the RTI approach isn’t to move students from one tier to another; instead, RTI provides supplemental and intensive support in addition to core instruction. This approach recognizes that students who miss core instruction on essential grade-level standards in order to receive interventions are unlikely to catch up. This is because while these students receive interventions on previous learning outcomes, they miss the teaching of new content critical to future success—the proverbial “one step forward, two steps back.” With the RTI approach, however, the most at-risk students receive effective Tier 1 core instruction on grade-level essential standards, Tier 2 supplemental support in meeting these critical outcomes, and Tier 3 intensive instruction on foundational skills that the students should have mastered years ago. Collectively, these three tiers ensure that all students end the school year with the essential skills and knowledge they need to succeed the following year and beyond.
When RTI is viewed this way, one point becomes very clear: the entire RTI process is built on effective, grade-level core instruction. The foundation of a successful system of interventions is effective initial teaching (Shapiro, n.d.).
Recognizing Unrealized Potential
While federal law has promoted response to intervention since the reauthorization of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEIA) in 2004, most schools and districts are struggling to secure the student achievement results that RTI is proven to provide. Many states, districts, and schools mistakenly view RTI primarily as a new process to qualify students for special education, with the tiers serving merely as new hoops a school must jump through in order to place students into traditional special education services. As a result, screening assessments, cut scores, and program decision protocols predetermine student identification, placement, and duration in each tier. Instead of providing students with multiple tiers of support, this misapplication of RTI moves students from tier to tier on their path toward special education.
But without question, the most common reason that schools struggle to successfully implement RTI goes back to the foundation of the process—effective core instruction. Tier 1 instruction should successfully meet the needs of a significant majority of students most of the time. When it does not, the consequences manifest in multiple ways. Some schools, for example, find that too many of their students are failing after core instruction and need interventions, and the size of that need overwhelms their system of supports and its available resources. Similarly, some schools find that significant subgroups—such as English learners (ELs) or students with special needs—struggle disproportionately in core instruction. Instead of revising their initial teaching practices to better meet these students’ learning needs, many schools remove the students from grade-level core instruction and replace that instruction with remedial coursework. This decision virtually ensures that these students will never catch up. Removing students from the Tier 1 grade-level essential curriculum is nothing more than student tracking, a system that separates students into learning groups based on perceived ability. As Jeannie Oakes (1985) finds in her landmark study Keeping Track, this sorting continues to disadvantage those in lower-track classes. Such students have less access to high-status knowledge, fewer opportunities to engage in stimulating learning activities, and less engaging classroom experiences with teachers, peers, and learning. If the goal is for all students to learn at high levels, then all students must be taught at high levels.
When individual students struggle in core instruction, few schools begin the intervention process by assessing the effectiveness of the student’s core instruction. Instead, as special education expert David Prasse (n.d.) finds, schools traditionally operate as though “failure to succeed in a general education program meant the student must, therefore, have a disability.” In other words, the common assumption is that the student’s innate abilities are the cause of his or her struggles. Even if these students begin receiving interventions, they most likely will continue to receive ineffective core instruction for a majority of their school day. Supplemental and intensive intervention cannot compensate for ineffective initial teaching that does not differentiate instruction to meet each student’s unique learning needs.
Even when dedicated school staff members acknowledge that too many students are struggling in core instruction, the consensus and commitment to improve core instruction can be elusive. As a general concept, RTI is appealing to virtually all educators. Who, after all, wouldn’t want to provide extra support for students in need? But, too often, the enthusiasm for intervention wanes quickly when the focus turns to Tier 1, because improving this level of instruction requires a deep level of change that affects every aspect of the school day. It requires school staff to take collective responsibility for student success, collaborate regularly, agree on essential learning outcomes and pacing, differentiate instruction, abandon traditional teaching and assessment practices that were designed to create a bell-shaped curve of student success, and make significant revisions to the school’s master schedule and resource allocations—all actions required to meet each student’s individual learning needs. This level of change is exceptionally difficult. In the end, many schools struggle to improve core instruction because too many adults in the building are unwilling to accept the level of temporary disequilibrium and discomfort required to significantly change what they do all day.
Because schools have resisted efforts to revise their core instructional practices, many districts have responded by purchasing a research-based textbook series and then dictating that their teachers exclusively implement it as their core program. In the name of “program fidelity,” these districts often require teachers to utilize these programs’ lockstep lesson plans, assessments, and supplemental materials. Such an approach assumes that the curricular design and pedagogies in the textbook represent scientifically researched-based best practice, so classroom teachers should relinquish their authority to plan and differentiate instruction and instead serve as program facilitators. Yet, Hattie’s (2009) study finds that textbook series have a marginal effect on student learning. This is not to suggest that textbooks cannot serve as effective tools to assist teachers in core instruction or that educators shouldn’t implement research-based programs. The concern is that when the program dictates all elements of core instruction, it limits the results teachers can achieve. In the end, no silver bullet program can ensure effective teaching for all students.
If rigid adherence to textbooks and instructional programs is not a long-term solution to improve Tier 1 core instruction, then what is? The key is to ensure more good teaching, in more classrooms, more of the time (DuFour & Mattos, 2013). When students have access to classrooms that consistently provide a learning environment and instructional practices proven to dramatically improve student learning, more students will succeed. To achieve this outcome, one must answer a critical question, What is good teaching?
Identifying the Elements of Good Teaching
Good teaching is a dichotomy.
