student backgrounds and interests. The first day of school is generally the first time we are introduced to our students, but the days that precede that encounter offer valuable instructional data. Each student brings his or her own backpack packed with strengths, weaknesses, and many prior home, school, and life experiences that shape him or her. This includes exposure or lack of exposure to vocabulary through conversation, reading, and real-world and multimedia experiences.
Successful educators need to know their subjects.
Students do not come to us as clean slates. Most students come to us with positive and negative academic, social, emotional, and behavioral experiences. These events comprise the baseline core academic and behavioral levels we must identify. As students enter each grade from preschool to high school, we learn to recognize the many scripts that precede that first day of school.
When teachers communicate and students believe that they are malleable and able to learn the core knowledge, additional progress occurs, despite the challenges presented. Successful academic outcomes are influenced by resiliency and the belief that change is possible (Yeagar & Dweck, 2012). Positive mindsets influence academic achievements. Some students have uphill journeys to achieve the core knowledge, but that is when teachers collaboratively provide the appropriate scaffolding to help students succeed, despite their learning, behavioral, emotional, social, communicative, sensory, or physical differences. In modern classrooms, diversity is the norm. In turn, multiple engagements and personalized learning experiences with tiered instruction also must be the norm.
Everyone has a backstory, but students are more likely to achieve success when teachers plan for, prepare, and deliver solid instruction, positive attitudes, and multiple curriculum entry points. This includes motivating lesson plans that offer diverse, step-by-step interventions for the whole class, small groups, and individual students. Lesson objectives must honor the academic core knowledge and also the class dynamics of the teacher’s audience—a diverse cast of characters known as students.
Teacher Expertise
Programs do not teach, but teachers do. Teacher expertise begins at the early stage of preservice at the university level and continually expands in school settings. A teacher’s development and expertise never stagnate. Universal screening and progress monitoring yield the appropriate selection of interventions for core instruction, but teachers need to make effective choices to honor an alternate way to identify students who need more intensive instruction or intervention (Wehman, 2013).
Programs do not teach, but teachers do.
After appropriate screening, teachers plan how abstract concepts are solidified in students’ working memories. Teachers must introduce and then reinforce concepts. The strategies they use go beyond direct instruction to involve cooperative learning and developing collaborative partnerships with other teachers, intervention specialists, instructional leaders, families, and students.
However, before any instruction occurs, teachers must conduct accurate assessment. According to William Bender (2012), “Assessment tools in the differentiated class should be selected by the teacher to specifically target discrete skills on which a student is struggling” (p. 111). Teachers must be able to identify the skills with which students need more assistance, and then choose the appropriate, evidence-based materials to implement Tier 2 and 3 interventions.
Teachers should use RTI as a vehicle, with formative assessments in the front seat to guide instructional decisions and interventions. They offer students assistance in RTI tiers, but it is important to note that the interventions are not exclusively teacher owned; students must learn to own their strategies. Once teachers determine that interventions are effective, they can modify and adapt them based on the data from both formal and informal assessments. Some students may need increased interventions, while some may require decreased interventions as time goes on. If students continually master the core curriculum, then teachers should be cognizant of how interventions are helping, not enabling, students.
Evidence-Based Practice
RTI includes evidence-based practices, but there is no universal definition for RTI based on a one-size-fits-all approach, since one size basically fits none. Although teachers often use evidence-based literacy and mathematics resources as part of the interventions, RTI is not a neatly packaged program (Scanlon, 2013); the multitiered levels structure classroom instruction. The following sections describe the basic tenets of RTI: cohesive framework, prescriptive and responsive instruction, and contextually engaging tasks.
Cohesive Framework
The RTI framework is cohesive, multitiered, and research based. Cohesiveness includes organization and structure. Core instruction, student-specific interventions, screening instruments, progress monitoring, and data analysis are integral to RTI (Gersten & Vaughn, 2009). Progress monitoring includes estimating rates of student improvement and identifying adequate student progress. When implemented with fidelity, RTI improves instructional quality to increase students’ chance of school success as they move on to postsecondary choices in colleges and careers (McInerney & Elledge, 2013).
Teachers make data-based decisions regarding using supplementary intervention for students who do not respond to the core instruction delivered in Tier 1. The teacher delivers the core in whole-class, small-group, and individual instruction. Basically, educators deliver core instruction in the continuum of support shown in figure 1.2. This inverted pyramid demonstrates educators’ collective responsibility for student learning by schoolwide teams and collaborative teacher teams. As noted, Tier 1 can also be referred to as primary instruction, Tier 2 as secondary instruction, and Tier 3 as tertiary instruction.
Prescriptive and Responsive Instruction
RTI is a prescriptive and responsive way to address student skill levels and needs. For many years, special education was the antithesis to the philosophy that one size fits all, some, or even most. But now, differentiated instruction supports all students in inclusive settings (Tomlinson, 1999). Ableism cannot replace individualization, nor should students be viewed from a deficit paradigm (Fierros, 2006). Prescriptive instruction acknowledges and responds to different abilities with tiered levels that occur in mixed-ability classrooms (Karten, 2015; Tomlinson, 1999). Fidelity to the programs teachers select is essential, but teachers also need to acknowledge that students do not fit into neatly wrapped packages. RTI is not a path to special educational services but a way to infuse good teaching practices that strengthen those areas in which students need improvement.
Source: Buffum et al., 2012.
Figure 1.2: Team responsibilities in the inverted RTI pyramid.
Buffum and colleagues (2012) write:
In the RTI process, schools do not delay in providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead provide targeted and systematic interventions to all students as soon as they demonstrate need…. Some schools mistakenly view RTI as merely a new way to qualify at-risk students for special education and focus on trying a few token general education interventions before referring struggling students for traditional special education testing and placement. (pp. 1–2)
Just as a doctor prescribes medicine in the right dosage with a policy of “do no harm,” teachers must select interventions that consider benefits versus the risks with scrutiny and respect for learner autonomy (Knott & Harding, 2014). Evidence-based RTI considers the amount and length of tiered interventions with quantity and quality
