communities to team building, and more.
In retirement, Janet has presented at conferences, conducted professional workshops, and consulted with school districts throughout North America. Most recently, she has worked closely with Austin Buffum and Mike Mattos to co-create both the content of RTI at Work and the design of RTI at Work professional development offerings. Based on her range of experiences, she has made contributions to assessment, collaborative teamwork, leadership development, and facilitation of adult learning.
From her first teaching job to the leadership she demonstrates currently, Janet has always kept her focus on student learning. She passionately believes that in order for students to learn at their highest levels, the adults who serve them must be learning too.
To book Austin Buffum, Mike Mattos, or Janet Malone for professional development, contact [email protected].
Introduction
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite.
—Barack Obama
This book is about doing the right work. Success in school is the factor that most directly predicts the length and quality of students’ lives. A student that fails to succeed in our K–12 system is three times more likely to be unemployed, sixty-three times more likely to be incarcerated, and on average, lives at least a decade shorter than a college graduate (Breslow, 2012; Tavernise, 2012). Like any other professionals who make life-altering decisions on behalf of those they serve, educators have a professional and ethical obligation to utilize practices proven to best ensure every student succeeds. The very definition of profession is a vocation that requires specialized training in the practices deemed most effective in the field (“profession,” n.d.). When a preponderance of evidence proves that a particular process, protocol, or procedure is most effective, professionals are not merely invited to use it, but instead are expected to conform to these technical and ethical standards.
When it comes to how educators should respond when students struggle in school, the research and evidence in our field have never been more conclusive—response to intervention (RTI) is the right way to intervene. Also known as a multitiered system of supports (MTSS), RTI is a systematic process to ensure every student receives:
The additional time and support needed to learn at high levels. RTI’s underlying premise is that schools should not delay providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need. (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012, p. xiii)
Traditionally, the RTI process is represented in the shape of a pyramid (see figure I.1).
Source: Buffum et al., 2012.
FIGURE I.1: Traditional RTI pyramid.
The pyramid is commonly separated into tiers: Tier 1 represents core instruction, Tier 2 represents supplemental interventions, and Tier 3 represents intensive student supports. The pyramid is wide at the bottom to represent the instruction that all students receive. As students demonstrate the need for additional support, they receive increasingly more targeted and intensive help. Because timely supplemental interventions should address most student needs when they are first emerging, fewer students fall significantly below grade level and require the intensive services Tier 3 offers, creating the tapered shape of a pyramid.
RTI ranks in the top-three education practices proven to best increase student achievement.
Based on his meta-analysis of more than eighty thousand studies relating to the factors inside and outside of school that impact student learning, researcher John Hattie (2009, 2012) finds that RTI ranks in the top-three education practices proven to best increase student achievement. When implemented well, RTI has an exceptional average yearly impact rate of 1.07 standard deviation (Hattie, 2012). To put this in perspective, consider the following.
► A one standard deviation (1.0) increase is typically associated with advancing student achievement within two to three years (Hattie, 2009).
► Based on longitudinal studies, the yearly typical impact rate of a classroom teacher’s instruction ranges between 0.15 and 0.40 standard deviation growth (Hattie, 2009). This means a school that successfully implements RTI leverages a process that is considerably more effective than a school that leaves it up to individual, isolated teachers to meet students’ instructional needs.
► The greatest home or environmental factor that impacts student learning is a family’s economic status. Students that come from more affluent homes—defined as middle class or higher—gain a yearly academic benefit of 0.57 standard deviation growth per year (Hattie, 2009). This home support contributes to an achievement gap on standardized tests between affluent households and students of poverty that has grown more than 40 percent since the 1960s (Reardon, 2011), while the college graduation rate gap has increased more than 50 percent since the late 1980s (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011). RTI’s impact rate of 1.07—more than twice as powerful as what some students might receive at home each night—provides educators a proven, powerful tool to close the United States’ largest achievement gap.
Equally important, we know that a successful system of interventions must be built on a highly effective core instructional program, as interventions cannot make up for a toxic school culture, low student expectations, and poor initial instruction. Fortunately, our profession has near unanimous agreement on how to best structure a school to ensure student and adult learning.
Comprehensive study of the world’s best-performing school systems finds that these systems function as professional learning communities (Barber, Chijioke, & Mourshed, 2010; Barber & Mourshed, 2007). Additionally, virtually all our professional organizations endorse PLCs (DuFour, 2016). When implemented well, the PLC process is the best way to build the learning-focused culture, collaborative structures, instructional focus, and assessment information necessary to successfully respond when students don’t learn.
At a time in which our students’ lives depend on educators utilizing practices proven to be most effective, should we allow professional educators to disregard this overwhelming evidence and cling to outdated procedures? Would this be acceptable in any other profession? Imagine if you are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and you ask your doctor to identify your best course of action. In response, your doctor says, “There is a treatment process that, based on over eighty thousand studies, is the most effective way to cure your illness. It is proven to be multiple times more powerful than traditional treatments used throughout most of the past century. Additionally, the most successful hospitals in the world utilize this practice, and virtually all our medical organizations endorse this treatment.”
How would you respond? “When can we start?”
Now imagine if your doctor knows of this near unanimous professional consensus on the best possible treatment of your illness, yet disregards it and utilizes a less effective, outdated procedure. You would be outraged. We would consider such actions as professional malpractice, profoundly unethical, and grounds for removal from the field. Knowing what we know today about how to best respond when students struggle, there is no debate: implementing RTI within a professional learning community framework is the right work.
Knowing what we know today about how to best respond when students
