Response To Intervention (RTI) in the Shoreline School District

Steve Hirsch, PhD, NCSP

Coordinator, WSU-EWU School Psychology Program

School Psychologist, East Valley School District

Special Education Consultant, OSPI

smhirsch@wsu.edu

Workshop Goals

The goal is for every staff member of Shoreline to understand and appreciate the need for an RTI data-based decision-making model.

For RTI to be implemented in Shoreline each school will ultimately have to submit an RTI plan to the district. The plan will outline when and how RTI will be implemented in that particular building.

What exactly is RTI?

What is now being proposed is a multi-tiered model of assessment and intervention where with each successive tier, intervention becomes more focused, more intensive and more individualized. Assessment becomes more focused and is always more intervention-based than in the past.

Progress during these interventions are monitored and decisions (including special education) are based on the data

Where is Washington on this?

The Federal Law went into effect around two yrs ago. This law, as part of the IDEIA Special Education Reauthorization indicated that states must allow districts the option of RTI for purposes of eligibility.

RtI: optional path for LD eligibility in WA To qualify a child for past 30 years as Learning

Disabled, we utilized the “LD Discrepancy Tables”. The latest WAC starts off with, “If the district chooses to use discrepancy as its model for eligibility, then these are the tables”. Wow!

Why RtI? What was so bad with the old model?

30-year old model: Refer to SST ; Test for Special Ed- Place in Sped or stamp “Does Not Qualify” What was wrong?

Children fell through cracks (delayed referral) Children fell through cracks (DNQ evaluation) Interventions designed after the DNQ evaluation Had to wait for child to sufficiently fail IQ testing not relevant to academic potential Academic achievement testing not relevant to

curriculum (the phantom grade equivalent)

Phrases that should never be heard again

“Let’s test again next year when the gap will be bigger” or “Could you retest them and find the extra point they need to qualify?”

“According to my testing, your child is reading at a 5th grade equivalent and therefore doesn’t qualify for special education help in reading”- but the child cannot read the 5th grade (or even 4th grade Social Studies text)

“Their IQ is 75; now I know why they aren’t producing work- I guess I’ll just have to lower my expectations”

So this is a Special Ed initiative? No!!!!!!!! It has come down through special education

mainly because congress was so concerned about how children ended up in special education (or didn’t), but this is really not about special education .

It is about coming up with a game plan to systematically help all students. Those that don’t respond to our help (interventions) probably have a disability which will require a different curriculum or type of instruction.

Reading the tea leaves: Will RTI be mandated with the reauthorization of NCLB?

How do you mandate a process for decision-making?

Congress will hear that RTI is good for all students

Congress will hear that RTI is the best way to implement the intent of NCLB

Congress will hear that RTI creates a logic so that what we are doing in schools makes sense

But you can’t mandate how folks think. Schools will no doubt be encouraged to follow such an approach or process and if congress doesn’t mandate it-I doubt OSPI will

RTI for Shoreline: Is it a direction we need to go?

Let’s face it-Shoreline is an extremely high-performing district as measured by the WASL (or MSP).

Certain populations exist to a lesser degree in Shoreline than in other districts e.g. ELL; Poverty; Migrant; highly Transient, Special Ed, but its their WASL scores that are failing to meet AYP. They are being left behind

Is EVERY student in Shoreline reaching their potential? Are there parents who believe that their ‘highly capable’

child is not reaching potential because they weren’t labeled ‘gifted’?

A Support-Systems Model for All Shoreline Students

Response To Intervention (RTI)

RTI represents a systematic and logical approach to assessment and intervention for all students, along with decision-making based on data rather than gut feelings or categorical labels.

What RTI is…

The focus is on monitoring progress while we expose the student to increasingly: more intensive, more need-focused and more individualized intervention

based on what the student needs This is the ‘Multi-tiered model’ of intervention

What RTI is…..

It is continually asking ourselves, “What does this student need, and where in the school or district can they get it?”

What RTI isn’t

RTI doesn’t focus on labels for eligibility or intervention-whether a student is ELL is irrelevant-what matters is what they need to be successful in the core curriculum right now!

-whether a student is Bipolar is irrelevant-what matters is what they need to be successful in the core curriculum right now!

-whether a student is gifted is irrelevant-what matters is what they need to be successful in the core curriculum right now!

-and if the student is likely to move in six months, we don’t initiate a time-consuming process to get help (referral to sped) and we don’t put off helping due to impending move. We act!!!

The multi-tiered model of assessment

Universal Screening (all students)Who is at-risk?

Diagnostic Assessment (only at-risk students)

Why are they at-risk?

Intervention Design

Progress Monitoring(only at-risk students)Is what we are doing

working?

If not, either modify or change

intervention

If yes, either continue intervention as is

or discontinue

RTI as a Problem-Solving Model Step 1: Problem Identification

Universal Screening to identify who is at-risk Step 2: Hypothesis formulation

Diagnostic Assessment to home in on reasons Step 3: Intervention Design

Team approach-student staffing Step 4: Progress Monitoring during intervention

Progress monitoring stage Step 5: Intervention revisit and revision if

needed More student staffing

Does Shoreline need RTI?Pretend you are a new teacher and its your first week of class

●Do you know to what extent your class is at risk to do poorly on high stakes state assessment?

●Do you know which students in particular are not on track (and how far off they are)?

●Are you aware of what intervention options are expected of you prior to calling in the cavalry (building resources such as Title)?

●Are you aware of ‘intervention pathways’ in your school for reading, math, written language and social skills that will help you get the support that the student needs?

Does Shoreline need RTI?

Will the progress of ALL the students in your class be reviewed to see what type of support they (and you) need, on a regular basis?

If a student is in Highly Capable, Title, SpEd or receiving any other support or intervention, are you aware of their progress while in these programs?

If the support isn’t working, can you expect a meeting to review progress and propose additional intervention?

Does Shoreline need RTI?

And finally, are you clear as to how and when a student might end up in special education with an IEP? Will the student be your most neediest? Will the decision be based on progress in

general curriculum rather than IQ scores and standardized testing?

Will the sped services be in the areas of greatest need (according to you as teacher)?

Our first focus must be the Core Curriculum (reading, math, written language, social-skills)

Do we have one in all areas? Is it taught with fidelity? (i.e. has there been

enough training) Are there gaps between the core and the

standards? Is the curriculum adequately differentiated so that

everyone has access to the core? Are you avoiding pulling students out of the core to

supplement the core? After all, how do you supplement what they are

not getting in first place?

Lack of success in the core curriculum triggers support

Support in the form of assistance in differentiated instruction

Support in the form of a team meeting Support in the form of additional diagnostic

assessment if needed Support in the form of intervention design,

implementation and progress monitoring Support, if needed, in ‘gap-filling’ (what

does the student need and where can they get it?)

Tier 1- the Core

Tier 2-Strategic

Tier 3-Intensive

Special Education

Culturally

Linguistically Diverse

Highly

Capable

At-Risk

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

RTI is a process and there is no one RTI model. Every district, every school, will tweak the basic tenets of RTI so that they can be followed in that particular building given its unique population, its unique staff, its unique set of resources, and its unique group dynamics

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

RTI is all about a group of educators (including parent) using their professional judgment to make the best educational decisions for a student that they can.

The major criticism of RTI seems to revolve around the lack of trust one district has for another

Rules are more like guidelines in RTI. The team decides if: A student is in making adequate progress with

intervention and whether the intervention needs to be continued, intensified or changed

A student is in need of English Language services A student is in need of an accelerated learning program A student is eligible for special education

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

RTI is multi-tiered. Tiers are layers of intervention that are More intensive than the in previous tiers More focused than in previous tiers More individualized than in previous tiers

Tiers does not equate to different curriculum. It may or it may not dependent on student’s needs

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is no longer a three letter word. We could define it as the difference in percentage of students who are on track to pass high stakes assessment in September versus May. Same students, same assessment-our focus will be on progress

Effective programs result in a greater percentage of students reaching benchmark (and therefore more likely to pass WASL) over the course of the year

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

Redefine Research-based intervention as evidence-based with the distinction being that you don’t need to find research studies to support what you think might work for a student- you need to document the impact of what you did (turn it into a research study), using a comparison of baseline data to post-intervention data. Leave your gut out of it!

Just so we are all speaking the same language here in Shoreline

Decisions are to be based on data collected during progress monitoring. Such data is collected at the student’s instructional level and indicates whether they ‘can’ learn if they have the necessary prerequisite skills.

Screening data is just that and only that: it allows us to ‘red flag’ students not on track to pass high stakes assessment.

Where do we go from here?

Professional Development of a specific nature (e.g. teaching of content-embedded reading at secondary)

All schools in Shoreline should begin to formulate an RTI-based decision-making model.

Danger of having only the elementary schools pilot RTI-bottleneck-an unbelievable number of initial special education referrals in secondary schools

Danger of having only the elementary schools pilot RTI- unsuccessful secondary students since the ‘rug of support’ has just been pulled out from under them

The option to not problem-solve all of the obstacles that arise? “What if we don’t do RTI?”

Some students will leave Shoreline schools without adequate skills to succeed at next level-they are left behind.

Are you willing to write them off? RTI is work; it’s meetings; it’s brainstorming; it’s

out-of-the box thinking and it may be redesigning the way you are doing things right now. Are you willing to do that to help those students? (hopefully you are feeling quite guilty at this point)