Implementing RTI in Secondary Schools

Diagnostic Assessments and the Three-Tiered Approach

Narrator: Too often, schools can be good places to get lost in the crowd. Students often slip into the background to avoid the embarrassment of needing help. It is the job of teachers and administrators to identify those students in need and to make sure they get the help required to ensure success.

Long used in primary schools, RTI is now making its way into secondary schools, where its proven methods are helping students to replace the frustration of failure with the gratification of achievement.

RTI's methods are equally effective, regardless of the socioeconomic or cultural differences of the students receiving extra help. But what is RTI exactly? And what does it bring to the secondary classroom?

Margaret Searle: RTI stands for Response to Intervention. Basically, it's the part of the IDEA special [education] law that says a school district needs to have research-based interventions, needs to progress monitor. And it, basically, was meant to get earlier intervention for students.

I think of RTI as a three-legged stool, where all three legs have to be in balance to really have the whole system hum. The first leg would be the assessment system, where the universal screening and the progress monitoring really give teachers a list of children who need to be on what I would call a "watch list." Those are the kids who are most likely to be in danger of failing.

The second leg would be the pyramid of interventions that would give the teacher the menu to choose from of what you do with the children who are on the watch list once you have identified them.

And, then the third part, or component or leg of the stool, would be the intervention assistance team, as some teachers call it, or the student support team. It's a problem-solving team that is the safety net that teachers can depend on when they run out of ideas and they don't know what to do with a student. They can say, "OK, can I have a team of experts to help me figure out what the next steps are?"

Narrator: Let's examine the first steps of RTI: universal screening, diagnostic testing, and progress monitoring.

Rashawn is a freshman at a high school that utilizes RTI. Like all the students in her school, Rashawn takes universal screening tests. In her case, a screening test revealed she was behind in reading.

Judy Mikita: When Rashawn first came to us, she came from a district where they weren't as intent on reading-writing workshops as we are. So, consequently we recognized her gaps very quickly. As a student, she was quickly bored after a page of work because she didn't know how to decode words; she didn't know strategies that, when she stumbled, she could do.

We really recognized quickly that reading was an issue because when we would settle down, when it was quiet-reading time, that's when Rashawn acted out. She, oftentimes, was very vocal about, "this is dumb, this is stupid. I don't know why I need to read. I don't need it for anything at all." So, we were armed with the fact that we can make this child read if given enough time and the right strategies.

I think the end of the first grading period, she was around a 30 or 40 percent for the work she had done, and it was devastating.

Source: From Implementing RTI in Secondary Schools: Diagnostic Assessments and the Three-Tiered Approach (DVD), 2010, Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

ASCD Express, Vol. 5, No. 15. Copyright 2010 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.