RTI got its name from observing how struggling students responded to research-proven interventions.   If the students did  not respond satisfactorily, another research-based intervention was selected.  This intervention change-out process continues until the student responds satisfactorily.

What I liked about the approach was that it focused on research-based interventions implemented by trained teachers and staff, and it stressed feedback, and it required teachers and staff to keep seeking research-based techniques that would work.  These are areas where the current typical special education (SE) programs fall down. RTI refocused effort from identification of the disability to finding effective interventions.

Typically, LD students were pulled out into resource rooms and  given remediation materials.  I think the research is clear that remediation is not the optimal way to work with LD students.  Rather, research-based approaches such as strategy instruction (SI) are what work, but very often are not employed in current SE classrooms, at least from what I have seen.

Michael Tate

From: learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:learningdisabilities-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Maureen Carro
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 5:12 PM
To: The Learning Disabilities Discussion List
Subject: [LearningDisabilities 4237] Re: Response to Intervention (RTI)

Here is what I thought the "tiered system" of "Response to Intervention" entailed:

1.  The classroom teacher notices the student is struggling in the classroom.
2.  More specialized classroom help is provided as the first intervention.
3. If the student continues to struggle in spite of the classroom intervention, he/she is referred to more intense, small group instruction.
4.  If the student still fails to "respond to the intervention", they  are referred to one-on-one, very specialized, intense, instruction.

My question:  Is this "fourth tier" struggling student not feeling like he/she is failing???!!   It seems to me that they now have to "fail" three times to get the right help!

For heaven's sake..... why not give every child the direct explicit instruction in the structure of the language..... starting with the alphabetic principle, moving to syllables, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and discourse.... that is needed to successfully read and comprehend text in the first place!


Maureen Carro, MS, ET
Academic Learning Solutions
Alamo, CA
mcarro at lmi.net<mailto:mcarro at lmi.net>



On Nov 3, 2009, at 2:17 AM, HKerr at aol.com<mailto:HKerr at aol.com> wrote:


The RTI initiative was originally, I believe, aimed precisely at adopting a different approach than the deficit one. The idea was originally, according to articles by people like Jack Fletcher, specifically to enable the whole environment to be considered and for us to move away from the assumption that 'failure' must mean deficit; that we must always seek to find a fault in the student, even his neurology. Recent literature seems to show that RTI has been subverted and is now being deployed as a measure which is used to 'identify, a 'deficit' in exactly the way the discredited discrepancy criterion was in the bad old days. For discrepancy read RTI, in other words, which had not been the point originally, as I understood it.

Hugo

at: http://www.hugokerr.info<http://www.hugokerr.info/>

"We're here to help each other get through this thing - whatever it might be." (Kurt Vonnegut)
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