An Instructional Approach Expands Its Reach

Response to intervention started out as a way to identify and teach struggling readers and special education students, but it's fast becoming a way to change schooling for all students

By Christina A. Samuels

Ed Week

Response to intervention burst onto the national scene thanks to two major efforts by the federal government.

The $1 billion Reading First program ushered in with No Child Left Behind in 2002 gave a boost to the educational framework by encouraging schools to use it for their literacy programs.

Two years later, the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act said that states must permit districts to use RTI as one tool for determining if a child has a specific learning disability.

The process has been growing exponentially ever since, morphing along the way into new forms and educational uses.

In 2010, a survey of district administrators found that 61 percent had implemented an RTI educational framework or were in the process of spreading RTI throughout their districts. In 2007, that proportion was only about a quarter.Response to intervention involves early identification of students’ learning problems and the use of focused lessons, or interventions, to address those problems before they became entrenched. Though primarily linked with special education and early reading, the method is now used at all levels of schooling and in a variety of subject areas. Educators use “tiered-intervention” models—of which RTI is one type—to improve school discipline. Response-to-intervention models have also been used to improve instruction for English-language learners, with preschoolers, and as a lever for districtwide reform.

The process has been credited as a factor in reducing the overall rate of students diagnosed with specific learning disabilities, which has been on a steady decline since 2005. And in a time of constrained resources, response-to-intervention materials are one of the few areas where school districts are increasing spending.

The Evolution of RTI

The basic “pyramid of interventions” became a well-known symbol of response to intervention because it gives a quick visual representation of how an RTI program can function in schools. Some depictions evolved to show how RTI fits in a model of academic as well as behavioral supports for students. The National Center on Response to Intervention now ...

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