Seven Ways RTI Can Fail

In this Kappan article, Brandi Noll (Ashland University, OH), who is a fan of Response to Intervention (RTI), discusses the ways it can wind up in the dustbin of reform efforts:

• Mandating a core reading program – “Requiring strict fidelity to a core reading program has failed to raise student achievement in reading,” says Noll. What’s especially distressing is that basals seldom boost the skills of at-risk students. Before purchasing materials, educators should consult one or more of these unbiased sources of consumer information:

• Florida Center for Reading Research: www.fcrr.org
• Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE): www.bestevidence.org 
• What Works Clearinghouse: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc 

More effective than relying on materials, though, is supporting teachers in implementing effective strategies and using assessment data (rather than a strict scope and sequence) to plan and sequence instruction. “Instead of assuming that materials are perfect or that materials teach students,” says Noll, “educators should focus on teacher skills because those skills can be used consistently over time regardless of the materials.” 

• Not focusing on high-quality Tier I instruction – Far too many districts spend heavily on Tier II and Tier III remediation, ignoring “the unbridled power of high-quality instruction,” says Noll. “Thirty minutes of intervention can’t make up for poor classroom instruction during the other five to six hours of the school day… Consistent, high-quality classroom instruction all day, every day, should be a number one priority for keeping students from initially entering or re-entering Tiers II and III.” And Tier I is not all whole-class instruction; it should match student needs through differentiation and small-group instruction.

• Not providing effective PD – “Schools should provide on-site professional development so teachers can have assistance with implementing literacy concepts in their own rooms, with their own students, and using their own materials,” says Noll. Teachers develop and grow when they get close-in, personalized, differentiated support and constantly look at how their students are doing. Schoolwide PD sessions should flow from data and insights from classrooms. 

• Not looking at results – Noll says she has sat through numerous conference presentations on RTI in which nobody in the audience asked the most important question: Do you have evidence that what you’re doing works? Some districts have solid results and methods we can learn from, she says, but they tend not to be out presenting at conferences because they’re “busy making sure that they get it right.” Noll lists the following research-based characteristics of successful Tier II and III interventions: 

• Early identification of students (in kindergarten or first grade) is crucial.
• Interventions are most effective when they occur regularly, i.e., 4-5 days a week.
• Effective programs focus on phonological awareness, decoding and word study, guided and independent reading of progressively more difficult texts, and comprehension strategies while reading real text.
• Certified teachers are the front-line troops; paraprofessionals can be effective if the intervention is fairly structured and provided one-on-one.
• Group sizes up to three can have a positive effect, but one-on-one instruction is most effective.

• Relying on commercial intervention programs – Boxed intervention programs are the reflexive prescription for Tier II and III, says Noll, but they have not proved to be effective beyond teaching simple decoding. “Rather than spending valuable resources buying commercial programs,” she says, “educators should examine research about highly effective, teacher-designed intervention practices.” 

• Failing to use good assessments – Throughout the year, teachers need detailed information on how students are doing with reading and writing, says Noll: “If we want struggling readers to become strategic, like their successful counterparts, we must know how they problem-solve as they encounter decoding or word knowledge issues as they read.” This means one-on-one, informal reading inventories and running records, not timed reading of grade-level passages in which teachers tell students the words they can’t figure out after waiting for three seconds. 

• Not supporting teachers as they analyze assessment results – A common problem, says Noll, is too many assessments and not enough time and training to make meaning of the data and think through instructional changes. “I have sat side-by-side with many primary grade teachers who have stacks of data on their desks, but little knowledge of how to turn that data into instructional changes,” she says. 

“Seven Ways to Kill RTI” by Brandi Noll in Phi Delta Kappan, March 2013 (Vol. 94, #6, p. 55-59), www.kappanmagazine.org; Noll can be reached at bnoll@ashland.edu. 

From the Marshall Memo #478