Response
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Intervention
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Response to Intervention |
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A major concern for parents as well as teachers is how to help children who experience difficulty learning in school. Everyone wants to see their child excel, and it can be very frustrating when a child falls behind in learning to read, do math, or achieve in other subjects. Children who have the most difficulty are often referred for an evaluation to determine if they need and qualify for special education services. The term “learning disability” has been used for many years to explain why some children of normal intelligence nevertheless have much difficulty learning basic skills such as reading.
Some new federal laws have directed schools to focus more on helping all children learn by addressing problems earlier, before the child is so far behind that a referral to special education services is warranted. These laws include the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and the Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) of 2004. Both laws underscore the importance of providing high quality, scientifically-based instruction and interventions, and hold schools accountable for the progress of all students in terms of meeting grade level standards.
Simply, “Response to Intervention” refers to a process that emphasizes how well students respond to changes in instruction. The essential elements of an RTI approach are: the provision of scientific, research-based instruction and interventions in general education; monitoring and measurement of student progress in response to the instruction and interventions; and use of these measures of student progress to shape instruction and make educational decisions. A number of leading national organizations and coalition groups, including the National Research Center on Learning Disabilities and the 14 organizations forming the 2004 Learning Disabilities (LD) Roundtable coalition, have outlined the core features of an RTI process as follows:
Response to Intervention (RTI) is an array of procedures that can be used to determine if and how students respond to specific changes in instruction. RTI provides an improved process and structure for school teams in designing, implementing, and evaluating educational interventions.
Universal Screening is a step taken by school personnel early in the school year to determine which students are “at risk” for not meeting grade level standards. Universal screening can be accomplished by reviewing recent results of state tests, or by administering an academic screening test to all children in a given grade level. Those students whose test scores fall below a certain cut-off are identified as needing more specialized academic interventions.
Student Progress Monitoring is a scientifically based practice that is used to frequently assess students’ academic performance and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. Progress monitoring procedures can be used with individual students or an entire class.
Scientific, Research-Based Instruction refers to specific curriculum and educational interventions that have been proven to be effective –that is, the research has been reported in scientific, peer-reviewed journals.
IDEA 2004 offers greater flexibility to school teams by eliminating the requirement that students must exhibit a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement in order to be found eligible for special education and related services as a student with a learning disability. This increased flexibility has led to a growing interest in using RTI as part of an alternative method to traditional ability/achievement discrepancy comparisons. IDEA 2004 addresses RTI procedures within several contexts.
Effective instruction and progress monitoring. For students to be considered for special education services based on a learning disability they first must have been provided with effective instruction and their progress measured through “data-based documentation of repeated assessments of achievement.” Furthermore, results of the student progress monitoring must be provided to the child’s parents.
Evaluation procedures. The law gives districts the option of using RTI procedures as part of the evaluation procedures for special education eligibility. Comprehensive assessment is still required under the reauthorized law, however. That means that schools still need to carefully examine all relevant aspects of a student’s performance and history before concluding that a disability does or does not exist. As before, schools must rule out learning problems that are primarily the result of factors such as poor vision, hearing, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, lack of appropriate instruction, or limited English proficiency.
Early Intervening Services. IDEA 2004 addresses the use of RTI procedures is by creating the option of using up to 15% of federal special education funds for “early intervening services” for students who have not been identified as needing special education, but who need additional academic and behavioral support to succeed in the general education setting. The types of services that can be included are central to the RTI process, and include professional development for teachers and school staff to enable them to deliver scientifically based academic and behavioral interventions, as well as educational evaluations, services, supports, and scientifically based literacy instruction.
The hallmarks of effective home-school collaboration include open communication and involvement of parents in all stages of the learning process. Being informed about your school’s RTI process is the first step to becoming an active partner. Both the National Center for Learning Disabilities and the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities advise parents to ask the following questions:
Perhaps the most commonly cited benefit of an RTI approach is that it eliminates a “wait to fail” situation because students get help promptly within the general education setting. Secondly, an RTI approach has the potential to reduce the number of students referred for special education services. Since an RTI approach helps distinguish between those students whose achievement problems are due to a learning disability versus those students whose achievement problems are due to other issues such as lack of prior instruction, referrals for special education evaluations are often reduced. Finally, parents and school teams alike find that the student progress monitoring techniques utilized in an RTI approach provide more instructionally relevant information than traditional assessments.
There are many specific issues that must be addressed in order to effectively implement RTI approaches. Schools must be prepared to offer a variety of proven instructional strategies; staff must be trained to measure student performance using methods that are sensitive to small increments of growth; parents must be kept informed of these new procedures and made partners in the process. Teams must also determine how they will define an “adequate” response to an intervention—how much progress over what period of time will be the benchmark to determine if an intervention is successful? While forthcoming federal regulations will offer guidance, each school district will need to develop its own procedures based on their state regulations, resources and the needs of its student population.
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Wrightslaw
: What You Need to Know about
IDEA 2004 Response to Intervention (RTI):
New Ways to Identify Specific Learning Disabilities
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/rti.index.htm
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One of the primary job functions of school psychologists, of course, is assessment. As pointed out by Allison and Upah (February 2006 Communiqué), when implementing RTI, many school psychologists may worry about potential changes to their job role and a devaluing of their skills. In practice, most school psychologists have found that RTI actually makes greater use of their skill sets than whatever their role before. Because of its reliance on data to make decisions, RTI can enhance the need for a school psychologist and her/his skills in a school. However, some changes in practice may be necessary and it is important for the school psychologist to be aware of these in order to help others navigate them.
Often these terms are used interchangeably, but it can be helpful in navigating the implementation of RTI to think of how these terms are differentiated. If you think of assessment as the process of collecting information, it becomes easier to convey to teachers the need for standardization, reliability, validity, and using different assessments for different purposes. This leads to thinking about evaluation as the process of using information to make decisions (i.e., information collected through assessment). We often get caught up in the process of conducting an assessment because we had to or someone told us to do so. If we think about evaluation, it starts a dialogue about why we are conducting assessments. Teachers have a lot of different things to do every day. Having a reason to do something (or to not do it) can be very reinforcing as their time is valuable and at a premium. This can just be the starting point—other team members might begin to consider the purpose of their activities and find time for new by eliminating some of the old.
Because making decisions is a key part of evaluation, a school psychologist can guide others to look ahead to outcomes (what would you like to see happen?) and to what needs to happen in order to get there. Thus, in addition to the assessment/evaluation skill sets, a school psychologist’s consultation training is also critical. Working with others to develop observable, measurable outcomes as well as planning for the steps of implementation to get there is crucial. Within RTI, it is important to be thinking of the desired outcomes. The rule of thumb is that educational decisions should be about meeting educational goals. One of our primary tasks is to provide high quality instruction to our students (for academic, behavioral, social, vocational, transitional goals, etc.). This means that assessment data should be used to make decisions that lead directly to instruction.
In order for our assessment data to be used to guide instruction, we have to measure things that are important to developing, evaluating, or modifying instruction. As much as possible, we want measures that directly assess the skills we are interested in (sometimes called “low inference” measures). If we are interested in a student’s ability to read words fluently in connected text, we should select a measure that requires the student to read connected text—not one that has the student skip, put puzzles together, or copy line drawings. We want to use measures that require the least amount of inference as possible. Directly observing a student perform the task of interest is at the lowest level of inference in our assessment.
Just because a measure is direct, though, does not mean that it is relevant to the decision we are trying to make. Generally there are three questions that must be answered affirmatively when deciding if information is relevant:
1. Does this information align with the purpose for which I am conducting this assessment?
This takes us back to the use of direct measures. Make sure the assessment data have been validated for the purposed for which you need them.
2. Is this information about an alterable variable (or related to something alterable)?
If it is something we can not control, or does not affect our instruction, we should not spend time assessing it. We can control academic and behavioral performance; therefore these skills might be relevant to instructional decision making. Although we do not have control over a student’s visual acuity, there are accommodations we can make that are important (preferential seating, enlarged print). However, most things that we do not control do not help instructional planning (e.g., knowing how many people live in the student’s home).
3. Does this information link directly to instruction or interventions? Again, it is important to discuss validation of assessment measures.
After we have determined what is relevant or not relevant, we also need to determine whether we can obtain that information or not. Information that is relevant must be known. If we do not already have it available, we need to plan how to collect it (i.e., via assessment). Data that are not educationally relevant do not need to be collected. Including educationally irrelevant information in our decision making can mask otherwise valuable solutions or distract us from solving problems and working toward goals. As new information is gathered, it is sometimes useful to reconsider whether other pieces of information are relevant or not. Occasionally, new information makes us consider other information in a whole new light.
When thinking about assessment and evaluation, it is important to remember (and help others understand) that there are different ways of collecting the information needed to make decisions—tests are not the sole method of assessment. A handy rubric that is often used is RIOT—Review, Interview, Observe, Test. (See Figure 1.)
Using the methodologies of RIOT is usually common sense for most school psychologists. However, in education, we often focus all of our assessment efforts on the student and his or her characteristics. However, there are many other things that might impact a student’s performance, yet are still alterable by educators. These other sources are sometimes called domains and are represented by the acronym ICEL—Instruction, Curriculum, Environment, Learner (see Figure 1).
Considering the purposes for assessment and evaluation, what information is relevant, what is known or unknown, and planning assessment through the RIOT/ICEL matrix sounds like an awful lot to do. In actuality, the time required will vary from student to student and problem to problem. Saturation is the point at which a person or team feels that there is enough information to make an informed decision. There is no sure-fire way to identify when you have enough, but it is important to make our jobs as efficient as possible. Selecting assessment methods that are the most reliable and provide for the most valid interpretations is important to consider. Also, if there are two ways to get the same information and one takes half the time, but is less reliable, it might make more sense to use the faster procedure if time is at a premium. Using two different methods that take less time than one procedure is an even better use of time. This is another area where the training of a school psychologist becomes valuable to others in schools—helping with time management decisions. It is important to make sure that we balance the effort we put into tasks with the benefits of decision making and the desired outcomes.
While I am usually reluctant to use medical analogies for educational issues, I think this is actually a case where it might be useful. This is how a process of assessment and evaluation in RTI could look—very similar to how doctors diagnose and treat many illnesses:
A few years ago, I saw my doctor for a routine checkup. She started off measuring my vital signs--weight, blood pressure, temperature (akin to screening assessment in RTI). Two of the three (weight, blood pressure) indicated risk factors, predicting future difficulty if not addressed. At this point, she ordered some slightly more complex tests such as a cholesterol test--a diagnostic assessment. At the same time, she recommended that I improve my diet and start to exercise regularly--a Tier I intervention, something generally effective for all people and many problems. Now I had to buy a home blood pressure machine and measure my BP twice a day--progress monitoring or formative evaluation. In addition, I was scheduled for a follow-up test of my cholesterol, etc.--a sort of post-test of my Tier I intervention (summative evaluation). At this time, my physician also outlined potential Tier II and III interventions which were scientifically based on my symptoms. Tier II would be cholesterol-lowering drugs and possibly BP drugs if my elevated BP didn't respond to the change in diet and exercise. Tier III would be the most intensive intervention--we would only move to that if I exhibited a severe need (possibly the analog to a disability). I assumed "severe need" included a heart attack or stroke. There would be additional tests to determine these risks (a comprehensive evaluation?). At every stage, she collected data and used the data to guide decisions about which treatment to use. She selected these treatments because they had been validated to address my specific problems.
The diagnostic tests suggested additional problems which she thought might require extreme (Tier III) interventions--she was going to skip Tier II if the data indicated a severe need. Fortunately, we were monitoring my progress and over time, the additional tests showed that the "severe needs" responded to the Tier I intervention. If we hadn't monitored my progress, I would probably be missing an internal organ right now (which I don't believe happens in education), but more relevantly, resources would have been wasted on an unnecessary intervention—resources that could have been better used elsewhere.
Assessment and evaluation in RTI often require that we think differently about what we do as well as how and why we do it. Does it require different skills than those we normally use? Sometimes, but certainly skills that should be well established in any school psychologist’s repertoire. One of the most valuable contributions school psychologists can offer schools is our training using data to make decisions and to judge the adequacy of the data we use. School psychologists are in a prime position to serve as a resource to other educators to navigate changes in what, how, and why we evaluate students.