Section 1: Why RTI Is So Important

How do we know RTI really works?

25-30 YEARS OF RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND USE IN

THE CLASSROOM

RESEARCH HAS SHOWN THAT IT

WORKS WITH MANY STUDENTS WHO HAVE

SEVERE READING DISABILITIES…

60 CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 8 AND 10

RECEIVING SPECIAL EDUCATION SERVICES FOR AN AVERAGE OF 16 MONTHS

RECEIVED 67.5 HOURS OF ONE-ON-ONE INSTRUCTION, 2 HOURS PER DAY FOR 8 WEEKS

PROGRESS WAS FOLLOWED FOR TWO YEARS AFTER INTERVENTION

One study conducted in Florida during the mid 1990’s…

P-Pretest Pre Post 1 year 2 year

75

80

85

90

95

LIPS

EP

Growth in Total Reading Skill Before, During, and Following Intensive Intervention

Stan

dard

Sco

re

FLORIDA CENTER FOR READING RESEARCH (fcrr.org)

WE KNOW IT WORKS…

AND IT HELPS US SOLVE A BIG PROBLEM.

Children enter school with widely discrepant

language/literacy experiences...

• Literacy: 10,000 hours of exposure to print versus 10

• Language: 2,153 words versus 616 words heard per hour

• Confidence Building: 32 affirmations/5 prohibitions per hour versus 5 affirmations/11

prohibitions per hour

Consequences of getting off to a slow start in reading…

First Grade:Average number of words read per reading session

Biemiller, 1977-78

Fifth Grade Reading Practice…

• A student at the 10th percentile reads about 60,000 words per year

• A student at the 50th percentile reads about 900,000 words per year

• Average students receive about 15 times as much reading practice per year

12

Diagnosing Specific Learning Disabilities:

• cognitive and achievement tests

• substantial gap between higher IQ and lower achievement scores

‘severe discrepancy’ = Specific Learning Disability (SLD)

“Test-Score Discrepancy Model”

AND ANOTHER BIG PROBLEM…

Slow Learners who don’t exhibit a severe discrepancy

but need lots of extra help and can’t get it

(a.k.a., “DROP OUTS”)

Up to half of the students identified as Learning Disabled in

Reading really aren’t disabled. They started out behind and

couldn’t catch up.

Ineligible for SPED

What we end up with…

Why is Progress Monitoring Important?

How do we know if a student is making adequate progress?

(In other words…1.How well are they doing now?2.How well should they be doing?3.Are they making progress toward that goal?)

?

We can’t tell how they’re doing

unless we know where they need

to go.

We can’t help them reach their goal if we

don’t monitor progress and “fine tune” our

intervention.

The RTI team must meet on a regular basis to

make the intervention process effective. RTI team meets,

reviews progress, and modifies intervention

With regular monitoring and changes

to intervention, we make it possible for

students to meet their goals.

This is the only way the gap between low

performers and average performers can be

closed.