>>Welcome, I am pleased that you joined us for his webcast on response to intervention co-sponsored by the office of elementary and secondary education and the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the US Department of Education.

I am Dr. Jackie Jackson Director of Student Achievement and School Accountability Programs and the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. My office is responsible for administering the Title I Part A Program. Part of this responsibility includes providing technical assistance and guidance to states through a variety of forums such as this webcast.

The purpose of this webcast is to share information about response to intervention commonly known as RTI. RTI is in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, but it is a General Education strategy to help all students receive appropriate intervention and prevention. So why are we sharing this information about RTI with you? RTI helps ensure that all students receive the necessary educational interventions to meet their learning needs. RTI used in the classroom generally leads to earlier and more appropriate identification of children with disabilities.

The idea is prevention. The earlier school staff can assess all students needs and identify those at risk. For more effective, quicker and less expensive the task is to help those struggling learners catch up. The length of time a student goes without assistance is proportional to the need for longer and more intense services and is less likely to be successful.

RTI is an instructional process. It utilizes scientifically based instruction. It positively impacts the achievement of all students including all student subgroups such as migrant students, homeless students and English-language learners. It enables educators to target scientifically based instructional interventions to children's areas of individual need and it prevents the identification of children for Special Education because the child has not received appropriate instruction. The use of RTI relies on collaboration between general and Special Education. Both the individuals with disabilities education act and Title 1 have the same goal to ensure that all students succeed.

RTI helps schools to provide services and interventions to all learners including those at risk as early as possible and as intensely as needed. I hope this information in this webcast informs your knowledge about the range of tools available to help you strengthen your own capacity to improve teaching and learning in your districts and schools. It is now my pleasure to introduce Renée Bradley from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services. Renee’ will serve as the moderator today and will introduce you to our webcast panel.

>>Hello, I am Renee’ Bradley from the US Department of Education Office of Special Education Programs Rehabilitative Services. I’ll be serving as your moderator for today’s panel. It’s my pleasure to introduce to you Dr. Lynne Fuchs. Dr. Lynne Fuchs is a professor and Nicholas Hobbs Chair and Special Education and human development at the University at Vanderbilt. She also co-directs the national research center on learning disabilities. Dr. Fuchs is the recipient of many awards for research and education, including the research award for Council for exceptional children.

Doug Marston is a Special Education administrator in the Minneapolis public schools and adjunct faculty in educational psychology at the University of Minnesota. Doug has published several articles on the use of curriculum-based measurement and problem solving model. Brandy Meade is a 5 th grade teacher at Dalton Elementary Coeur d'Alene . Dalton elementary is a model RTI sight a National Research Center on Learning Disabilities.

>> The term responsiveness to intervention or RTI refers to a multi-layered prevention system, the purpose of this multi-layered prevention system is to identify academic difficulties as early as possible and then to provide effective interventions to preclude the development of long-term and serious problems. The first layer in a multi-layer prevention system, called primary prevention refers to General Education, where we expect the vast majority of children to profit academically.

This, of course, assumes that the core curriculum is well-designed and based on strong research principles. But regardless of how well the core curriculum is designed, there will always be some children who fail to profit academically in a General Education core program. To identify students who will fail to profit from the core General Education program. There are two activities that are typically done. The first is that all children in a school are screened at the beginning of the school year. With screening all students are tested once on a relatively brief test. For this screening test research studies have established a cut score students who score below that cut score are considered likely to develop long-term serious academic difficulties.

Students who score above that cut score are unlikely to develop serious long-term academic difficulties. But unfortunately, it's difficult to set these cut scores with very high precision, and we do need high precision for an RTI multi-layer prevention system to work well. We don't want to miss any children, who will eventually experience long-term academic problems, because it’s important get prevention service to these children as quickly as possible. On the other hand, it is costly for schools to provide extra services to children who would do fine without those services.

For these reasons, based on the work that we've done an RTI as part of a national research Center and learning disabilities, we recommend setting a cut score relatively high at the beginning of the school year screening to identify approximately half the school population as potentially at risk.

Then teachers conduct systematic progress monitoring on a weekly basis for this subset of potentially at risk students for five to eight weeks. Teachers use those progress monitoring data to confirm risk of the subset of students who don't show adequate progress on those five to eight weeks of progress monitoring and to disconfirm the risk status of children who do demonstrate adequate progress on those five to eight weeks of progress monitoring. The subset of students who scored low on the screening, and his five to eight weeks of progress monitoring data show inadequate response to the primary prevention in General Education program enter what we call secondary prevention. For secondary intervention the academic programs are more intense for difficulties that are primarily academic in nature, where no extreme behavioral difficulties seem to underlie the academic problem. Secondary prevention involves one or more rounds of small group tutoring. The tutoring is standardized, this means that the tutoring protocol has been demonstrated in rigorous studies to help the vast majority of children.

Typically, tutoring is implemented outside of the classroom by a certified teacher. Sometimes the classroom teacher sometimes a different teacher and some times and standardized tutoring protocol that's used for secondary intervention is implemented by a well trained and supervised aid and it's conducted during the school day. Typically they tutoring occurs three to four times a week for 30 to 45 minutes per session, and it lasts for anywhere from 10 to 30 weeks. These standardized tutoring protocols often incorporate components. Not only address the students academic difficulties, but also helps students develop motivation to do well and to work hard.

By contrast, for students whose difficulties are laced with extremely problematic behavior, like students who show aggressive behavior in a regular classroom. I want problem-solving approach to secondary prevention is typically used. With a problem-solving approach a functional analysis is conducted to determine the situations and the consequences to behavior that maintained a problematic behavior then the teacher restructures the environment to systematically modify the situations and consequences. The goal is to help students behave in a manner acceptable and non-disruptive to the classmates. At the same time, because students who manifest seriously problematic behavior in the classroom these students are often also behind academically.

So is standardized tutoring protocol is sometimes implemented along with a problem-solving functional analysis. But regardless of whether a students difficulty is primarily academic or behavioral, and RTI multi-tier of prevention system requires systematic assessment of whether the student responds to the secondary prevention program. Typically, this assessment of responsiveness to the secondary prevention program is conducted using weekly progress monitoring. So each week during secondary prevention the tutor or teacher collects a brief progress-monitoring test. When the students rate of improvement and final performance after tutoring a commensurate with well-established standards for adequate response the student exits the secondary prevention. He rejoins his classmates in a primary prevention regular education program of progress monitoring continues so that if the core curriculum proves inadequate to sustain good progress.

This student can return for an additional round of small-group secondary prevention tutoring. It's important to note, researchers are investigating standards for accurately distinguishing responders from non-responders to secondary prevention. Some tentative standards designed to be used with specific progress monitoring systems are available. And when school is considering using an RTI multi-layer prevention system. They need to systematically consider different progress monitoring tools, and one important consideration is whether that progress monitoring system provides a useful and database set of criteria for distinguishing adequate from inadequate response to the secondary prevention program. It’s also important that these progress-monitoring tools that schools adopt provides information that helps schools determine what adequate response to primary and tertiary prevention is.

So what is tertiary prevention? Tertiary prevention is the next layer in the multi-layer prevention system students who failed to demonstrate adequate progress. In response to the secondary prevention layer and tertiary prevention for academic difficulties this means that the student has failed to respond to a validated standardized small group tutoring protocol. This means that this student requires a more individualized and more intensive approach to academic instruction. So at a tertiary intervention level progress monitoring is used to interactively formulate and effective instructional program and instructional component is introduced. Progress monitoring data are collected for several weeks to determine whether that instructional component is affecting better growth. It so, instructional component is maintained. If not that instructional component is eliminated from the program. Then another instructional element is introduced, and the iterative process of building an effective individualized instructional program continues.

Often but not always the tertiary program requires more instructional time each week – then does the secondary intervention program, and typically tertiary intervention is conducted under the auspices of Special Education by a certified Special Education teacher, individually or in small groups. In this slide, you see the estimated proportion of students who are expecting to be served effectively leaving each layer of a multi-tier prevention system. The foundation or days of the triangle represents primary intervention. Most of the research data we had indicate that approximately 80 to 85% of the student population will profit well in primary prevention. Of course as I said, that the quality of primary prevention is good.

So we expect between 15 and 20% of the student population to enter secondary intervention in a classroom with 20 students this might mean that two to three students in that class would enter secondary intervention and the best data we have available today indicates that we can expect at least half of the students who enter secondary prevention to respond nicely so that only 5% of the student population would be expected to enter tertiary interventions. In this next slide, you see a students progress monitoring data. The first asterisk on the left-hand side of the slide shows the students screening in data point. It is a first grader, and his graph represents his performance in the area breeding on a progress monitoring and screening tool known as word identification fluency, where students read aloud for one minute from a list of high-frequency words.

We see in that asterisk on the left-hand side of the slide that this student scored below the cut point on the screening. They are for the teacher monitor his progress for eight weeks, and that’s first data path that you see, under the umbrella that says tier one. Here this student was making some progress, but it was less than the progress we expect first-graders to make as shown on the word identity identification fluency measure.

So this student entered secondary intervention, and that's the second data path that you see there and what we see here is that the students rate of progress in response to secondary prevention takedown method criteria for a strong response to secondary prevention, and therefore exit its secondary intervention and reentered the primary prevention General Education program.

In this next slide, we see a different story, here as shown in the asterisk this student also scored below the screening criterion to cut score and then we progress monitored him for five to eight weeks. We see very little growth in the General Education program, and so this student entered secondary intervention. And here again we see very little response to secondary prevention, and so this student would then go on to enter tertiary prevention.

Now research suggests that when secondary prevention tutoring is conducted well. The prevalence of learning disabilities will be reduced. For example, in our work at the national research center on learning disabilities, we've designed research-based secondary prevention tutoring protocols that reduce the prevalence of learning disabilities and other researchers have provided similar evidence using their own or commercially available research-based tutoring protocols.

Here's a example of the research-based secondary prevention tutoring protocol that we studied with a national research center on learning disabilities. It addresses first grade math on and some important components of the tutoring protocol is that it was delivered in small groups of two to three students. It occurred three times per week outside of the students classroom. It lasted for 20 weeks, and each session, which lasted 40 minutes comprised 30 minutes of teacher led explicit instruction in math as well as 10 minutes of computerized drill and practice to help students master number combinations automatically.

Now how do we train our tutors will first it's important to say that our tutors was almost entirely uncertified teachers who were trained and carefully supervise. Initially, these tutors attended a half-day workshop, where they learn in general tutoring routine as well as learned and practiced the first unit that they would be delivering to children. Tutors practiced implementing a tutoring protocol with each other and with his supervisors until they could implement that tutoring protocol with 100% accuracy. Then each week the tutors and his supervisors met and they problem solved to make sure that they could handle children's behavior problems and could address the learning problems that children were showing on in the area of math.

And then before each new unit, the tutors attended another training session where they learned how to deliver the next instructional unit. So the tutor led instruction comprised an approach that we call concrete abstract representational instruction where children are learning that my math concepts using manipulatives. We address 17 scripted topics that interest a broad variety of math topics that are typically covered in the first grade curriculum. Each small group session lasted 40 minutes and all or the sessions were audio taped and that way the supervisors could sample listen to the lessons as they were being implemented, not some of them, not all of them, but some of those lessons and could provide feedback to the tutors to help them address some of the difficulties that they were experiencing.

We found strong support for the efficacy of the tutoring on a variety of measures including calculation measures, concept and application measures, and story problem measures on the calculation and concepts and applications measures, in fact, the tutored children who are at risk, grew more they improved more then not only students who were at risk they didn't receive tutoring, but also they grew more than students in their classrooms who were never considered to be at risk. On story problems, students who were not at risk did grow more in the at risk tutor children for the at risk tutor children did grow better than me at risk students, who did not receive tutoring.

And the tutoring did reduce the prevalence of math disability in first grade, and depending on the type of live the way they redefined half disability for example scoring below the 10th percentile on a standardized measure of concepts and applications, the incidence of math disability at the end of first grade went from 10% to 5% and at the end of second grade, the incidence of disability one year later after tutoring and ended with still twice as high in the students who did not receive tutoring compared to the students who did receive tutoring.

So, I thought this illustrates identify students promptly and those who look like they may be at risk and delivering to those children scientifically validated or research-based interventions to try to preclude the long-term difficulties can be an effective way of organizing prevention services and RTI or a multi-layered prevention system is an important organizing framework for delivering those services.

>>In the Minneapolis problem-solving model, we use a three-stage model. In which school staff examines student response to intervention. At stage one of our model, General Education staff are asked to implement a change or modification to the students academic instruction if they feel that the student has not responded to General Education or primary intervention and the student is discrepant from the expectations of school staff or parents.

These secondary interventions are implemented by the classroom teacher and are known as Stage 1 Classroom Interventions. After four to six weeks if the teacher has evidence of the student is not improving the teacher is asked to address the students needs at the school problem-solving team. This is Stage 2 of the problem solving model, and it utilizes building intervention assistance teams that bring together other school staff to discuss and develop more intensive interventions than might be available in the classroom.

Recommended timelines for stage two were six to eight weeks the problem-solving team reviewing student data to determine if the student was responding to a stage two intervention. For those students who do not response to this intervention, a formal Special Education evaluation is conducted at stage three. During stage three, staff are encouraged to continue their interventions while conducting a comprehensive evaluation of student needs for the determination of Special Education eligibility. It’s important to note that the problem-solving model has four important steps.

First we want staff to look closely at student academic and behavioral difficulties and be specific in describing student needs.

Second, once these needs are described we ask staff to select the best practice intervention that they believe will accelerate students learning.

Once the intervention is implemented, the third step begins-the monitoring of student progress and evaluating how well the invention is working.

Finally, in step 4, staff are asked to repeat these steps of the student is not responding to the invention. The backbone of the problem-solving system or the RTI model number using his frequent review of student data in order to see if secondary interventions are working and if students are responders or non-responders.

As Lynne Fuchs pointed out in her introduction, looking at student data on a frequent basis is important. Fortunately, the progress-monitoring model that she described was prevalent in our district when we first instituted the problem-solving model. In the early 1980’s, our district created progress-monitoring probes based on the model that was developed by Dr. Stanley Dino at the University of Minnesota.

We soon recognize that these procedures while we start in Special Education were useful in regular education, but early 1990, schools were using this kind of data for school improvement plans and looking at student progress. As schools began implementing the problem-solving process, progress monitoring became an important indicator for helping staff determined that the student was responding to interventions within the multi-stage model.

Our outcomes were encouraging we had an independent evaluation and a study of interventions that were used in traditional schools using a typical identification model for Special Education versus the problem-solving model and the independent evaluators determined that the quality of interventions use at the problem-solving site had higher quality than traditional site.

Now about midway through our implementation of the problem-solving model our district adopted a plan that focused on serving all students with academic difficulties. This plan which was implemented in the mid 1990s included improving our screening of students with academic and behavioral difficulties -- improving the range of the regular of interventions that we have available in reading and math and also in behavior -- increasing our to training on these methods -- developing progress monitoring teams in problem-solving teams a look at the student data talk about interventions and then creating a district wide website in which all staff to take a look at student data and make data-based decisions.

To do this we pull together a team of interdisciplinary team of folks from all the different departments in our district curriculum and instruction Title I research and evaluation, gifted and talented, multicultural education and Special Education and the various times we had building principles, EOL staff, school social work, and other staff development folks involved with this effort. This activity produced a district-wide effort building upon the problem-solving model to look at student performance.

In the area of screening, our district utilized district standardized achievement measures -- progress monitoring measures and other district assessments to help determine which students had significant needs. And in the area of behavior we developed our own behavioral screener, which is a twelve-item checklist in which teachers rate how well students are doing in the classroom management externalizing behavior and socialization.

For students below district criteria on the achievement measures and behavior measures, an intervention was implemented for the student in the hopes that it would accelerate student learning. Developing a wider range of general at interventions led to a variety of staff development activities and this involved collaboration of many departments again in our district again for construction title I Special Education were involved in providing these trainings and professional development opportunities. In the area of intervention assistance teams did quite a bit of work in and helping of staff and schools get together to talk about student data think about trends in student data in order to document whether the students were responding to interventions.

Are these teams consisted of General Ed teachers are title I teachers, EOL teachers, school psychologists, building support staff and the school social worker. While the composition of the school problem-solving team often varies from school to school, it is this a diverse nature of it that its strength is this team that identifies more intensive secondary interventions to be implemented across the school for those students who need more than stage one classroom intervention. An essential component, as I stated earlier, of this process is data and it’s obviously necessary to a review student performance and examine response to intervention. It was at this point were our district and to interdisciplinary planning team created a district website in which has become our student data warehouse to help all staff look at student performance. In our response to intervention system, all teachers monitor progress and screen in the fall, winter and spring.

All screening is conducted by the end of September. The data is input into the district website and teachers log on and take a look at data such as the data as you'll see on this slide. On the slide were looking at a classroom in student performance on achievement, attendance, progress monitoring, and suspensions. Our REA department research and evaluation has done correlational studies to help us predict how well students are going to doing state accountability tests and we’ve color-coded all of the students as red, yellow or green.

Students that are coded green are students that the data suggests are on track to be proficient on state tests of accountability. Students that are coded yellow are predicted to be partially proficient so they will need a more intensive intervention and then those students that are red will need the most intensive intervention of the predicted to not be proficient at all on the state test of accountability. The nice thing about this website that we created, is that teachers can look at all of their data all of their students at one time. They can click on any of these headings and sort through their students from top to bottom to help determine who has the most significant needs.

On the next slide, we have our progress monitoring data – it’s a second grade classroom and we’re looking at fall, winter, spring data on this drop line chart. And what this allows a teacher to do is look at individual student data with Crichton-based measures and how well they are growing in comparison to the benchmark, but they need to be at if they are going to be proficient on the test. It's this kind of data that helps teachers determine if the students are responding to intervention and whether they need to go to a more intensive stage of interventions or return to the core instruction.

In his last slide, we have some data from our early literacy effort in which we measure performance in kindergarten students fall, winter, and spring. What we have here is letter sound data for fall, winter, and spring with a suggested benchmark that we use. Students not meeting this benchmark or students that enter the problem-solving model and receive more intensive services.

>>I have been asked here today to share with you some information from the General Education teacher’s perspective and pretty much what I’m going to share are the positive attributes for RTI in my school, Dalton Elementary in Coeur d'Alene , Idaho.

I’m going to share some challenges that faced along the way and continue to face. And I’m also going to share two different case studies. Both of which are students that I had in my classroom – one that we were able to exit off his I Plan and the other was a little girl who did continue on to Special Education and I’ll take you through the steps of all of that. What I’ll talk about first are the positive things and there are far more positives than negatives -- I can say that right up front.

The first is that through the RTI model, teachers and our administrators have become very reflective about the data we’re receiving for not only our progress monitoring but also our state-wide assessments as well. We are making good sound instructional decisions for our students at Dalton because we’re looking at the data and using that data to drive our decision-making. The next thing is that we are using research-based materials to instruct our kids, not only in the General Ed curriculum but also in our interventions.

The next thing is is that at Dalton we have made some school wide changes based on us implementing the RTI model because we needed to find ways that we could reach all of our kids. And in doing that, we have implemented something that we call SWITCH. And what we do, is we have skills based groups for reading and math. And in 5 th grade we have 4 teachers – we have three General Ed teachers and one advanced learning teacher. And then we separate the kids based on their point of need in reading and math and then each teacher takes them forward from there so that is something exciting that we have started. That is now district wide and we have seen some real positive results for that in our test scores. So we’re very happy with that model.

The next thing is the teachers are loving this model because we don’t have to wait for our kids to fail any more to get them help. It’s an early intervention model – we are moving right along and we’re real happy with getting the help they need right away. We’re seeing tons of kids in Kindergarten and 1 st grade and in second grade and that really tapers off as they get older. We don’t see as many third graders or fourth graders or fifth graders in our TI team. The next thing is is that Special Education and General Education have really come together – kind of a bridge – what happens is that they start with me in General Ed and then our Special Education will swoop in and help me out when she can or use one of her assistants to help me – provide interventions, or just and extra body in a SWITCH group with kids who are struggling with reading or math and it’s really become seamless between Special Education and General Education.

The kids don’t even really know who the Special Education teacher is – she’s in and out – and around all the time and there’s no stigma to working with a Special Education teacher anymore, which is very exciting. I would say that some of the positive changes have been our school’s psych’s roles have changed, she is out and helping to provide interventions and helping us as teachers with whatever it is we need help with because she is not freed up to do that and we appreciate that very much.

The next thing is is that our students don’t fall through the cracks. When we have a kid on the RTI calendar, we already knew that they were going to be on there. The only time that we don’t know the name is if they moved into the building. They are very aware of how all of our students are doing and how much effort and things like that that our teachers are putting into our students education. And finally, something very exciting for our district is that our LD numbers have decreased by 35% since our elementary schools have come on board with the RTI model. And so I think that proves very clearly that it works and we’re very happy about that.

Next, I’ll talk about the challenges. And they’re certainly are some because the RTI model is really a shift – you’re going from the – as a General Education teacher – he’s broken please fix him…to what can I do to fix him? What can we do as a team to help get this kid the help that he or she needs. And so that is a big shift and it’s a hard one for some people but the thing that I would like to say is that RTI is hard work worth doing. It is really so beneficial for students and teachers that I think because of the RTI model I have become a stronger teacher. Just because of the programs we’re using, the interventions that we do, and I think that that is the key right there. But other than the philosophy shift, you need to have your administrator buy in first of all because you’re model probably will not succeed if your administrator isn’t a large part of that and second of all you have to have your staff buy in. Your staff has to see that it’s going to be hard getting started but that it will become easier, it will become part of your routine, it’ll become what you do for kids.

The next thing that is tricky in my state is the training. The training is mostly provided by our state people and we’ve had people in and out so it’s been intermittent but I think that all states will kind of go through the growing pains of this and find some way to get the people the training they need.

The next thing is the intervention program was first for us hard to find, but now they are everywhere and they are research based and they are amazingly well put together and they are very good for the kids. So that was a challenge but it’s now becoming easier. What we need are progress monitoring tools that are very skill specific – time, money, things like that – the kids can do the computation what they can’t do is maybe tell time or count out change and those are the progress monitoring tools that we’re having a hard time finding. But I know they will show up. We’re just starting this process and they’ll get there. One thing that we do at our school is that we hang on too long. We keep kids on our I Plans and we keep trying and trying and trying and we’ll pull this out for as long as possible. And I think that we were looking at it as General Educators as a failure.

For us to say all right, Special Ed, now this is your student. It’s not a failure, we have figured this out. And we are very happy to send them along though we know that we have done everything that we possibly can to get them where they need to be. And if they can’t make it then they need that setting in which they get that specialized instruction for however much time they need. And that’s just something that I cannot provide as a General Educator but our Special Ed team certainly can do that. So, that’s something that we struggle with but we are getting better with that too. The next thing is money. That it will be a challenge because everything costs money. Your materials cost money, your training costs money, your release time costs money, all of those things cost money. And so that is a large challenge but, again, we have become very good at figuring out how to make that happen and a huge part of that is due to our principle. And, again, that’s where that administrator piece comes into play. How important they are to your model as a whole.

I have two case studies that I would like to share with you. The first is, before I taught fifth grade which is what I teach now, I taught third grade – that was kind of the make it or break it year. That’s what we saw. That’s where we exited the most kids off I Plans and that’s where if we had a student who was still struggling and that’s when we moved them into tier 3. So, I had a boy in third grade and he came to me on an I Plan and he just wasn’t a fast reader. He, for the most part, understood what he was reading but he just wasn’t very fast at it and we have a test in our state called the Idaho Reading Indicator and he wasn’t able to pass that and that’s a big deal in our state. So, what we did is had him in a skills based group and he worked on phonics and decoding and, of course, the fluency piece and comprehension. And throughout the year, he was making progress but he wasn’t able to close that gap between himself and his peers and so we really, really wanted to make sure that he was able to do that so he received tutoring over the summer and entered fourth grade at grade level. And so he was a huge success story and he’s also in my class again this year and it’s so exciting to share those results with his parents. Look! He has an A in reading and remember how much he struggled? And so, not only is it exciting to me and to the student but his parents are extremely happy with his progress as well.

The next case is a girl who was also in third grade, she was also in my third grade class and is not in my fifth grade class and this student came to us from another state in second grade and was immediately placed on an I Plan for all areas. We took her through our process and she was making progress but she just wasn’t able to close that gap. So, what we did is – in our state we have something called the Non-categorical Waiver – and we were waiting on our waiver so we had to test her and through the testing we found that she did have a learning disability in the area of math and written language but not in reading which is a place that we were looking. So, we have now, surrounded her with many of the same interventions that she had before but we are giving her the time that she needs. And her progress, even though she is on an IEP, is astounding and to sit in and IEP meeting with her family is so exciting because they are astounded…she’s reading at grade level, her math skills have come a long way, we are working really hard on written language, and her parents are just so happy that she went through this process that we found out for sure that Special Education placement was what she needed, and that’s what we did for her.

And so those are two of my, even though one went to Special Education, my success stories because these are kids that they didn’t fall through the cracks, we got them the help they needed, when they needed it. So, I hope that all this information helps you on your journey through the RTI model.

>> Thank you all for your presentation a lot of information was shared and I’m sure it will be helpful to everyone out there in charge of implementing our response to intervention in their schools and districts. I’d like to ask a few questions some of which we've received via e-mail prior to the broadcast and others that we know are on the minds of a lot of the teachers and district personnel out there. Brandy, I’m going to start with you. What kinds of challenges did you face when you are first starting to implement RTI in your school?

>>First of all training was a challenge -- finding it and then being able to actually attend it. And then the next thing was the buy in from the rest of the staff at our school. They needed to understand the process and be able to carry it out as well and then the third thing I would say would be materials -- finding things at first when we started was more difficult than it is now but that was something that we faced.

>>Doug, from a District perspective, what were the types of supports or items that the district needed to consider prior to implementing RTI in order to make sure and it was able to be implemented at the school level?

>>Well, there are really several areas that our district would need to attend to. I think, first of all, there needs to be a commitment to database decision-making. We’re going to look at student data, we’re going to respond to student data, we’re going to try to come up with interventions for students that are working for those kids. The second area is a commitment to using best practice interventions so this means staff development and training and people getting on board providing a number of opportunities to learn about new ways to teach students. A third area is collaboration and getting departments within your district to work together we were fairly large district and what we found is when the construction, Title One folks, research and evaluation, special-education, EOL, work together makes for better results.

>>Great. Lynne, when we talk research-based or evidence-based practices what we mean by those terms?

>> A research-based intervention integrates several instructional components and for each of those instructional components there is convincing well-controlled research studies showing that the use of that component results in improved student achievement.

>> Brandy, I’m going to come back to you again, tell me from a school perspective, what were some of the top things that you considered prior to implementing that you think were critical to your success now?

>>One thing we needed to look at was how we were going to meet as a team and who would be on that team. We looked at – we called it a student assistance team and then the MDT – The Multidiciplinary Team – and we meshed those together and formed a new team and that’s how we met all our kids and we had our school psyche, and our counselor, our principal, we had the referring teacher, the parents were always invited, and then, of course, we had a General Education teacher sit on board as well as our Special Ed teacher. And all of those people together were able to really problem-solve for each student that we met on.

>> Doug, talk to us a bit about why your district decided to implement RTI.

>>Renee’, in the early 1990’s, our district decided to try and alternative approach to identifying students needing Special Ed services. We adopted the problem-solving approach which is a form of RTI in response to intervention to do that. We developed a three-stage process in which our teachers looked at student performance, reacted to the student data and implemented interventions for those students. Eventually, we decided that that approach would work well across the entire district to meet the needs of all students. So we soon involved a curriculum instruction Title 1 research and evaluation and Special Ed folks in that effort.

>> Great, great. A real collaborative effort across the board.

>>Yes, it was.

>>Lynne, I’m hearing folks talk about RTI and different perspectives. One is, as kind of a prevention model within a school and then another way they are talking about it as an identification model for children with learning disabilities. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between these two.

>>Sure. Well, I think that the RTI functions prevention and identification of learning disabilities really go hand-in-hand, so that when within an RTI model be put into place a validated form of tutoring or secondary intervention. We expect on a basis of prior research that the vast majority of children are going to respond positively, to that secondary intervention, and when this small subset of students do not respond as expected to that secondary intervention, and there is a basis for assuming there's something different about that child who that prevents the child from responding positively and so the inference is that there is a disability there and when we implement responsiveness to intervention a one of the nice things in an identification model is that we have eliminated poor instruction as a possible explanation for the lack of adequate progress.

>>Thank you. Brandy, I was thinking about some of the comments made during your presentation. Talk a little bit about the role of your school administration or your principal and ensuring that this is a successful implementation.

>>The principle is really the driving force behind a RTI in any building it’s their job to make sure that the teams meeting regularly and then everything going well with the team and not only that but that teachers are providing interventions and doing the progress monitoring that they need to be doing. So, I think that, in a nutshell, the administrator will make or break your RTI model.

>>And yours had been extremely supportive.

>>All three of them have been amazing.

>>Great, do they support the training and is it a top priority in your school?

>>Yes. We have a schedule of who’s been, who needs to go and we need to get any people on board right away as well.

>>Great. Doug, talking a little bit about sustaining this over the years. Can you just mention a few and what you think are critical components in enabling your district to sustain this program for as many years as you have?

>> I think one of the things that’s been really helpful is using technology to look at student data. We developed a district website to enter student data, to look at assessment information, attendance and behavior data, document interventions and react to the data so the technology has really been a key component to ensure continuing.

>>Great. Lynn, in your presentation when you were describing a number of students expected to respond at each level. It appears that it would be a lot of students that would be determined through the screening process not to respond. Can you talk little bit about the numbers that you expect there?

>>Right, when we use a combination of screening in short-term progress monitoring for identifying students who will need to receive secondary intervention. When we have in place, high quality General Education programs the research data tells us that we can expect a 15 or 10% of the student body to move into secondary intervention. So in the classroom of 20 children we are talking about two or three children, possibly requiring secondary intervention and of course those numbers increase or decrease depending on the quality of what's going on in the General Education program.

>>A follow up to that, when we are looking at doing the universal screening that universal at primary level and that’s all kids and then if we’re looking at doing weekly progress monitoring as you were describing, how much time does that take for the General Educator?

>> Well, what we would recommend in an efficient RTI processes is that not all students be progress monitored, but rather only a subset of students who in that initial screening look like there is some suspicion of potential difficulty. We would recommend that that subset of students enter weekly progress monitoring. And it's been our experience that when teachers are well-organized and create schedules for collecting progress monitoring data it can be done very efficiently. For example, we've worked in Nashville with entire classrooms of students where teachers take their 20 students and make a plan so that five students are assessed on Monday before school starts as children are coming into the classroom. Five children Tuesday, five on Wednesday, five on Thursday, and Friday is reserved for make ups. And when teachers are helped to be organized in that way they get into a pattern, you know, were they use that before school time as children gathering in a productive way and that it becomes like a desired fun activity for the children – when’s my turn, that kind of thing.

>>Brandy, what’s been your experience from a school level General Education teacher?

>>I agree with her 100% and as she was speaking about making the schedule and if you're organizing and you have all of your materials in the same place every time it's very easy and very efficient to do it and it becomes exactly what you said a rewarding experience for both the student and myself because we’re then graphing the data together when we’re finished and we're excited to see their growth.

>>Brandy, do you think your school will continue using the RTI process?

>>Oh my goodness, I can’t imagine going back the other way. And I think if you were to ask our staff, they would say the same thing. We don't want to go back to the way it was. We like it this way.

>> What do you think can you point to any one or two things that keeps your faculty excited about this new process? I mean, we know sometimes when you put a process into place it has a hard time sustaining over time and the excitement kind of goes away. What keeps your faculty kind of focused on this?

>>Well, the first thing is the early intervention piece, our kids are getting help right away right when they need it we’re not waiting for them to fail. And the other thing is the data. We are showing their progress, we are seeing them make their gains and we are excited about that.

>>Thank you.

>>It’s been my experience also, that teachers looking at data – seeing the kids growing…on the charts has been very reinforcing for them.

>>Great, thank you all very much.

>> I’d like to thank the panelists. It's always heartwarming and it's always very helpful to all those of us the field to hear from the practitioners in terms of how you can really make this happen as you're well aware the 2004 reauthorization of IDEA provided for the use of what's known as evidenced-based instructional practices, what we refer to as RTI. Work on RTI does started long before it was in reauthorization. We've seen it in many states and districts and schools just as you've heard from the previous panelists and so forth, they’ve been using it for over the past decade.

The idea here is the idea behind RTI is really twofold. It’s to serve struggling students early on, and the other one is that it leads to determining if this didn't really need Special Education services as early as we possibly can because we know that the evidence has shown that many students who struggle in the early grades do not catch up especially if we wait until 3 rd or 4th grade to deliver the intensive remediation that we need.

The other thing is that RTI really clearly helps all teachers look at all students needs. As you heard from the panelists, the use of RTI requires the collaboration that we really need. I refer to it as that of the great teamwork that really needs to occur between General Ed and Special Education. Decisions are made by these collaborative teams of school staff as they take a look at and review response data, as they look at the progress monitoring, as they review all other information to pursue a comprehensive evaluation.

We also know that the benefit of combining expertise in general and Special Educators have far-reaching outcomes for all of our students now and in the future. The other thing is that we now many of the elements of RTI align with Title I and Special Ed there has probably never been a closer alignment between what we need to do to provide the interventions and the remediation in under an CLB and IDEA that really helps all students do well.

For example, schools that have implemented Reading First have a much easier time implementing RTI because they’ve already got research-based instruction they do intensive screening they do progress monitoring so linking an CLB with IDE has been a great boost to all of us. We also know the title I schools understand how to use instructional interventions. They use the expertise of all of the staff in the building and they use the efficient and effective use of time so that groupings can be made that will best serve all students needs.

We’ve also known that we have some next steps that we need to take. First and foremost, we, and I’m talking about OSEP, The Office of Special Education Program, and OESE the Office of Elementary and Secondary Ed will continue to provide models of Special Education and regular education working together that really serves all students needs.

We also know that we need to ensure that all personnel are qualified to deliver the supplemental services and have the ability to link the students area of need with a specific intervention that's provided.

And, finally, we know we need to continue to provide professional development and other resources that are needed to support the ongoing and sustained implementation of RTI. Following this, you're going to be seeing several different websites. We encourage you to visit each and every one of these because this will provide you with the ongoing resources that you need to help you when you work as you implement RTI.

Finally, I want to wish you the best as you go forward in implementing the procedures which we have just heard from it really and truly benefits all children. Thank you.