Wayne Sailor on the broader potential of Response to Intevention

Nancy Walser provides an excellent, concise description of the three-tiered Response to Intervention (RtI) logic model with a nice example of how it can work as an approach to reading instruction in a first grade classroom ("Response to Intervention"). While some would argue for confining RtI to an approach for the diagnosis of learning disabilities, this paper shows how the logic has a broader utility in application to all students. As such it presents a developing alternative to the categorical medical model of special education. For example, the paper shows how RtI logic provides a bridge for blending special and general education in a collaborative relationship.

I would like to see future RtI position papers place greater emphasis on the central importance of data-based decision making using data from valid and reliable instruments that are directed to evidence-based interventions followed up with careful progress monitoring. Further, I would like to see discussion of parallel developments employing the RtI logic model in schoolwide Positive Behavior Support applications and how these parallel developments might be combined through tracking social/behavioral indicators integrated with academic indicators of pupil progress. Finally, I would be disinclined to link Tier III interventions directly to referrals for special education. Lucille Eber’s school-based mental health Wraparound approach in Illinois presents an example of a Tier III (tertiary level) intervention that may or may not be associated with an IEP.

Nancy Walser’s article provides a glimpse of how an RtI logic model can form the basis for clear linkages between standards-guided instruction and systematic estimates of school and school district accountability. It illustrates a clear pathway for children in special education to participate fully in school accountability measures. In March 2005, my colleague Blair Roger and I published an article in Phi Delta Kappan showing how the logic of RtI can be extended to an entire structural school reform model. Advanced technologies with emerging data-mining software can now enable school site governance teams to examine a range of levels of pupil progress on a variety of indicators. These levels include district-wide assessments; comparisons across schools; school-wide assessments within implementing schools; aggregate assessments within smaller learning communities within schools; grade-level assessments; classroom assessments; and individual pupil progress. Data-based decision-making processes geared to these assessments can lead to smaller grouping arrangements (second tier) for academic content enhancement strategies, as well as targeted group Positive Behavior Support interventions (e.g. classroom management) where student behavior may be impeding academic progress.

These processes applied on a school-wide basis guided by general education are just in their infancy. Much research to refine these practices is needed and will likely be forthcoming. Walser’s article provides a nice “heads up” for these emerging developments.

Wayne Sailor is a professor of special education and associate director of the Beach Center on Disability at the University of Kansas.