In collaboration with a multidimensional team of stakeholders that includes parents
or guardians, a crosswalk between the correlates of Effective Schools Research and
tenets of an effective Response to
Intervention (RTI) program allows RTI to become an efficient and effective system. This promotes equity in quality within schools committed to the pursuit of
learning for all. While there is a
danger to prescribing interventions in a limiting fashion, RTI anthologies have
the potential for providing a clearinghouse of research-based and success-proven
strategies and interventions.
Subsequent alignment of
the district's non-negotiable goals with individual school needs and experiences
(Marzano
& Waters, 2009) should expand rather than limit the district's
clearinghouse of research-based and success-proven strategies and interventions.
Promoting such a clearinghouse of
identified successes ensures professional development is available. This optimizes access, review, and
implementation of a range of interventions, thereby enriching teachers through defined
autonomy.
The core competency
required for effective implementation of RTI interventions is the ability to correctly
collect, analyze, and utilize data. For
many prospective and in-service teachers, data equates to math. Unfortunately, too many teachers are uncomfortable
with mathematics. To address this, we
will eventually need to recognize this country's math scores are related to too
many teachers being over reliant on the text book rather than proficiency in "thinking
mathematically” (Edelmuth, 2006).
Therefore, Schools of Education and Alternate
Route Teacher Preparation Programs need to ensure graduates are able to collect
data, evaluate results, and be an honest consumer of the resulting data. This becomes possible through better statistics
and data analysis courses for prospective teachers. Effective districts will need to complement
this evolution through in-service professional development on collecting data,
evaluating results, and being an honest consumer of the resulting data.
Frequent
monitoring of student progress, and adjusting as indicated by results, is a
correlate of continuous school improvement within Effective Schools. This correlate requires teacher competency in
collecting data, evaluating results, and being an honest consumer of the resulting
data. When teachers identify and
prescribe an intervention, they often have difficulty accepting the need to
change (adjust) if the prescribed intervention proves ineffective. Too often the failure of the intervention is perceived
a personal failure of the initial prescription, which can then delay the
necessary adjustment. For this reason, a
district and school is well-advised to consider the following six ideas for
successful development of an effective
RTI system:
- Encourage participation by key stakeholders during
planning and implementation.
- Elicit strong administrative support in staff
development, instructional integrity, and data collection.
- Provide in-depth staff development with mentoring,
modeling, and coaching.
- Begin follow-up trainings at the beginning of each
school year.
- Distribute a manual outlining procedures and materials.
- Build Problem Solving Models including RTI into school
schedules and the student improvement process (Lau,
Sieler, Muyskens, et al, 2006).
Implementation of the effective RTI system can then
begin. However, potential problems will
be omnipresent without administrative support and ongoing professional
development. The following core
principles identify potential challenges for implementing RTI.
- effectively teaches each and every student,
- provides early intervention,
- uses a multi-tier model of service delivery,
- uses a problem-solving method to make decisions within
the multi-tier model,
- uses research-based validated
interventions/instruction,
- monitors student progress to inform instruction,
- uses data to make decisions, and
- uses assessment for three purposes: screening,
diagnostics, and progress monitoring.
Both pre-service and in-service
teachers openly admit to the difficulty of monitoring student progress to inform instructional decisions. The inter-relationship
between the identified core principles makes the pursuit of a hierarchy subjective
at best and futile at worst. The correlate
of frequent monitoring and subsequent adjustment drives the core principles for
implementing RTI. The ability to collect
data, evaluate results, and be an honest consumer of the resulting data promotes the correlate of frequent monitoring and subsequent
adjustment. Teacher proficiency with
data must therefore become a professional competency.
To cite:
Anderson, C.J. (December 4, 2012)
Aligning a response to intervention system with teacher
competencies
[Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/
References:
Edmonds,
R. (1979). Effective Schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership,
37,
15-24.
Lau, Sieler, Muyskens, Canter,
VanKeuren, & Marston (2006). Perspectives on the use of
the Problem-Solving Model from the viewpoint of school psychologist, administrator, and
the Problem-Solving Model from the viewpoint of school psychologist, administrator, and
teacher. Psychology in the Schools, 43 (1), 117-127.
Marzano, R. & Waters, T.(2009). District leadership that works. Bloomington, In: Solution
Tree
Press
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