Thursday, March 31, 2022

Effective Response to Intervention Programs Can Make a Difference

        Stakeholders involved with students exhibiting academic, behavioral, or social/emotional learning deficits too often sense there are too few options for effective support.   While the teacher or parents believe such deficits exhibit a major concern, the student is often not evaluated until categorical programs such as Title I, ESL, literacy services, or special education becomes involved,  Yet, since NCLB (2001) and IDEA (2004) began emphasizing the expectation for Response to Intervention (RTI), at-risk students with learning and/or behavioral challenges should be identified sooner rather than later, and provided with more flexible and responsive service options.  RTI should be mitigating the expectation for individualized help to come only through special education services.  An effective RTI approach offers several key opportunities for systemic effectiveness:

(1) emphasizes early intervention in the typical, general education learning environment,

(2) maximizes all staff’s expertise and services, and makes effective use of all existing resources,

(3) intends to assess the student’s strengths and weaknesses based on their academic performance or behavior in the regular educational setting,

(4) delivers interventions regular educational setting and interventions are based on reliable and measurable information,

(5) response to the intervention is directly and frequently monitored and charted, and

(6) intends to de-emphasize categories and labels while encouraging creativity, problem solving, and providing support to students in a timely manner.

           The effective RTI approach institutionalizes a problem-solving model for schools.  As such, the RTI model allows application of a systemic, school-wide problem-solving approach.  Therefore, rather than perceptions or assumptions, effective curriculum and instructional decisions can be based on collected and analyzed student-centered data.

As far back as 1990, Vacca and Padak found at-risk learners were seldom more academically vulnerable than during instructional situations that required them to engage in acts of literacy.  Kletzien & Bednar (1990) viewed at-risk readers as students who saw themselves “as poor learners who have limited aptitude to benefit from educational opportunities.  They are at risk by being constantly discouraged and by having an inadequate understanding of their own learning abilities and potential” (p 528). 

To better understand the purpose of literacy or developmental reading options utilized for  RTI, it is prudent to understand that most research-based reading intervention programs utilize a phonemic and phonological awareness approach as the foundation for their model of reading intervention.  The most effective reading programs for at-risk students utilize a multisensory and systematic approach ( Ehri, Nunes, Willows, Schuster, Yaghoub-Zadeh, & Shanahan, 2001; Kim, Wagner, & Lopez, 2012; Kruidenier, MacArthur, Wrigley, 2010).  Research on the foundations of these these approaches will find many to be based on the Orton-Gillingham method. 

Many RTI initiatives utilize these approaches within Tier 3 (Intensive) reading programs.  Research by Slavin, Lake, Davis, and Madden, (2009) found one-to-one intervention effective for students at-risk for reading failure.  Below are brief descriptions of some of the more popular reading programs utilized as Tier 3 RTI interventions.

Before reviewing specific programs, let’s be mindful that regardless of the intervention, it is crucial to recognize teaching does not entail instruction alone.  A highly qualified teacher will understand the ongoing relationship between the curriculum, his or her instruction, and ongoing assessment of learning.  Competency regarding this relationship should be exhibited through increased classroom assessment literacy whereby standards-based instruction is continually provided and monitored through diverse and consistent formative and criterion assessments.  The aim of the Reading Recovery® program is to reduce the number of children that experience difficulty with reading and writing.  Specially trained Reading Recovery® teachers identify children for the program.  The identified children “are the lowest achievers in the first-grade cohort as evidenced on a standardized test and the Diagnostic Survey (Clay, 1985), excluding none” (Lyons, 1989, p 126).  The Reading Recovery® approach to identifying at-risk students involves a relative notion of risk, rather than an absolute one.  Students are selected for the Reading Recovery® intervention program because of their performance relative to their classmates according to teacher judgment and performance on a diagnostic battery.

During the Reading Recovery® intervention program, children are pulled out of their classrooms each day for thirty-minute individual lessons.  The lessons supplement regular classroom instruction for 12 to 20 weeks.  The Reading Recovery® program does not rely on consumable materials or step-by-step programs.  Rather, the knowledgeable Reading Recovery® teacher develops an individualized lesson for each child.  Each lesson provides the child with an opportunity to think and problem solve while reading and writing.  A detailed, daily running record is kept of the student’s progress and the teacher then designs the next day’s lesson (Lyons, 1989).

Reading Recovery® is not meant to be a perfect program for every need.  It is an intervention that appears best suited for students with moderate reading or language disorders.  Evidence identifies Reading Recovery as a successful early intervention reading program.  A WWC report (2013) found Reading Recovery® to have positive effects on general reading achievement and potentially positive effects on alphabetics, reading fluency, and comprehension for beginning readers.  In response to critics, it is only logical to believe sustained student progress will depend upon subsequent support, both in school and at home.  

The Wilson Language Training® (WLT) empowers individual educators, schools, and districts to achieve literacy with all students.  Approximately 25,000 teachers in United States schools have achieved WRS Level I Certification.  While WLT initially focused solely on the education of teachers who were working with individuals with dyslexia, since 2002 WLT programs provide professional development to the general education classroom teachers as well.

WLT serves as a provider of research-based reading and spelling programs for all ages. Its programs offer a multisensory and structured curricula.  Programs include Fundations®, Wilson Just Words®, the Wilson Reading System®, and Wilson Fluency®/Basic.  The approaches utilized within WLT programs have proven highly effective (Melby-Lervåg, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012).

The Wilson Reading System® exhibit potentially positive effects on alphabetics but no discernible effects on fluency and comprehension.  One study, which included more than 70 third-grade students in Pennsylvania, used a modified version of Wilson Reading System®.  The study met the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards.  As a result, of their literature review (2007), the WWC considered the extent of evidence for Wilson Reading System® to be small for alphabetics, fluency, and comprehension.  No studies meeting WWC evidence standards, with or without reservations, addressed general reading achievement. 

An intervention found to be popular in New York City public schools is Reading Rescue®, which is a systematic reading intervention model based on tenets of Reading Recovery® (Clay, 1993).  Ehri, Dreyer, Flugman, and Gross (2007) found Reading Rescue® to be an effective tutoring intervention model for first-grade struggling readers.  The Reading Rescue® program offers staff development designed to implement the intensive early intervention program.  Using trained tutors rather than certified reading specialists, the intervention specifically targets students who will benefit from one-on-one instruction to reach grade-level reading.  Training tutors rather than reading specialists offers school districts a less expensive alternative to providing Tier 3 RTI.

The Reading Rescue® program’s twelve-part professional development protocol for those delivering the intervention is delivered over two-years.  The structured training seeks to equip participating staff with knowledge and skills typically associated with reading specialists.  Ideally, this approach increases the school’s culture of high expectations for successful literacy and builds the school's capacity to promote learning for all students.  However, one reality of a cost-efficient two-year plan for professional development is that at-risk students may not be served by tutors as fully trained as those studied by Ehri, et. al (2007), thereby impacting the generalizability of those findings.  Additionally, spreading the full training protocol over two years, may adversely impact the necessary development and implementation of a systemic process for subsequent monitoring of program completers for sustained success.

The Remediation Plus System's Teacher Training White Paper (2017) seeks to help teachers and school administrators understand the program's reading intervention training and curriculum. The system provides opportunities to become expert teachers of reading and remediation. If seeking to ensure every teacher is proficient to address reading deficits, the system's replicable lesson plans offer an invaluable opportunity to use a very strategic approach to providing interventions.

Undoubtedly, RTI programs utilizing a phonemic and phonological awareness approach in a multisensory, systemic reading intervention model should be offering a research-based Tier 3 RTI administered by well-trained interventionist. However, for at least two years following successful participation in any early intervention program, the effective school needs to ensure the student is exposed to “good classroom instruction and moderate personal motivation that should be achievable” (Clay, 2005, p. 52).  Next month’s post will address the need for a systemic follow up program for successful completers of early intervention reading programs.  A follow-up program needs to offer techniques that address the students’ “affective needs to help them see themselves as capable learners and good thinkers” (Coley & Hoffman, 1990, p 497).

 

To cite:

Anderson, C.J. (March 31, 2022) Effective Response to Intervention programs can make a

 difference [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

 

References;

 

Brown, R. (2021). Understanding dyslexia. A whitepaper published by for Illuminate Education

 

Clay, M.M. (1987). Learning to be learning disabled.  New Zealand Journal of Educational

Studies, v22, 155-173.

 

Clay, M. M. (2005). Reading recovery. Heinemann

 

Ehri, L.. Dreyer, L.,Flugman,B. and Gross, A. Alan. (2007) Reading Rescue: An effective

tutoring intervention model for first-grade struggling readers. American Educational

Research Journal, 44,414-448.

 International Dyslexia Association. (2008). Just the Facts: Multisensory Structured Language

Teaching. Baltimore: MD.  Reading Research Quarterly, 36(3), 250-287.

doi: 10.1598/RRQ.36.3.2

 Hoover, N. L., (2011). Reading Rescue®: A literacy intervention for elementary students,

            Gainsville, FL: The Literacy Trust.

 

Kletzien, S.B. & Bednar, M.R., (1990). Dynamic assessment for at-risk readers. Journal

 of Reading v33. n7  528-533

 

Lyons, C.A. (1989) Reading recovery: A preventative for labeling young at-risk learners.

Urban Education v 24, n2  125-39.

 Melby-Lervåg, M., Lyster, S.-A. H., & Hulme, C. (2012). Phonological skills and their role

in learning  to read: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 322-352.

doi: 10.1037/a0026744

 National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing Early Literacy: A Scientific Synthesis of

            Early Literacy Development and Implications for Intervention. Jessup, MD: National

            Institute for Literacy. 

 

Remediation Plus System Teacher Training White Paper (2017) Retrieved from:

    https://issuu.com/remediationplus/docs/r__teacher_training_white_paper

Slavin, R. E., Lake, C., Davis, S., & Madden, N. A. (2011). Effective programs for struggling

               readers:   A best-evidence synthesis. Educational Research Review, 6(1), 1–26.

               doi:10.1016/j.edurev.2010.07.002

 

Vacca, R. T. & Padak, N. D. (1990). Who's at risk in reading? Journal of Reading v33. n7

486-88.

 

 

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