On September 26, while standing behind a lectern previously used
by Lincoln during delivery of the Gettysburg’s Address, Pope
Francis delivered remarks with the potential to
revitalize the American conscience. To
this writer, limiting the pontiff’s address as a homily regarding freedom of
religion would be short-sighted. During
his Ground
Zero Memorial address, Francis suggested,
“Together we are called to say “no” to every attempt to impose
uniformity and “yes” to a diversity accepted and reconciled.” Collectively, the two addresses remind any audience of the benefits resulting from an embrace
of multi-pluralism. Francis’s remarks at
Independence Hall cited a previous pontiff: “The ultimate test of your
greatness is the way you treat every human being, but especially the weakest
and most defenseless ones” (John
Paul II Farewell Address, 1987).
Passing this test
is crucial for every educator. This
writer believes education is the endeavor that strengthens
a mind, frees a spirit, and enriches a society.
Teaching utilization of tools that promote
success, empowering diverse learners’ imagination and innovation, and providing
equity in quality, promotes the mission
of learning for all. To optimize this endeavor, educators will
benefit from increased understanding of the correlates of Effective Schools Research (ESR) and tenets of an
effective Response to Intervention (RTI) program.
In collaboration
with a multidimensional team of stakeholders, including parents or guardians, the
ability to crosswalk the correlates of ESR and tenets of an RTI program results
in a more efficient and effective system. This promotes the equity in quality that is
essential for schools committed to the pursuit of learning for all. While there is a danger to prescribing
interventions in a limiting fashion, anthologies have the potential for
providing a RTI 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 access to a 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. However, this approach
requires a cultural change in how adults currently work together to
educate children.
Professional
Learning Communities (PLCs) have emerged as perhaps the best, most agreed
upon means of continual improvement in instruction and student
performance. PLCs are evidenced in a
single school or online. Models include
study groups, action research teams, communities of practice, or conversation
circles. The essential focus of any PLC
is for educators to work together, with a shared focus on learning and
accountability to help all students learn at high levels.
The core competency required for
effective implementation of RTI interventions is the ability to correctly
collect, analyze, and utilize data. For
many teacher candidates and in-service teachers, data evaluation equates to
math. Unfortunately, too many teachers
are uncomfortable with mathematics. This
lack of comfort with math also translates to this country's math scores that
results from 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 objectives for teacher candidate coursework. 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 instruction or interventions based on results, is a correlate of
continuous school improvement within Effective Schools. This correlate requires teacher competency in
collecting data, evaluating results, and effectively consuming the data. When teachers identify and prescribe an
intervention, they often have difficulty accepting the need to adjust when the
prescribed intervention proves ineffective. Too often, a teacher erroneously perceives the
intervention’s failure as a personal failure of the teacher’s initial
prescription. Thus, defensiveness rather
than professional awareness delays the necessary adjustment. For this reason, teacher preparation programs
as well as districts or schools need 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).
Given
increased awareness, effective implementation of the RTI system can begin. However, potential problems will be
omnipresent without administrative support and ongoing professional development. The following identify the essential eight
core principles for implementing RTI.
- Effectively teach each and every student.
- Provide early intervention.
- Use a multi-tier model of service delivery.
- Use a problem-solving method to make decisions within the multi-tier model.,
- Use research-based validated interventions/instruction.
- Monitor student progress to inform instruction.
- Use data to make decisions.
- Use assessment for three purposes: screening, diagnostics, and progress monitoring.
The
vast majority of teacher candidates and in-service teachers
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.
Just
as public schools needed to establish metrics for accountability of their
teaching and learning mission, so too do institutes of higher education (IHE)
and teacher preparation programs need to establish better metrics for measuring
the competencies of their teacher candidates, including knowledge of systems
and the ability to think systemically.
To address this, IHE and other teacher preparation programs must
recognize the aim for graduating “instruments of systems
change” rather than merely preparing individuals to administer
curriculum. Basile and Nathenson-Mejía
(2003) suggests the process for problem-based learning creates a healthy
environment for reflection,
discussion, and problem solving, which
provides a valid system for enculturating teacher candidates into schools and
the profession of teaching. The result
will be educational systems that provide equity in educational quality, which promotes
the mission of learning for all.
To cite:
Anderson,
C.J. (September 30, 2015) Educators embracing
tenets of RTI promote equity in quality
[Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/
References:
Basile,
C., Olson, F., & Nathenson-Mejía, S. (2003). Problem-based learning:
reflective coaching
for
teacher educators. Reflective Practice,
4(3), 291.
Edmonds,
R. (1979). Effective Schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership,
37,15-24.
Lezotte,
L. W. (1991) Correlates of Effective Schools: The First and Second Generation.
http://www.effectiveschools.com/images/stories/escorrelates.pdf
Lezotte,
L. W., & Snyder, K. M. (2011). What effective schools do:
Re-envisioning the
correlates. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press
Lau, Sieler, Muyskens, Canter,
VanKeuren, & Marston (2006). Perspectives on the use of 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
Schmoker, J, (1999) The Key to Continuous School
Improvement (2nd edition) ASCD
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