Describe your understanding of RTI and its structure of intervention in details. What other questions do you still have about RTI? (b) Provide comments and feedback on at least two your peers’ blogs
Response to Intervention is a great way to help students get extensive instruction on something that they are struggling with. For example, if a student is having difficulty decoding larger words the teacher, school psychologist, or any other important superior figure can meet together after school to discuss other ways to provide extra instruction to ensure that this student does not fall behind. The system was essentially created so that no student would be able to fall through the cracks and that every student would, hopefully, be on grade level or higher. The teachers first need to meet once a week to discuss any possible student struggles and discuss ways that they can either prevent this from happening or figure out a new solution to ensure that the problem is taken care of right away.
The entire idea of RTI helps teachers, school psychologists, principals, and other administrators not over-diagnose children for special education services. The problem with over-diagnosing students for special education is that some of the students do not need entirely the services that special education provides. With Response to Intervention, teachers can help provide extra instruction or work with the special education teacher or resource room teacher to ensure that the students do not fall behind. This will help students not develop a stigma about being in special education and can also boost the students confidence level in the classroom.
There are three different tiers to the RTI program intervention strategy. The first tier indicates that all students receive instruction. Every student participates in the 90 minutes of instruction provided and about 80-85% of students learn from this tier. The second tier is where fewer students receive additional instruction. The additional instruction is another 30 minutes which will focus in on the exact criteria that the student is struggling with. The final tier is the least participating tier. There are not many students that are included in this final tier and it is for intensive instruction. The instruction is usual individually based or small group based.
I wanted to know if the parents are always included in the RTI process. If it is possible, can parents request for a teacher to implement RTI like they can with special education?
I agree with your ideas, just not sure if we should view students with special needs as being stigmatized.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response. I do have to say on one part I do disagree. I believe parental involvement is crucial for even the straight A student. When parents are involved in their education they have a higher success rate and tend to feel more confident. Do you agree?
DeleteGood summary on the RTI and good questions to start the discussion. RTI is still a relatively new process and one that has led to much debate among educators, policymakers, advocates and parents. In New York State, the State Education Department's regulations have given school districts the option of using RTI to assist in the identification of students with learning disabilities but have not required it. The state regulations called for a complete phase-out of the "discrepancy model" for students in grades K-4 by 2012. (Note: "discrepancy model" required students to be two grade levels below their expected achievement, resulting in what some dubbed the "wait to fail" model.)
ReplyDeleteAccording to New York State's regulation, RTI is to be used in a general education setting as a "pre-referral" service (meaning prior to a referral for an evaluation to determine eligibility for special education services). It is the data from the process of RTI and not the process iteself, that can and should be considered during a complete psychological evaluation. Federal law and state regulations state that no single criterion can be used to make a determination of eligibility for special education services.
Parents of students who are or who will participate in an RTI process must ask questions and be kept apprised of their child's progress along the way. Parents also need to know that under federal and state law, they can request an immediate referral for a comprehensive psychological evaluation at any point in the process.