Highlighting Learner Strengths

In this 2017 column, Toby J. Karten uses the image of a tiered wedding cake to explain how response to intervention (RTI) gives students needs-based instruction in tiers, and how it connects to differentiation. A section added below explains the tiers in plain terms, how RTI relates to MTSS, and what the research and federal rules say.

Responsive Interventions Honor Successful Outcomes

by Toby J. Karten

“Good things come to those who wait,” but educators can never have a “wait-and-see attitude” that passively watches students struggle. The field of education requires a diversity of professional ingredients. This includes knowledge, collaboration, organization, compassion, reflection, and individualization. As a wedding cake has tiers, a process known as response to intervention (RTI) provides learners with needs-based multi tiered instruction. All students receive the essential universally designed core knowledge in Tier 1, and as needed, supplemental instruction in Tier 2, and more intensive instruction in Tier 3. Students are screened to determine their proficiency levels and then assessed at set intervals to continually capitalize on learner strengths.

RTI is an evolutionary process that assists students as they develop their behaviors and skills to become better readers, writers, and mathematicians. Its framework is designed to delete the frustrations for students who try to keep pace without the appropriate intervention. High expectations exist for all learners, within instructional tiers that acknowledge learner individuality. Progress occurs in increments in emotional, social, behavioral, and academic arenas. Cooperative play is preceded by parallel play. Sounds are associated with letters that become words, which form sentences that comprise paragraphs, essays, and novels. Before learners solve complex mathematical equations, they first count simple quantities and strengthen computational skills. RTI’s instructional tiers take into account that prior knowledge; skill sets, interest, motivation, and rates of learning vary.

Revisiting the wedding cake analogy, note that RTI is married to differentiation. Differentiation of instruction values the fact that learners require varying representations, engagements, actions, and expressions. Some students’ brains are not wired to read with automaticity, unless they receive multisensory instruction to associate phonemes with their sounds. Perhaps a student would prefer to create a skit or collage that demonstrates his or her knowledge of imperialism or the forces of motion, rather than write a three-paragraph essay. That skit and collage could very well include the same writing and research skills of the essay, but the engagement invites heightened motivation and interest to increase time on task and level of performance.

If a student listens to a math rap, such as one from Flocabulary on the order of operations, he or she appreciates the auditory accompaniment to better grasp the concept. A learner with attention issues often does not respond well to long lectures that require him or her to “sit and git,” but he or she may prefer to be part of intervention that includes a scavenger hunt. In this case, a worksheet’s requirements leap off the page. Hands on activities then translate to minds on learning!

RTI’s interventions need to be accompanied with cognitive learner strategies. As example, effective learners know that if they receive learning accommodations, that is not an excuse to stop listening and learning, since they are active participants in the RTI process, regardless of the tiered level of intervention that they receive. Students, who exhibit increased cognitive buy-ins, are continually on a road that hones their skills. Effective learners know how to ask for help and how to interact and collaborate with peers and adults. Students then develop skills to shift gears as educators assist learners to navigate the curriculum.

Time well-allocated and accompanied by a set schedule of responsive intervention is a learner’s friend. The gains achieved are never identical ones for all learners. The tortoise and hare are seated in the same classroom, but a lion of a teacher in a group or pride of interventionists facilitates ongoing growth to nurture each learner’s skills and strengths. School staff collaborates with students and families to determine and deliver the effective instructional approaches. Bottom line is that responsive interventions offered within the RTI framework, honor successful classroom and life outcomes.

Response to intervention explained: tiers, MTSS and what the evidence says

Toby Karten describes response to intervention, usually shortened to RTI, as a process in which all students receive core instruction in Tier 1, with supplemental help in Tier 2 and more intensive help in Tier 3 as needed. This section adds the details that parents, teachers and school leaders often ask about: what happens in each tier, how RTI differs from the newer term MTSS, and what research and federal rules say.

What the tiers look like in practice

The most detailed federal guidance comes from the What Works Clearinghouse practice guide Assisting Students Struggling with Reading: Response to Intervention and Multi-Tier Intervention in the Primary Grades, released by the Institute of Education Sciences in 2009. It sets out five recommendations and rates the evidence for each:

1. Screen all students for potential reading problems at the beginning and middle of the year (moderate evidence).
2. Provide differentiated reading instruction for all students, based on assessments of their current reading levels (minimal evidence).
3. Give intensive, systematic small-group instruction on up to three foundational reading skills to students who score below the benchmark on screening, which is Tier 2 (strong evidence). The guide’s video summary says these groups typically meet three to five times a week for 20 to 40 minutes.
4. Monitor the progress of Tier 2 students at least once a month (minimal evidence).
5. Provide daily, intensive instruction in the components of reading proficiency to students who make minimal progress in Tier 2, which is Tier 3 (minimal evidence).

These steps match Karten’s picture. Tier 1 is the cake everyone eats, and the higher tiers add a closer look at skills and more time for students who need it. The ratings show that the research base supported small-group instruction most strongly. A rating of minimal evidence reflects the research available when the guide was written in 2009, and does not mean the other steps were shown to fail. The guide is also about reading in the primary grades, so schools using RTI for math or behavior need guidance written for those areas.

The Institute of Education Sciences has since published newer guides on what intervention teaching can look like. Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Intervention in the Elementary Grades (2021) makes six recommendations, all rated strong evidence, including systematic instruction, teaching mathematical language, using number lines and giving deliberate instruction on word problems. Providing Reading Interventions for Students in Grades 4-9 (2022) makes four recommendations, three rated strong evidence (decoding multisyllabic words, fluency-building activities and comprehension-building practices) and one rated moderate (practice with challenging text). These guides describe intervention teaching and do not set out an RTI process.

RTI and the law

RTI also appears in federal special education regulation. Under 34 CFR 300.307, a state’s criteria for identifying a specific learning disability must not require a severe discrepancy between intellectual ability and achievement, and must permit the use of a process based on the child’s response to scientific, research-based intervention. States may also allow other research-based methods. The regulation sets these requirements for state criteria and does not describe how schools should run the process, so the details come from state and district rules.

How RTI relates to MTSS

Many schools now use the term multi-tiered system of supports, or MTSS. The Center on MTSS describes it as a framework that integrates data and instruction within a multi-level prevention system, and lists four essential components: screening, progress monitoring, data-based decision making, and a multi-level prevention system. The Center’s page does not explain how the term relates to RTI. The four components resemble the screening, tiered instruction and progress monitoring in the 2009 reading guide, and districts differ in whether they use the words RTI, MTSS or both, so a family should ask a school what its own process includes and how decisions are made.

Questions to ask at school

• How are students screened, and how often?
• What does Tier 2 look like here: how many students are in a group, how many minutes, how many days a week?
• How is progress checked, and what result moves a student to a different tier?
• How are strengths used in planning, as Karten recommends?
• How are families told, and when?

As Karten explains above, students also take part in the process, and effective learners know how to ask for help. Teachers can support this by showing students their own progress data and agreeing on small goals together.

For more, see edCircuit’s Special Education Guide.

Further Reading

1. edCircuit – Special Ed: Redefining Inclusion Education
2. THE Journal – 3 Keys to a One-Year Literacy Turnaround
3. Education Week – Student Trauma Is Real. But Connection Can Heal.

More on Special Education and IEPs