Three-Tiered Model of Reading Instruction

Pennsylvania RTI: What it is and What it is Not

Pennsylvania RTI

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, IDEA, was rewritten and signed into law in early December 2004. This Act changes many sections of the statute to reflect new ideas around learning disabilities and the concept of a pre-identification strategy called response to intervention or RTI.

The emphasis of RTI is to focus on providing more effective instruction by encouraging earlier intervention for students experiencing difficulty learning. The assumption is that this will prevent some students from being identified as learning disabled or LD by providing intervention as concerns emerge. It also emphasizes using a comprehensive, school-wide system because…almost 30 years of research and experience has demonstrated that the education of children with disabilities can be made more effective by providing incentives for whole-school approaches. (601, c, 5, F)

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Articles & Research

IMPLEMENTATION OF IDEA: INTEGRATING RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION

AND COGNITIVE ASSESSMENT METHODS

ABSTRACT: The Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA) was reauthorized by the U.S. Congress in 2004, yet ongoing regulatory efforts are required to determine its operationalization and implementation. Of particular concern to school psychologists and others involved in the educational process are the guidelines for identification of children with specific learning disabilities (SLD). Two seemingly opposite camps have been arguing for either a response-to-intervention (RTI) approach for SLD identification or a methodology that includes comprehensive evaluations for SLD identification and intervention purposes. In this article, the authors propose a resolution to these critical issues by emphasizing a multi-tiered approach to serving children with learning problems—one that begins with RTI, but then provides for comprehensive evaluation of cognitive processes if RTI methods are not successful in ameliorating the child’s learning difficulties. If a child fails to respond to intervention and demonstrates a deficit in the basic psychological processes following comprehensive evaluation, both the definitional criteria for SLD and the method for determining SLD eligibility will be addressed. This methodology incorporates the best aspects of both the RTI and comprehensive evaluation perspectives to forge a balanced practice model that ensures diagnostic accuracy and optimizes educational outcomes for children with SLD. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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• Responsiveness to Intervention: an Alternative Approach to the Identification of Learning Disabilities by Frank Gresham, University of California, Riverside.
  
  The concept of responsiveness to intervention appears to be a viable alternative approach to defining learning disability, particularly in light of the myriad difficulties with discrepancy-based models. In addition, assessment procedures should contribute to the planning and implementation of more effective treatments to remediate academic deficits. However, before the field can adopt responsiveness to intervention in eligibility determination, a host of unresolved issues await further investigation and deliberation.
   

• Responsiveness-to-Intervention: Definitions, Evidence, and Implications for the Learning Disabilities Construct. Douglas Fuchs, Devery Mock, Paul L. Morgan and Caresa L. Young.
  
  Longstanding concern about how learning disabilities (LD) are defined and identified, coupled with recent efforts in Washington, DC to eliminate IQ-achievement discrepancy as an LD marker, have led to serious public discussion about alternative identification methods. The most popular of the alternatives is responsiveness-to-intervention (RTI), of which there are two basic versions: the "problem-solving" model and the "standard-protocol" approach. The authors describe both types, review empirical evidence bearing on their effectiveness and feasibility, and conclude that more needs to be understood before RTI may be viewed as a valid means of identifying students with LD.

On-line Resources

• LD Online's RTI Model
  The response-to-invention (RTI) model is also often called the Three-Tiered Model. It is being proposed as an alternative to the Discrepancy Model, the "Wait to Fail Model," as it is often called by proponents of the RTI model. In the past most state education programs have used the discrepancy model for the identification of learning disabilities. http://www.ldonline.org/ld_indepth/assessment/response_to_intervention.html
   

• Responsiveness-to-Intervention Symposium - December 4-5, 2003 * Kansas City, Missouri. Jeff Grimes and Dave Tilly presented at the NRCLD symposium and their papers can be found at http://www.nrcld.org/html/symposium2003/index.html.
   

• Response to Intervention Models, Identify, Evaluate & Scale. http://www.nrcld.org/html/research/rti/RTIinfo.pdf

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Responsiveness-to-Intervention Evaluation Technical Assistance &Dissemination Activities

The Responsiveness-to-Intervention Model Site research is one activity NRCLD has undertaken to inform our work. NRCLD will work with the nation's six Regional Resource Centers (RRCs) to:

1. Implement these activities, including identifying, evaluating, providing technical assistance and dissemination information on RTI procedures and model sites
2. Explore the adequacy of RTI models as alternative models of identifying students with specific learning disabilities
3. Discover best practices of RTI currently in use

Learning Disabilities Resource Kit

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Last modified: July 11, 2010