By Janette Klingner, University of Colorado at Boulder
Challenge 2: Teachers and other school personnel are not clear how the RTI process is similar to and different from the Pre-Referral Process they had used in previous years. Their RTI meetings look very much like the Child Study Team Meetings of old.
How can we make sure we shift paradigms in how we think about supporting student learning? Can we provide students with appropriate instruction that meets their needs without thinking there is something “wrong” with them if they are not where we think they should be, according to a prescribed curriculum? At many schools it seems that RTI problem-solving meetings still center on possible reasons for an individual child’s struggles from a deficit perspective. There also still seems to be a push to qualify students for special education so that they can receive more intensive support.
It is certainly understandable that teachers would still come to these meetings with concerns about individual students and feel frustrated that their students are not learning more quickly and that they are not receiving more assistance. I’ve heard so many teachers say something such as, “I just want to get them more help.” RTI provides both teachers and students with additional support.
It is natural that it will take time for school personnel to shift their thinking from one of figuring out what is wrong with a student to one of looking more broadly at the instructional context and ways to make it better, as well as how to provide support for all students who need help, regardless of label. During this transition period, I suggest focusing on ways to improve Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction and interventions to be more appropriate for ELLs—and therefore, for all students. Rather than placing a child in Tier 3, I recommend providing a different form of intervention at Tier 2, perhaps for a longer duration, and making sure the instruction is provided by a teacher with expertise in teaching ELLs to read.
It is important to keep in mind that there are many reasons a child may not respond to a particular instructional approach (see Klingner & Edwards, 2006). It could be that the method is not an effective one with this child, and a different approach would yield much better results. Or the level of instruction might not be a good match for the child. The environment might not be conducive to learning. It is important to look in classrooms and observe instruction, and also to try different approaches, before determining that a child may have a disability because he is not responding to an intervention. RTI expert Amanda Vanderheyden says that students who do not seem to be responding to an intervention are “students for whom we have not found the right intervention (so the adults are the non-responders, really).”
Klingner, J. K., & Edwards, P. (2006). Cultural considerations with response to intervention models. Reading Research Quarterly, 41, 108-117.
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