Jarrod Martin's List: Strategy and Interventions

• Once placed and programmed, the system failed to ask "How is the student doing?" While individual special education teachers certainly focused on answering that question, it was never part of a larger system.

  • This is certainly true in a lot of ways, and I think my school could use a wake up call. We are all responsible for the progress of our students.
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• General education programs and teachers came to understand that when students failed to learn in a general education setting, it was expected, if not required, that the student be referred for special education consideration.
• Special education experienced ballooning enrollments, with too many students identified as disabled—not because they had a disability, but rather because they had not been successful in a general education program.
• That is, when a student was not learning at an acceptable rate or was not at grade level, general education learned to look elsewhere (i.e., to special education) for assistance. Failure to achieve at grade level was too often understood only in the context of something being wrong with the student.
• Insufficient systemic attention was directed at general education programs for addressing poor academic performance.
• Finding, identifying, and placing students "in" a special education program was no longer sufficient. What needed to be addressed was the creation of a service delivery system that was more oriented around how a student responded to research-based interventions delivered with integrity.
• Could we hold IEP meetings where the first question posed was not whether a student satisfied criteria for a specific special education category, but instead related to how well a student has responded to effective interventions, or asked about what effective interventions the student needs? And if effective interventions were not a part of the education history, could we insist that those interventions be delivered?
• Adopting an RTI model is about adopting best professional practice, insisting that we do what is best and necessary for all students in our schools, and, finally, rising to the challenge of doing that which is socially just.

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• There are numerous justifications for the use of Response to Intervention in Schools. Most notably it addresses the gap of services that exist between regular education programs and Special Education programs. Despite past practice, we all know that there is a gray area between the needs of students who qualify for Special Education and those who do not.

• Although not new or limited to special education, RTI initially appeared as policy in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004), and it has conceptual and empirical foundations in, for example, applied behavior analysis, curriculum-based measurement, precision teaching, pre-referral intervention, teacher assistance teaming, diagnostic prescriptive teaching, data-based decision making, early universal screening and intervention, behavioral and instructional consultation, and team-based problem solving (Sugai, 2007).
• • A core curriculum is provided for all students;
   
  • A modification of this core is arranged for students who are identified as nonresponsive, and
• RTI is a good framework and logic for organizing and increasing the efficiency with which evidence-based practices are selected, organized, integrated, implemented, and adapted.

  • Systems create behaviors. Sounds like the RTI system creates a way for teachers to work together to reach consensus about a student's needs.
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• If done wisely in the context of other initiatives and interventions across classroom and nonclassroom settings, the possibility of improving student academic and social behavior outcomes can become a reality for all students.    

   
   
  1. How curriculum adoptions and instructional design decisions are made;
   
  2. How special and general educators work together to address the needs of all students;
   
  3.  What assessment tools and procedures are used to make reliable and valid instructional decisions;
   
  4. How high fidelity of implementation of best practices is assessed, evaluated, and supported;
   
  5. What communications among students, teachers, and families look like;
   
  6. How resources are organized to respond effectively and efficiently with students who do not achieve the desired oucomes in response to the intervention;
   
  7. What criteria are used to determine whether a practice is evidence based;
   
  8. How the practices and systems align with the social, cultural, and educational vision and values of students, family members, and school staff.

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