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Response to Intervention (RtI) also referred to as Response to Instruction is a process for achieving higher levels of academic and behavioral success for all students through high quality instructional practices, continuous review of student progress and collaboration. The staff of the Chetek-Weyerhaeuser Area School District view RtI not only as a system to ensure success for all students but also as a framework for school improvement that embraces a systematic approach, which is used to understand how effectively a student learns when exposed to instruction. RtI has allowed for more timely response to all students when they fail to learn adequately. This system applies to all students regardless of subgroup or label.
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction defines high quality instruction, continuous review of student progress and collaboration as shown below.
High quality instruction responds to individual differences in a learning community/classroom. Inherent to high quality instruction is rigorous content delivered through differentiated instruction. Instructional activities are culturally relevant and put the student at the center of academic and social learning, with the student’s needs driving instruction, not programs or curricula. High quality instruction is vital to informing additional support, challenge, and intervention.
Continuous review of student progress involves a balanced, systematic process of constant inquiry that determines:
· Where a student or a group of students is at (screening).
· How students are responding to differentiated instruction of the core curricula (ongoing assessment).
· How students are responding to additional support, challenge, and intervention (monitoring of progress).
Collaboration is a process where people work together toward common goals. Collaboration as part of an RtI system includes:
· Inclusive discussion and planning as part of building a solid foundation and infrastructure.
· Formal and informal discussion among educators and families about the individual needs of students.
To best insure that all students learn, it is critical that a number of characteristics inherent to academic success are present. These characteristics include:
· high expectations for students and staff
· standards aligned curriculum
· high quality instruction
· Continual use of data
o universal screening of all students
o progress monitoring of students at risk for failure
· use of research-based interventions
Successful implementation of this framework in Wisconsin is based upon the following seven principles:
- RtI is for ALL children and ALL educators.
- RtI must support and provide value to effective practices.
- Success for RtI lies within the classroom through collaboration.
- RtI applies to both academics and behavior.
- RtI supports and provides value to the use of multiple assessments to inform instructional practices.
- RtI is something you do and not necessarily something you buy.
- RtI emerges from and supports research and evidence based practice.
*Note: Information has been taken from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction website.
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To best address the learning needs of all children, educational services are provided in a tiered model of service delivery. At the base of this tiered model, all students receive high quality instruction based on comprehensive curricular units, collaborative teaching (co-teaching). This bottom tier is characterized by high expectations for students and staff, students having equal opportunity to learn, and on-going staff development. Another critical element of the bottom tier is universal screenings to identify students with additional needs. This includes identifying students who struggle to learn as well as identify students who have already mastered grade level benchmarks.
Students who score below these minimal benchmark levels on universal screenings receive additional support as part of Chetek-Weyerhaeuser’s value added model. In this tier, students are exposed to targeted interventions that are designed to remediate specific skill deficits. Students progress is monitored carefully to insure that he/she is learning at a rate that will ultimately lead to closing the achievement gap between them and their grade level peers.
Students whose rate of learning does not lead to a rate of learning that will result in closing the achievement gap may require additional intensive intervention. This intervention is defined on an individual basis.
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