Taking Action. Austin Buffum
results—that many schools are failing to see the gains in student achievement that RTI can provide when implemented well—did not surprise us. We have directly led the RTI process as site and district practitioners and have subsequently assisted hundreds of schools around the world. Throughout our travels, we have found that many site educators, district administrators, and state policymakers misinterpret key concepts, skip critical steps, look for shortcuts, and fail to discontinue traditional practices that are counterproductive to the RTI process. In addition to the two RTI implementation mistakes from the study (Sparks, 2015), nine other common missteps include the following.
1. Viewing RTI primarily as a process to identify students for special education
2. Viewing RTI as a regular education process
3. Building interventions on an ineffective core instructional program
4. Failing to create a guaranteed and viable curriculum
5. Using mismatched and misused assessments
6. Relying too heavily on purchased intervention programs
7. Perpetuating ineffective interventions
8. Focusing too much on what the staff cannot directly influence
9. Assuming some students are incapable of learning at high levels due to innate cognitive ability or environmental conditions
There is an important secondary benefit of RTI—educators can use it as a process to identify students with learning disabilities.
Viewing RTI Primarily as a Process to Identify Students for Special Education
There is an important secondary benefit of RTI—educators can use it as a process to identify students with learning disabilities. When all students have access to essential grade-level curriculum, highly effective initial teaching, and targeted interventions when needed, a vast majority of them succeed. If a student does not respond to these proven practices, it can indicate a potential learning disability and would justify a comprehensive evaluation of the student’s unique learning needs.
Unfortunately, many educators too quickly assume that a student’s failure in core instruction means he or she has a disability (Prasse, n.d.). When educators begin the RTI process assuming that a student’s struggles are likely due to a potential learning disability, then they usually view the tiers as the mandatory steps to achieve special education placement. Rigid time lines and laborious documentation then drive the process, and special education placement is the predetermined outcome.
Even if the RTI process worked perfectly to identify students with learning disabilities, what great benefit would we expect this qualification to provide these students? An objective analysis of special education’s impact since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 concludes that it has not only failed to close student achievement gaps but has actually been detrimental to achieving this outcome.
The graduation rate for students with special needs was 61 percent in 2014—almost 20 percent lower than for regular education students (Diament, 2014). Students with special needs are underrepresented in postsecondary education (Samuels, 2010) but overrepresented in prison. It is estimated that at least one-third and up to 70 percent of those incarcerated received special education services in school (Mader & Butrymowicz, 2014). These statistics are not meant to condemn special education teachers’ heroic efforts. Instead, it demonstrates the limitations of legislation that was never designed to ensure that students with special needs actually learn but to simply allow them to attend school. Based on these results, viewing RTI as merely a new way to qualify a student for traditional special education services is nothing more than creating a new pathway to educational purgatory.
Viewing RTI as a Regular Education Process
Instead of viewing RTI as a process to qualify students for special education, some go to the opposite extreme and see a multitiered system of supports as a way to stop the over-identification of students for special education. While this goal is noble, the unintended consequence is usually detrimental to both regular and special education students. For example, policymakers in one southwestern state dictate that Tier 3 can only serve special education students. This means that regular education staff alone must serve students who need intensive remediation in foundational skills but do not have an identified learning disability.
Often categorical dollars fund the best-trained faculty in areas like reading remediation, language acquisition, and behavior support, which would then deny regular education students access to their expertise. It is unrealistic to expect content-credentialed teachers to have the training equivalent of a reading specialist or school psychologist. This is why federal law acknowledges this need and allows early intervening services, in which a percentage of a district’s special education resources can be used in preventive ways for students who demonstrate the need for these services but don’t have a disability (Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA], 2004).
Creating this artificial divide between regular and special education staff also hurts special education students. Special education teachers cannot be content experts in every subject at every grade level. Yet many individualized education programs (IEPs) assign special education staff to provide supplemental interventions in multiple content areas. To implement RTI effectively, we cannot view it as regular education or special education. Instead, educators should base interventions on each student’s individual needs, and assign staff based on who is best trained to meet each need. We are not suggesting that schools should discontinue special education services altogether, or that educators can disregard student IEPs. What we are suggesting is that special education law now advocates for providing schools much more flexibility to meet all students’ needs. But taking advantage of this requires schools to rethink the way regular and special education have worked for years.
Building Interventions on an Ineffective Core Instructional Program
A school with weak and ineffective teaching will not solve its problems by creating a system of timely interventions for students. Eventually, the number of students it is attempting to support will crush that system. Interventions cannot make up for a core instructional program functioning in teacher isolation, a culture of “my students and your students,” tracking students by perceived ability and demographic expectations, assessing students with archaic grading practices, and expecting parents and special education to be the primary solution for struggling students. This is why our approach to RTI works best in schools that function as a PLC. The PLC at Work process focuses and unites all the school’s practices toward one mission: to ensure high levels of learning for every student. As long as we view RTI as an appendage to a school’s traditional instructional program, instead of an integral part of a school’s collaborative efforts to ensure all students succeed, a school’s intervention efforts will most likely be ineffective (DuFour, 2015).
Failing to Create a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
To learn at high levels, students must have access to essential grade-level curriculum each year. Every student might not leave each school year having mastered every grade-level standard, but every student must master the learning outcomes the school or district has deemed indispensable for future success. Anything less, and the student is on a trajectory to drop out of school.
Working collaboratively as a PLC, educators must create a guaranteed and viable curriculum grade by grade, course by course, and unit by unit that represents the skills, content knowledge, and behaviors every student must master to achieve this goal. Equally important, they must ensure students have access to this essential, grade-level curriculum as part of their Tier 1 core instructional program. With the rare exception of those few students who have profound disabilities, there should be no track of core instruction that focuses exclusively on below-grade-level skills.
Tragically, many schools assume their most at-risk students are incapable of learning at grade level and, instead, replace these students’ core instruction with Tier 3 remedial coursework. If a student receives below-grade-level instruction all day, where will he or she end up at the end of the year? Below grade level, of course. Educators must provide Tier 3 interventions in addition to Tier 1 essential