At the beginning of the school year, I and another ‘coach’ were tasked with explaining to the rest of the district staff as what RTI is… at least it got me out of the refresher course in PBIS. (and if you understood that last part, you probably don’t need to read this anyways, unless you want to correct my typos)
RTI or Response to Intervention is, originally, an idea that seems very logical and student centered. Basically, any student, whether they qualify for Special Education services or not should receive instructional supports at their level. If Johnny isn’t reading, then teachers need to know why. If Johnny is being a butt-head, the teacher needs to find a way to counter that. However, if Johnny is having difficulty reading because of a skill deficit, then Johnny should get some sort of support to help him fill that deficit. If the classroom teacher can work with that, all the better. If not, then Johnny needs that support from somewhere else. Even if he is put into a Special Education class! *gasp*
RTI is also a system. It is a data driven system. It’s also a tiered system.
Tier 1 are those students who are have grade appropriate skills. They are where they should be for that grade level. This should be approximately 80% of the population of a school. If this is less than 80%, it may indicate a problem with your core curriculum or with the fidelity of that curriculum (fidelity means that the curriculum is being presented as it was intended to be according the publisher). It could also mean that you have a school full of students with skill deficits and everyone needs to be teaching interventions in the core instruction – not separate intervention instruction.
Tier 2 are those students who show some sort of skill deficit. They are not at grade level. They are not, however, very far below grade level. If you are familiar with WASL/HSPE lingo, they are level two students. The most common term for them I’ve found on RTI materials is that they are “at-risk”. It never goes into detail of what they are “at-risk” of… but I like to think of this group as those students in your class who you know just don’t get it, but probably enough life skills to get by. This should be approximately 5 to 15% of the entire student population.
Tier 3 are those who have definite skill deficits. It’s pretty obvious to the teacher that something is not clicking. These tend to be students with identified learning difficulties or language issues. This is expected to be under 5% of the total student population.
These percentages are guidelines to a certain extent. In lower elementary grades the percentage of level two students will be much, much higher than in high school, for example. Schools with a very large immigrant population will have a higher percentage of level three students and that may change seasonally if there is a large migrant population. It’s my personal opinion that the tiers exist to help determine what working and what isn’t. Your mileage may vary.
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