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Policy Framework
Students with learning disabilities are more likely to have low academic achievement, despite recent advances in curriculum design, assessments to inform instructional decisions, and research-based intervention strategies. To better serve these students — and to avoid unnecessary referrals for special education services — researchers and practitioners have designed interventions to identify specific learning disabilities earlier and to improve the achievement of struggling learners without referring them to special education. One such model is Response to Intervention, or RtI.
RtI programs, which are built on research that suggests that low achievement may be due to inappropriate instruction and not necessarily to a disability, offer a multi-tiered framework to identify and serve students who are at risk for academic difficulties and may be eligible for special education services. RtI strategies emphasize high-quality instruction in general education classes, frequent and systematic measurement of student progress, methods for identifying students who do not respond to instruction, and delivery of increasingly intensive, tiered interventions. In the context of elementary reading instruction, RtI’s chief goal is to identify students whose reading difficulties stem from instructional deficits, rather than from learning disabilities, and to improve all students' reading achievement. Because of this focus, RtI was included in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (IDEA).
RtI models typically consist of three “tiers.” Tier 1 is the core, general education curriculum where student progress is monitored using benchmark assessments and struggling readers are identified. The majority of students typically remain within Tier 1. Students not progressing adequately in Tier 1 are placed into Tier 2, which monitors and supports struggling readers through more frequent assessments and data-driven interventions delivered via small groups. If students demonstrate improvement after receiving Tier 2 instruction, they will either remain in Tier 2 or return to Tier 1. If students continue to be unresponsive to Tier 2 instruction, they will be placed in Tier 3. This tier consists of intensive, individualized interventions to address each struggling student’s unique needs, which may lead to determining the child’s eligibility for special education.
The RtI approach has the potential to:
- improve instruction for all struggling students by identifying learning problems early and informing instructional decisions regarding the type, intensity, and duration of interventions to address them;
- inform the evaluation of students for specific learning disabilities by assessing their responses to research-based interventions; and
- affect the representation of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in some disability categories by identifying and intervening early with students who have achievement deficits.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
As the study has progressed, it has become clear that there is intense interest in RtI for elementary school reading. As of 2010, 43 states have indicated that they have a state RtI framework in place. Many districts and schools are working to put in place strong RtI models, and investigation of various types of RtI practices along with quasi-experimental analyses of their impacts can help school district and state administrators design and implement these programs and can inform federal efforts to support RtI and related early intervention services.
This evaluation will address the following questions:
- What is the average impact on academic achievement of providing intensive secondary reading interventions to elementary school children who have been identified as at risk for reading difficulties compared with children just above the cut point for providing intervention?
- How do academic outcomes, including reading achievement and special education identification, vary with elementary schools’ adoption of Response to Intervention practices for early grade reading?
- How do Response to Intervention practices for early grade reading vary across schools and how are they related to academic outcomes?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The study team will use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to answer the first question. The RDD analysis will examine the impacts of providing more intensive reading support to children on the margin of needing such assistance. In approximately 115 schools where decisions about providing assistance are made based on a ranking of students’ need for assistance and a consistently applied cutoff for assistance, RDD impact estimates would be calculated by comparing student academic outcomes for children immediately above and below the cutoff point. This analysis would provide evidence on the effectiveness of providing coordinated early intervention services (CEIS) funded under IDEA to students who are at the time not identified as needing special education services but are struggling to learn how to read and are receiving more intensive instructional supports for reading in the regular education classroom (Tier 1 in RtI terminology) or in separate tiers with small student-to-teacher ratios.
A comparative interrupted time series (CITS) design will be used to answer the second question. Approximately 50 schools from the RDD sample plus a similar number of comparison schools not experienced with RtI will be included in this analysis. The CITS analysis will examine whether implementation of RtI practices is associated with greater improvements over prior academic trends in reading achievement and special education identification in schools experienced with RtI as compared to similar schools not implementing the key elements of reading RtI during the period of the analysis. This design will also examine how special education referral and placement change as RtI is implemented.
For the third question, study team will document the design and implementation of RtI in the full sample of schools (RDD and CITS) through correlational analysis of surveys of school-level staff, teachers, and reading specialists (sometimes known as interventionists). These surveys will also inform the RDD and CITS analyses by allowing us to characterize the contrast in instruction provided students identified as needing additional, intensive reading instruction and those not identified for such services. For the CITS analysis, it will also provide information on the service contrast between the RtI treatment schools and comparison schools.
What's Next
Data collection for the project will occur in 2012, and a project report will be issued in late 2013.
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