What Every School Leader Needs to Know about RTI
by Margaret Searle
(ASCD, 2010 – Learn more)

Reviewed by Linda Biondi

What Every School Leader Needs to Know about RTI by Margaret Searle is a book that demystifies the confusion about RTI (Response to Intervention) and provides the steps and framework necessary to seamlessly apply the RTI approach within our schools. The book focuses on using a problem solving approach that can help ALL students who are struggling academically and behaviorally.

According to Searle, RTI isn’t a program you can purchase, and she cautions educators that we can no longer support the “wait to fail” mindset for our struggling students. The three tiers of intervention that Searle outlines are proven to increase success for general, gifted, and struggling students who are not reaching their potential. Her anecdotal stories, case studies, and research-based information provide concrete examples of evidenced-based interventions in schools where she was a coach to administrators and teachers.

A Pyramid of Interventions

What I found particularly helpful was an explanation of each tier on the Pyramid of Interventions, with supports to help teachers answer the question: “If this isn’t working, what will?” Each chapter is sequentially written and includes “how-to sections” which aid educators as they implement the RTI approach into a school or system. A comprehensive summary with key points and areas for reference concludes each chapter.

Searle instructs the reader on how to set up assessments, analyze data and use the three-tier intervention system to optimize results. Her research-based guide makes you realize the importance of note taking, setting detailed agendas, and using “quality data analysis to guide discussions and decisions for improvement.” She stresses the important role of leaders in setting the agenda and promoting honest conversations to help keep staff on task while implementing the RTI program.

In addition, Searle stresses the importance of establishing parental involvement through the use of a database of strategies. These family-friendly strategies can be applied by parents to target specific skills; they’re essentially stress-free and promote partnerships between teacher and parent. The analogy Searle presents to the reader for RTI to be functional is a stool with three legs. The three legs are (1) the assessment process; (2) a tiered intervention menu, and (3) a problems-solving process.

I would carry this analogy further to represent what is needed for students to succeed. One leg is the teachers to provide the information and guides. The second leg is the student who works and applies the information. The third leg is the parent who supports and encourages their children to do their best. All three legs must all work together in order for the student to be successful.

A leadership perspective

Written with school leaders and administrators in mind, Searle’s text includes strategies to “get teachers on board” and to assure skeptical minds that the RTI research-based concept must be in place for our students to all receive the quality educational program they deserve. She answers the questions of how to start, what RTI looks like when it is done well, and how school leaders can get parents as well as teachers involved.

The author eases the reader’s mind by reassuring administrators that quality educational strategies such as Professional Learning Communities, differentiated instruction, summative and formative assessment, and curriculum mapping are all part of an effective RTI framework. The book guides administrators in setting up efficient school based teams and infrastructure to sustain and support RTI.

What Every School Leader Needs to Know about RTI is an important book for all school-based and district-level administrators to read.

Linda Biondi is a fifth grade teacher at Pond Road Middle School in Robbinsville, New Jersey. She has written for Education World, the Responsive Classroom newsletter, and the ERIC Clearinghouse. She’s also the recipient of several grants that promote inquiry and a literacy enriched curriculum, and a consultant with the National Writing Project.

RTI Strategies that Work in the 3-6 Classroom
By Eli Johnson & Michelle Karns
(Eye on Education, 2012  Learn more)

Reviewed by Lori Trisler

Johnson and Karns identify 25 key strategies for Response to Intervention (RTI). They have very good research to back up their strategies. This book brings many research topics into one place.

The most helpful portions of this book were the “Question Aloud Guiding Questions” (p. 91) for math and the “Structured Group Discussion Sentence Frames” (p. 133) for speaking intervention strategies. These were very concrete strategies that I could implement immediately with students.

The first chapter focuses on the research regarding the 25 strategies for RTI. It was an overwhelming read for a classroom teacher. Then the beginning of each chapter returns to the research already discussed. I prefer one or the other.

A Lack of Specificity

As a classroom teacher, I was looking for some very specific suggestions on how to improve my teaching and students’ learning. The authors’ steps were numbered and easy to read. However, they lacked specificity. More examples of how these steps were applied in the classroom along with student examples  would have been helpful. My fifth graders would not have come up with the vocabulary that was used as an example for the “Academic Language Graphic Organizer.”

Old Ideas Recycled

Though I had wanted something new, I was disappointed that several of the book’s strategies are things that we’ve been doing for years. The “Academic Language Graphic Organizer” is just one example. We’ve been doing the Frayer Model for years, and this organizer is just in a different shape. We’ve been using signal words to teach text structure. RTI needs to be about a different way of doing things. If students understood the first time we teach something, they wouldn’t need RTI.

Teaching math comes more naturally to me than teaching reading. The strategies the authors gave for reading would have to be more specific to be helpful to me. After reading several pages of the “Brick and Mortar Words” intervention, I understand why specific academic language needs to be explicitly taught.  I still don’t see how I would apply that knowledge in my classroom.

More Emphasis on Understanding Needed

I have to disagree with the examples of “Fraction Chants” in the section on Fabulous Fractions. We’re educating teachers to “teach for understanding.” We don’t want students to “Just invert the second and multiply.” I suspect that many elementary teachers would be just as frustrated by the suggestions in the math section as I was with the reading section.  One bullet point is “Fractions can be viewed as portions of a number line.” Teachers don’t intuitively understand what that means and what they should do with it.  Teachers, like students, need to be shown what to do.

Much of this book is practical if you want to know the “why” behind RTI. If you’re looking for very specific ways to improve your teaching, this may not be the book for you.

Lori Trisler is starting her 17th year as an educator.  She received her Masters in Curriculum and Instruction at Wichita State University.  At this point she is teaching 5th grade having taught middle school math for six years.  She has presented workshops at her state’s math conference.  She is currently part of a team that is presenting workshops to teachers in her district on the changes that the Common Core will be bringing to mathematics instruction. 

Enhancing RTI: How to Ensure Success with Effective Classroom Instruction & Intervention
Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
ASCD, 2010 – Learn more

by Elizabeth Stein, NBCT

It’s easy to get lured into Enhancing RTI: How to Ensure Success with Effective Classroom Instruction and Intervention, by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey.

Within the first few pages, the reader is asked to “choose an adventure” that begins with a brief profile of Adam, “a fifth grader in a public school somewhere in the United States.” His educational experience is put in the hands of the reader, as we decide which learning conditions will serve Adam best. It isn’t too difficult to figure out — so long as the reader has moved beyond the traditional teacher-centered, “students as passive learners”, mentality.

Authors Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey combine their expertise to share knowledge and practical ways teachers can plan the learning experience within positive cycles of instruction. “This cycle—from assessment to instruction—enables teachers to observe students’ responsiveness to the targeted interventions and to proceed with instruction that is supported by ever-evolving performance data.”

Throughout Enhancing RTI, the authors make a clear and comprehensive case for the value and necessity of not only adopting an RTI mindset, but a strengthened model of RTI, so students can succeed. And their backgrounds and in-depth experience in the area of literacy add to the book’s practical approach.

One of the many valuable points the authors make clear is the distinction between intervention and instruction. As I read, I was reminded of the many discussions I’ve had with colleagues who have felt that RTI is all about providing interventions to those students who struggle. This book reminds teachers that the thrust of RTI is really all about high quality core instruction at the whole class level before students struggle.

The authors introduce readers to a powered up model of RTI that shines a spotlight on formative assessment and high quality core instruction. The focus is on effective whole-class instruction that can minimize the tendency to fall back on various layers of intervention. The authors call this more unambiguous model of RTI, “Response to Instruction and Intervention.”

They suggest that teachers should not wait to see if students will eventually respond to intervention; they must first become aware if students are responding to everyday classroon instruction. I think this distinction is critical for teachers who may not have a clear understanding of the premise of RTI. The authors include the following components for their strengthened model of RTI:

• Making sure that the core instruction (at the Tier 1 level) is responsive, standards-based, and data-driven;

• Making sure that Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions provide a continuous flow of instruction that is aligned to the core instruction;

• Analyzing instruction around a three-way feedback loop that incorporates formative assessment results that inform the teacher and the students;

• Making sure that collaborative efforts are established so educators and families work together successfully.

Each of the eight chapters is like a rung in a ladder leading to complete awareness of the RTI framework. Some chapter topics include:

Defining and refining the RTI process
Quality core instruction (Tier 1)
Supplemental Interventions (Tier 2)
Intensive Interventions for high risk learners (Tier 3)
The role of assessment and necessity of progress monitoring
Progress monitoring in action

Each chapter ends with a summary, or what the authors call “the takeaway.” This takeaway allows the reader to validate his or her reading of the text and begin to build a deeper understanding of what it takes to apply the comprehensive cycle of instruction described here.

After reading this book, the reader is ready to implement RTI with a clear focus and understanding that high quality core instruction is at the center of it all. The authors provide instructional planning tools, assessment rubrics, and pacing guides that are sure to make readers confident and ready to apply concepts right away. This book is perfect for those with and without a prior understanding of RTI. It will deepen any reader’s understanding and ability to implement the instructional cycles that define the RTI process.

The close of the book also brings to a close the particular adventure the authors have encouraged their readers to take. Adam, now entering 6th grade, has developed into a confident student. Adam’s story serves as an apt metaphor for the deep learning that can take place for every student when a school’s mission becomes aligning instruction, assessment and intervention to drive the learning process.

Elizabeth Stein is a National Board-certified special education teacher in the Smithtown Central School District on Long Island, N.Y. She also teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in special education and literacy. Among her published articles is this advice for new special education teachers. She also reviewed two books by Rick Wormeli that she says helped her make a mid-career shift from elementary to middle school.