Universal Response to Intervention
When the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, was rewritten in 2004, a newfound commitment to helping struggling students make progress in the core curriculum areas was born.
Known as Response to Intervention (RTI), the model mandated a new way to determine if a student does not perform at grade level owing to a lack of instruction, and which students require special education as the result of a disability.
At the core of RTI is an emphasis on effective instruction and early, data-driven intervention to maximize student achievement—and technology is making this intervention possible. Using software that has a built-in assessment component can help educators track and monitor their students' progress and adjust their instruction accordingly, truly ensuring that no child is left behind.
And as RTI has proven its value as an instructional model, many schools have applied this philosophy to their curriculum in general. With IDEA set to receive nearly $25 billion under the 2009 spending bill and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, many districts will find that the funds come not a moment too soon.
To help ensure your students' success using the principles of RTI, eSchool News, with the generous support of CTB/McGraw-Hill, has compiled the following list of news articles and other helpful resources on the RTI process and its use nationwide.
--The Editors
eSchool News articles
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RTI: Not just for special education
Once a concept only well known in special-education circles, Response to Intervention (RTI)—which responds to individual students' needs by taking a data-based approach to instruction—has taken hold in the general education arena and is helping educators take a more active role in monitoring student progress.[ Read More ] -
Technology key to analyzing assessment data
Through the careful application of technology in classroom assessments, schools and teachers can improve instruction for students, and states can develop comprehensive longitudinal data systems to better analyze student performance, according to data in a new report from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA). [ Read More ] -
Rochester City schools take assessment to another level
New York state's Rochester City School District faces many of the same challenges as other large urban school districts nationwide—including high student mobility, large numbers of students from single-parent and non-English-speaking families, and pervasive poverty. To better establish the needs of children at a certain point in time and then use that information to guide the delivery of instruction, the district needed a real-time solution for assessment and evaluation. [ Read More ] -
'MindLadder' suggests the future of assessment
Recent advances in technology and nearly two decades of research into how students learn have come together in a series of programs that could represent the future of assessment. [ Read More ]
Additional resources
http://www.rtinetwork.org/
What You Need to Know about IDEA 2004 Response to Intervention: New Ways to Identify Specific Learning Disabilities
http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/rti.index.htm
National Center for Learning Disabilities: RTI Updates
http://www.ncld.org/content/view/1002/389/
U.S. Department of Education's IDEA web site
http://idea.ed.gov/explore/home
Frequently asked questions about RTI
Educators have many questions about RTI. Here are some of the most popular questions, with in-depth answers.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/media/files/RTI FAQ - Customer-facing (Jan09).pdf
Promoting student achievement using research-based assessment with formative benefits
Research shows that technology-enhanced formative assessment is a powerful solution that enables educators to more readily monitor progress and improve student achievement.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/media/files/Acuity Formative Assessment White Paper (Jan08).pdf
The research foundations of Acuity Predictive Assessments in mathematics and reading/language arts
The Acuity Math and Reading/Language Arts predictive assessments measure content strictly aligned to related state content standards and deliver informative reports that teachers can use in the classroom to identify student strengths and weaknesses, assign personalized instructional resources, monitor growth, and track expected student achievement on the subsequent state NCLB assessment. .
http://www.eschoolnews.com/media/files/Acuity Predictive Assessments Research White Paper (Oct07).pdf