Implementing Response to Intervention (RtI): One District’s Story

DSC works with several districts around the United States with Response to Intervention (RtI). In our work, we are finding that districts approach RtI in many different ways. One of the districts using DSC programs in their approach to RtI is Special School District (SSD) in Saint Louis. I am looking forward to meeting and working with SSD teachers at the Suburban International Reading Association meeting this month where I will present strategies and assessments to address decoding needs students might have. Mitzi Brammer, the Area Coordinator at SSD, talked with us recently about some of the ways her district is implementing RtI.

DSC: How is your district implementing RtI?

Mitzi Brammer: SSD currently utilizes AIMSWeb as a progress-monitoring tool with students who are on Individualized Educational Programs in a number of our elementary and middle school buildings throughout the county. This is part of an Elementary Achievement Grant. For those districts that do not use AIMSWeb, teachers utilize common assessments or curriculum-based measures. We are also incorporating the use of data teams throughout almost all of our partner district sites. As part of our data team process, we have data coaches, data team leaders, and literacy coaches who assist teams in decision-making.

DSC: What are some of the ways you are performing student assessments?

MB: It depends on the partner district. Some use AIMSWeb probes; others use probes from similar data collection systems (e.g., Yearly Progress Pro); our SSD buildings utilize fluency measures (reading passages) compiled by the Federal Programs Administrator.

DSC: What kind of professional development is needed to help your teachers move forward with RtI?

MB: It’s not so much that we need additional professional development. We have a lot of in-house supports in our district with regard to progress monitoring and then interventions; the hard piece is getting buy-in from our teachers that RtI is a part of good instruction. The pieces that go along with RtI are not add-ons, they are just part of good instruction: you pre-assess, you try interventions, take data, post-assess. Right now, our teachers are seeing RtI as something separate from their daily instruction.

We invite you to join the conversation by sharing your district’s RtI story. We want districts to be able to learn from one another about many aspects of RtI, such as assessment, interventions, and training.