Response to Intervention 2.0
Next Generation
December 14, 2016
In 2004, "response to intervention" was introduced into federal special education law as a method of identifying children with learning disabilities. But RTI was quickly adopted as a model for overall school improvement because of its focus on providing assistance quickly to struggling students, before any academic deficits have a chance to become entrenched.
Now, 12 years later, RTI continues to expand its reach and evolve. The same basic framework is used by many schools and districts to support children's behavioral and social-emotional needs, to find and remediate struggling readers, and to identify students in need of special education. And, when it’s used to do all those things together, it’s often called "multitiered systems of supports," or MTSS. And along with that evolution have come some growing pains and some successes.
This special report on RTI—Education Week’s second such report—explores the challenges facing educators as they adopt RTI for new uses, scale it up to more schools and districts, and use it to improve learning for all students.
- Every Student Succeeds Act What Are Multitiered Systems of Supports?Here's a glossary for help in understanding multitiered systems of support, response to intervention, and their related uses.Curriculum Practical Lessons on Multitiered Systems of SupportsIn Michigan, the Ingham Intermediate school district’s experiences offer a road map to the costs and challenges of its multitiered system of supports model for academic and behavioral improvement.School & District Management Can Michigan Sustain Its Multitiered Supports?An initiative to embed a new instructional model in more than half the state's elementary and secondary schools has met with some successes—and some "false starts."Special Education Editor's Note: Response to Intervention 2.0Education Week's second special report on RTI explores how the instructional framework has expanded into new forms and uses in schools across the country.Special Education RTI Expands, Encounters Growing PainsResponse to intervention has come a long way from its origins in special education law—but not without some bumps along the way.Special Education Q&A Ask an Expert: Creating Multitiered Supports in SchoolsGeorgia school administrator John O'Connor answers readers' questions about implementing an RTI-like system of supports in their own school districts.Special Education Ky. District Uses RTI-Like Approach on Social SkillsMartin County, Ky., is using a $1.5 million federal grant to unite its secondary schools in a push to create a better school climate.