Abstract
Eight years ago, the editors of this special issue published another special issue focused on the topic of response to intervention (RtI; Vaughn & Fuchs, 2003). At that time, there was considerable interest in the application of an RtI model for providing services to children at risk for learning disabilities. The promises then of this new approach to serving children who were struggling in school included (a) an approach to instruction and instructional interventions that were more closely connected to state standards, (b) increased likelihood of identifying children with “real” disabilities rather that those who were not receiving adequate instructional opportunities, (c) better collaboration between general educators and special educators aimed at meeting the needs of a broader range of learners, (d) a more justifiable replacement for the “severe discrepancy” model for identifying students with learning disabilities, and (e) increased attention on those students with intensive learning needs for whom little research had been conducted with respect to intervention effectiveness.
The potential benefits have led to the RtI framework being adopted widely by state departments and school districts. In many cases, RtI has been applied by states and districts to assist schools to improve outcomes for all subpopulations of students. Here in Texas, for example, the state is supporting an effort to better prepare students for meeting the graduation requirement of successfully passing an end-of-course algebra exam. This is based, in part, on a multitiered RtI framework. Part of this initiative includes the development of a universal screener for identifying students who need intensive support in prealgebraic skills and knowledge and professional development of middle school mathematics teachers to ensure that they are providing the highest quality Tier 1 mathematics instruction. Simultaneously, our colleagues from around the state have developed sample intervention lessons based on the best available instructional research. Finally, we are poised to provide professional development statewide on how to implement a multitiered model for mathematics instruction. This work mirrors that of our colleagues who have been involved in similar initiatives in early and secondary reading and language arts. RtI has already had an enormous impact on state and district policies nationwide, and many details of a successful RtI implementation have been clarified. Denton et al. offer a thorough description of what we know from implementation in the context of early reading. Yet, like many of my colleagues who work in translating research to practice, frequently I am asked specific implementation questions and have to respond with “I am not sure,” “I am not aware of any research on that issue,” or “There are probably many ways to answer that question, none of them more or less correct than another.” I suspect that my responses frustrate the questioners, but we have successfully convinced policy makers and the public to embrace the RtI approach before we had all, or even many, of the answers.
The articles in this special issue represent the kind of research that is desperately needed to support the momentum that continues to gather around efforts to implement more effective instruction and assessment practices. As with most research, one can look at RtI and at the findings presented in these articles from at least two perspectives: (a) the half-empty glass perspective and (b) the half-full glass perspective. The remainder of my comments are structured around these two perspectives, followed by my view of our collective work as a field from a more personal perspective, that of a parent.
The Half-Empty Glass
The half-empty glass perspective is the one that views the collective findings from these articles as important but insufficient to assist in the formidable challenge of affecting improvements in outcomes for students with disabilities in our schools. It is certainly easy to take this perspective as we eagerly try to build models of technical support for implementation with limited knowledge of how to identify which children need instructional support, the specific focus of support that should be provided (e.g., whole number knowledge vs. rational number knowledge, fluency building or vocabulary development) and the level of support that should be provided (i.e., duration, intensity, focus). All of these questions are important, and there are emerging answers. However, for conscientious educators, the answers can’t come quickly enough.
In the set of articles in this special issue, the glass-half-empty perspective is furthered by several findings or reported research limitations. The following are a few concerning findings that jumped out at me as I reviewed the articles:
Despite effective interventions in early reading and mathematics, a universal RtI remains elusive.
There is little evidence of the nature of instructional interventions that will most support students identified as needing Tier 3 or intensive support in either reading or mathematics.
Our best efforts to support struggling readers in secondary schools result in only modest effects.
When interventions do appear to be effective, they do not seem to close the gap between those students identified at the outset as needing additional support and those not needing support.
In mathematics, we lack sufficient information on how to address students’ needs and ensure that the skills and knowledge that we target will transfer to more sophisticated knowledge as they progress through the grades.
Several studies, including those in this issue, demonstrate that despite best intervention efforts there is a persistent lack of universal RtI. This may imply that there is a small group of students who have legitimate learning disabilities. In addition, from an instructional perspective, this means there are some children for whom we still have no documented effective approach to meet their needs. In more than one of the articles in this special issue, authors note that we have insufficient information about how to meet the needs of students who are not responsive to evidence-based instructional interventions. To be sure, we have made great strides in the past 30 years in developing a research base on the instructional needs of students with learning disabilities and students who struggle generally, particularly in reading (e.g., Foorman & Torgesen, 2001; Gersten et al., 2008; Swanson, 1999). However, these syntheses do not give us much information about interventions for secondary-level students or for students who do not respond to Tier 2 interventions. Vaughn et al. reported that their interventions with middle school students resulted in modest positive effects on decoding, reading fluency, and comprehension. However, more needs to be learned about the kinds of intervention features that may help secondary students with learning disabilities to achieve important skills and knowledge necessary to be prepared for college or careers. In short, with our best efforts to develop strong intervention approaches, we remain unable to help all learners make progress.
The Half-Full Glass
In contrast to the perspective presented above, the articles in this special issue present many important reasons to be hopeful. The hopeful perspective is encouraging in light of the progress we’ve made in advocating for state and district initiatives to develop fresh approaches to systemic improvements based on the multitier RtI framework described in several of the studies in this issue. Some of the most important findings reported that I believe should give us hope include the following:
There is evidence that a carefully implemented tutoring program can result in measureable benefits for students struggling in mathematics.
Preliminary evidence suggests that we may be able to employ a combination of state assessments and fluency measures to identify secondary students in need to intervention.
It appears that we can identify students who need Tier 3 intervention without first having them fail to respond to Tier 2.
There is evidence that factoring in measures of students’ specific cognitive characteristics may support more sensitive and specific predictions of later reading difficulties.
Understanding the cognitive characteristics that assist in predicting later reading difficulties may help improve responsiveness to intervention when working with students who don’t respond to evidence-based Tier 2 interventions.
Many of these reported findings address the concerns I noted in the glass-half-empty perspective. Notably, the articles in this issue contribute to the growing evidence base on effective practices that teachers and interventionists can use to help struggling students in reading and mathematics across all grade levels. For example, the positive impact of tutoring in mathematics reported by L.S. Fuchs et al. is part of multiple research programs conducted by different research teams across several locations increasing our confidence in their findings. Also encouraging is that we continue to find efficient and effective ways to identify students in secondary grades who need intervention to support their academic success. Our work in Texas suggests that the RtI framework is still relatively unfamiliar for secondary teachers. In particular, systemically screening students to determine those who need additional support in the secondary grades is new territory for many teachers. However, providing teachers with data that illustrate clearly that their students are unable to access content area instruction without additional intervention for reading and mathematics is an essential ingredient to reallocating scarce resources to ensure student success in the secondary grades.
With respect to students with significant support needs, the findings presented in this issue are quite encouraging. First, Compton et al. demonstrate that by using a combination of results from a universal screener, norm-referenced test data, and a student’s responsiveness to Tier 1 instruction, whether that student needs Tier 3 intervention can be determined. This provides emerging technical guidance that supports federal law that prevents students from having to fail before receiving individualized instruction as well as many educators’ and parents’ suspicions that some children will not benefit sufficiently from Tier 2 intervention and need individualized support. Unfortunately, as I noted earlier, we have not always had a clear idea about what that individualized support should look like to help Tier 3 children succeed, however.
Nearly 50 years ago, in their classic article, Kirk and Bateman (1962) challenged the field to develop a “scientific pedagogy in the area of learning disabilities” (p. 74). We have made tremendous progress toward meeting this challenge by focusing on the effective features of instruction that meet the needs of a significant number of children identified as having LD (e.g., Swanson, 1999; Vaughn, Gersten, & Chard, 2001). However, as reported in this issue, the application of an RtI framework succeeds with a large number of children but punctuates the fact that a small percentage of children continue to struggle despite the efforts to help them (L. S. Fuchs et al.). D. Fuchs et al. identified several cognitive factors that help to predict later reading difficulties and may be a key to reaching the small percentage of children who require individualized instruction. I find compelling their suggestion that we consider these cognitive characteristics, including rapid automatized naming (RAN), phonological processing, oral language comprehension, and nonverbal reasoning as moderators to instruction in reading. However, rather than attempt to address students’ cognitive characteristics directly, the authors recommend we use our knowledge of a student’s particular cognitive characteristics to modify the instruction (e.g., pace, duration, intensity) to meet the student’s needs. Although I find their argument compelling, I question whether their choice of cognitive characteristics is tenable. Although RAN and nonverbal reasoning seem to fit into this category of cognitive characteristics, phonological processing and oral language comprehension seem more closely related to teachable content and may not serve as moderators in the same way as the authors have suggested. This concern does not diminish the importance of the authors’ idea that we must begin to consider specific characteristics of each Tier 3 learner as we tailor their instructional interventions.
A Personal Note
Recently, I found myself in a meeting with school personnel where I was the parent rather than my familiar role as teacher or advocate. One of my stepchildren had moved from a school district where she was receiving special education services to another district where she was denied services for the same condition. The district’s decision to deny her services relied entirely on a single test score. Although our interest was to get some targeted instructional support to prevent increasingly challenging academic issues in future years, the district seemed to be using every obstacle at its disposal to ensure that they didn’t have to provide that support.
In our case, the school district continues to use an approach to special education identification and instructional support that has not effectively served children like my stepdaughter. Under this model, one with which we are all familiar, children are provided instructional interventions only if they meet categorical criteria for inclusion. In addition, my stepdaughter would never get access to the scientific pedagogy that might help her catch up to her peers in reading and mathematics. In the RtI models described in the studies in this special issue, I hope a different scenario would result. One possible scenario is that she would have been assessed early with a series of norm-referenced tests, and on indications that core instruction was not meeting her needs, she would have been referred immediately for special education services (Tier 3 intervention). Alternatively, she would have been identified early as having difficulties in core instruction and would have received Tier 2 intervention. Under either of these possible RtI scenarios, she would have received immediate intervention, and we could have avoided the complicated interactions, excessive testing, and delayed support that ultimately resulted in her receiving Tier 3 intervention.
The findings of the studies included in this special issue represent the challenges in transitioning to an RtI framework for providing instructional support to children with learning disabilities or at-risk for failure. Through their ongoing research, the scholars who have contributed to these studies pinpoint and clarify several obstacles that still challenge RtI implementation. However, more important, their findings offer us several reasons to believe that an RtI framework offers the hope of a systemic approach that is still superior to the alternative models we used in the past.
Footnotes
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.