RTI: Considerations for School Leaders
The first stage of the change process is becoming informed. (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3) Principals seek out information about a new approach. They learn as much as they can about the effectiveness of the approach, the benefits for students, and the details of implementation.
The first step in building support is to identify a small representative group of key individuals. School leaders should do this because people often find it more manageable to build support for a new approach by starting with a small group of individuals than by immediately presenting the idea to the entire faculty.
Once an action plan has been created then implementing the action plan takes place. his process is complex and requires building an infrastructure, and because every school is unique, the infrastructure will differ from school to school. Therefore, schools need to prioritize the infrastructure components based on their needs. Most schools will have to balance: resources, implementation guidelines, professional development, scheduling considerations, teacher support, parent-school partnerships, and data management.
Fidelity of RTI implementation is the extent to which staff adhere to RTI procedures as they were designed, intended, and planned. If staff alter or stray from the implementation procedures used in the validation research, their changes could affect the approach’s effectiveness and consequently cause the approach to fail.
The second stage in the process of school-wide change is building support. It is critical for principals to lead. Principals who are effective leaders proactively build support within their school communities to initiate change for improving student outcomes. In the building support stage, principals share ideas with key individuals within the school community in order to improve outcomes for students.
Evaluating implementation is the final step in the change process. This step is critical for determining whether an intervention has been effective. During this step, school personnel perform two important tasks: assessing the fidelity of implementation and evaluating outcome data.
The five stages in the change process are: becoming informed, building support, creating an action plan, implementing the plan, and evaluating implementation.
The next step is creating an action plan
When implementing RTI, a school must determine how it will acquire and allocate needed resources. Potential resources could be: personnel, instruction, assessment, and time
The second step to building support involves his or her presenting a case to the representative group.
Evaluating school readiness
Identifying funding sources
Gaining a school-wide commitment
In the stage referred to as implementing the plan, principals actively participate in the planning team, oversee day-to-day activities, work with the planning team to solve problems, and ensure that adequate resources are available. Additionally, they promote good communication with parents, support collaboration among staff, create a supportive climate, manage school-wide data, and support professional development activities.
To implement RTI, schools need to develop guidelines concerning RTI-related procedures. These guidelines should provide information on how the school will implement the primary RTI components: high-quality instruction, frequent assessment, tiered interventions, and data-based decision making. A written record of these guidelines (i.e., a manual) will help school personnel implement RTI with fidelity.
Professional development and ongoing support are critical for the successful implementation of the RTI elements.
Scheduling is often overlooked, but it is important for the successful implementation of the RTI approach
Release time, in-class supports, and encouragement and positive reinforcement are classroom supports for teachers when implementing RTI.
Parent-school partnerships are essential to improving educational outcomes for all students. In order to establish good parent-school partnerships, school personnel need to remember rules of basic courtesy when communicating with all parents, taking into consideration different cultural, linguistic, educational, economic, and racial backgrounds.
It is important for schools to set up a data management system that will enable them to examine student data over time (e.g., by grading period, by year, or across several years). A good data management system will help principals generate accountability reports, demonstrate the success of the approach, and facilitate the sharing of data with faculty, parents, other principals, and interested community members.
In the evaluating implementation stage, principals participate in the evaluation of the fidelity and efficacy of an instructional intervention or approach. They do this by collecting and analyzing fidelity and students’ performance data. During this process, they approach teachers with positive regard when evaluating treatment fidelity.
Whereas fidelity checks ensure that the RTI approach is being implemented correctly, schools use other sources of data to document student performance. These data may include:
Standardized reading scores
Progress monitoring data
The number of students referred for evaluations or identified as having learning disabilities
The number of students receiving Tier 2 and Tier 3 interventions
Pupil data (e.g., number of absences)
All of my information was obtained from: The IRIS Center. (2007). RTI: Considerations for school leaders. Retrieved from https://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/rti-leaders