| RTI Practices | Caveats and Concerns | School Examples | Resources |
Dalton Gardens Elementary School's enrollment consists of 411 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Of those students, 55 percent are male. The number of classes for each grade is as follows: kindergarten-two; first grade-two; second grade-three; third grade-three; fourth grade-three; and fifth grade-two. Nineteen percent of the students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. Ninety-three percent of the students are Caucasian (not Hispanic), with the remaining 7 percent being nearly equally represented by Asian, Hispanic, and African-American students. Fifteen students are served in special education, and one student is an English language learner. Dalton Gardens Elementary's responsiveness-to-intervention model uses the following structure: Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, and special education.
Parents of students with an intervention plan (I-plan) are involved from the initial I-plan meeting. Before this meeting, the classroom teacher makes the initial contact with the parents. The contact may be by phone or at a parent-teacher conference. Just before the meeting, the classroom teacher meets the parents by the school office, assists them with checking in, and gives them a brief overview of how the meeting is expected to go and who will attend. The Dalton Gardens Responsiveness to Intervention (RTI) Team attends these meetings. Members of the RTI Team include the principal, counselor, psychologist, speech-language pathologist (if needed), general education representative (Dalton Gardens has one primary representative and one intermediate representative), special education teacher, and referring teacher.
At the beginning of the meeting, formal introductions are conducted by the meeting facilitator, usually the principal. The classroom teacher then presents information about the student to the parents and to the team members. During the meeting, team members try to be "jargon-busters" if there are terms or acronyms used that the parents may not understand.
School staff members are aware that parents often have unique insights about their child's strengths and weaknesses and are frequently eager to help with interventions at home. When parents offer to do interventions at home with their child, the parents are noted on the I-plan as interventionists. Dalton Gardens has had parents come to the school to volunteer so they could observe the interventions in place and help with other students' interventions. Dalton Gardens staff also give parents ideas and materials that they can use at home - for example, flash cards, reading passages with which their child can practice fluency, grammar worksheets, etc. If a parent suggests a certain intervention, Dalton Gardens staff members are open to considering the intervention if it is something that can be provided by the staff. When parents have a suggestion, it is often something they would like to do at home.
Parents are invited to all meetings about their child, although Dalton Gardens staff members do meet without parents if they are unwilling to attend.
Included in a student's I-plan is a description of the child's problem, clear and unambiguous documentation about the child's difficulties, a written description of the specific intervention(s), clearly stated intervention goal(s), and a long-range timeline for the plan and its implementation. (Student timelines can vary widely.) Every nine weeks, Dalton Gardens RTI Team members meet to discuss students with I-plans and to decide to discontinue the I-plan (because goals have been met), continue current interventions, change the interventions, or refer the student to special education. Parents are invited to attend these meetings.
Dalton Gardens staff members have found that, because the parents are so impressed with the RTI and I-plan process and because of the willingness of the team to do whatever it takes to help their child, parents do not have many complaints and it is easy to reach a mutual agreement. If parents do have concerns, the school staff address them immediately and try to work with parents to make satisfactory changes.
Dalton Gardens staff inform parents about RTI through presentations at Parent-Teacher Association meetings and through the school newsletter. At PTA meetings, school staff give a brief overview of RTI that includes basic information about RTI and the RTI process. The principal sends information about RTI to parents several times a year.
Follow-up meetings focused on student progress occur every nine weeks. If a problem comes up between meeting times, staff will call an emergency meeting to discuss the problem and the next step. The child's classroom teacher invites parents to all meetings.
Dalton Gardens Elementary distributes a survey to families each March to solicit feedback from parents about all the school programs, including RTI.
Progress monitoring data are usually sent home weekly, if parents request it. Many parents trust that school staff will keep them informed if there is a problem. Many students who are showing good progress on their graphs ask to take a copy home to show their families.
Parents are not given any written information formally, but during past meetings, parents have asked for testing. In these cases, the special education teacher steps in with the appropriate paperwork for parents to read and sign. If a parent asks for testing during a meeting when the special education teacher is not present and the paperwork is not available, a meeting will be scheduled for a later time to handle the paperwork necessary for proceeding with the testing.
The special education teacher is very conscientious about giving parents all the paperwork and materials at the appropriate time. All staff members are willing to stop a meeting and reconvene at another time to take the appropriate steps for a student.
Funding for NRCLD is provided by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special
Education Programs. Award No. H324U010004. Opinions expressed herein are those of the National
Research Center on Learning Disabilities and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S.
Department of Education.
© 2007 National Research Center on Learning Disabilities
Last Updated: November 19, 2007
Contact: nrcld@ku.edu