Tiered Service-Delivery Model: Caveats and Concerns

| RTI Practices | Caveats and Concerns | School Examples | Resources |

School-based examples of tiered service delivery, such as those presented in the School Examples section, are "real world" examples that represent current practices considered by most staff in their sites as "works in progress." In contrast, research studies may present a different picture of tiered service delivery standards (see Research Examples). Schools considering adopting a responsiveness-to-intervention model should consider the following points when undertaking tiered service delivery in conjunction with their RTI process.

To date, implementation of RTI models has mostly been limited to early reading interventions. The literature base in math is developing, and a few studies have reported results on later reading and content areas for fourth to 12th-grade students.

Although a high-quality RTI framework relies on research-based instruction and interventions, evidence-based instruction was not always implemented in the school sites that participated in our RTI practices research. Additionally, many of the Tier 2 interventions were not clearly distinguishable in terms of their intensity. Although a student may have received small-group instruction, important elements of that instruction--such as frequency, duration, alternative presentations, and highly-trained teachers--were not specified.

RTI is a school-wide system that can only be successful when implemented as a fully integrated instructional, intervention, and assessment model. As such, implementation requires strong school leadership to clearly define the required interactions among staff to create a seamless system of educational service. When RTI is successfully implemented as a school-wide process, it can be used as

  1. a prediction tool for at-risk students
  2. an intervention tool for students with academic or behavioral difficulties
  3. as a component of specific learning disability determination