Introduction
Expectations of public schools in American have never been higher. The No Child Left Behind legislation (2002) requires that schools demonstrate improved levels of student proficiency in the core academic areas. This accomplishment is unlikely to be achieved using past practices. To meet the challenge of NCLD a change is required in how data is collected, analyzed and linked to students' interventions. To achieve this outcome, a system solution is required that systematically considers the educational performance of all students and matches instructional interventions to students' needs.
A multiple tier model has been proposed for delivering differentiated instruction and support for an entire student population with academic and behavioral needs (Good, Gruba & Kaminski, 2002; Sugai & Horner, 1999; Sugai, Horner & Gresham, 2002). The most efficient manner of improving student performance is through the provision of an effective core curriculum and then early determination of performance gaps for students who performance in not keeping pace with expectations. Core instruction is considered the universal intervention or tier 1. Tier 2, or secondary intervention, occurs for those students who need additional assistance to improve performance and to determine what strategies are necessary to enable the student's continued growth. Tier 3, is offered when more specialized and intensive interventions is required to enable a student's continued growth. While characterizing the framework as three tiers there may be multiple activities at any level of intervention.
To illustrate the practices in a multiple tier, intervention-based system, a description is provided of how the problem-solving model occurs in the Heartland Area Education Agency, (AEA), an intermediate unit in Iowa serving approximated 24% of the students in Iowa attending 55 public school districts and 32 accredited non-public schools. While the present example involves one agency, a system approach to problem solving is being applied across Iowa and in other states.
In an attempt to meet the needs of all students, Heartland AEA uses a process that focuses on the students' skills and uses interventions to assist students in learning. Problem solving is both a conceptual and applied activity that has come to mean different things to different people. At Heartland AEA, problem solving is defined as a process that includes an objective definition of student behavior problems or academic difficulties, systematic analysis or the student's problem and implementation of a planned systematic set of interventions (Ikeda, Tilly, Stumme, Volmer, & Allison, 1996; Ikeda, Grimes, Allison, Kurns, & Stumme, 2002). These interventions may be designed to meet the needs of an individual student or groups of students. An essential part of the problem-solving process is monitoring interventions and evaluating effectiveness to determine future needs (Shinn, Walker, & Stoner, 2002).
Problem solving occurs within the school setting and becomes more complex as the resources needed to resolve a problem increase due to the significance of the problem. The intent of the problem-solving process is to resolve the problem. In some cases the end result could be entitlement to special education, but only after a systematic, data-based decision-making process has clearly demonstrated both the eligibility and the need for special education.
This paper is organized in four major sections: (a) consideration of intervention-based services within the context of current demands of federal and state laws, (b) description of the conceptual and applied framework for the implementation of an intervention-based, problem-solving system approach, including individual casework related to intervention design, and (c) discussion of selected issues related to the effective implementation of an intervention-based system, and a review of system and student results.
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