RTI: The Experiment

"It's just like stuff we've already been doing." That's what my principal said in response to teachers asking "what's RTI?", when she informed them that there was a professional development day that would focus on it. Yeah, this year is going to be great. (sarcasm alert) When she said that I looked across the room to a couple of special ed. teachers and chuckled. This is going to be a mess. Where to begin? First, there is nothing happening in my school that is related to RTI. For some reason my principal thinks that it's better to introduce it as something that has been done before, but it's not. This is a huge shift from everything we've been doing. Our pre-referral process is a nightmare, and it needed something major to fix it. This is a start if it's implemented well. Second, the fact that teachers haven't heard of RTI is a major concern, but it has always been my concern. This is supposed to be a regular ed initiative, but regular ed people haven't been talking about it. This should be interesting.

BBC