RTI: An Update 3

As I suspected, I'm being slowly sucked into the RTI vortex at my school. We've started the process, yet no one knows what they are doing, and I'm afraid that it will somehow disintegrate into our former pre-referral system. Ugh.

My principal has begun the process of looking over referrals. I expressed my concern that there were only 2 referral forms on her desk. Teachers are still in the mode of "I don't think this child is doing well, let me fill out a referral form." They don't get it. The data, the numbers should tell them who gets referred. Am I supposed to believe that only 2 children are significantly behind in reading? Almost everyone did well on the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment)? Really? My principal first tried to find a time to schedule an RTI meeting so that relevant staff would be present. She doesn't work well with visual logic problems. I was able to figure out the day and time when everyone could meet. I guess this spoke to my scheduling skills. Mistake #1.

A couple of days ago, my principal asked me how to move forward. I told her my vision of how RTI should look. Mistake #2. (Damn it, I said I would profess to no knowledge of RTI!) Then today, she told me about her administrators' meeting with the superintendent. The principals were complaining about the RTI process and the confusion that was ensuing in their schools. People are stressed out and felt as if there is no direction coming from Central Office. Well, that would be the case when Central Office tells everyone that RTI will look different in each school. Now principals are comparing what other schools are doing and they are upset over the differences. Initiating RTI without a clear cut view of how it should look in every school, and without some uniformity was a major mistake. But what do I know, I'm just a school psychologist. Wait, I know everything! Because unlike all the other education professions, school psychologists have been talking about RTI for years now. Years. And everyone else is being introduced to it now. Unbelievable. The kicker: My principal remarked, "Well, you and I will have to figure out how we're going to run RTI here." We??? (sigh)

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