RTI: An Update 4

My principal forwarded a referral to the PPT last week. I had the chance to present it to the team to have them review it and decide if we would accept it or not. I have learned that my teammates and I have the same philosophy on RTI, and I knew that they would have questions about the referral. The big question: Where was the data? I sat in on the meeting when the RTI team decided that this particular student "flat-lined" and wasn't making progress. My response was, "What about Tier 3?" My question was met with this response from my principal, "The administrators met and we were told not to get hung up on what is a Tier 2 intervention and what is a Tier 3 intervention." So I accepted this referral knowing that my team would reject it. This was better than me outright rejecting it at the RTI meeting, even though I could have. So the referral was missing some key information, such as the starting and end dates for interventions, the dates for some of the tests, and the pre- and post-test data for the interventions. Essentially, a lot of pertinent data was missing, and they needed to provide it.

Once again, the issue is that those that are properly trained and well-versed in RTI are not responsible for it. Nor do we want to be. But regular ed teachers have no clue how to do this and they aren't providing the right information nor are they conducting proper progress monitoring. This whole operation has been piecemeal and the worse refrain that the administration has used is "this will look different in different schools." So there is no expectation of uniformity, except in really lame cases such as the form that people fill out. We wanted more information and felt that the RTI form is inadequate because it tends to lead to underreporting. When I suggested changing it, I was met with some resistance. Can we add an additional form? It's obvious that this whole thing is a mess because people have no concept of what we are doing. People are frustrated because they aren't sure of when PPS gets involved. I've been running interference between my principal and the speech and language pathologist because there is a misunderstanding on how language issues should be detected. I suggested to my speech and language pathologist that she create a screener that looks at articulation and some basic language issues. She should spell out each step with boxes and charts and labels so that each part is completed. There should also be a criteria of 80% proficiency, so that teachers know what is expected. Then each teacher gets one when they suspect some sort of language issue. That should stave off the mob that's slowly building. Unfortunately, my SLP hasn't received any directives from her supervisor, so she is at a loss. Hopefully, this language screener will appease my principal and we can keep this process moving along.

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RTI: An Update

My district decided to roll out RTI at all elementary schools this year for grades K-2. It decided to do this by having a 2 hours inservice with every k-2 teacher, elementary special education teacher elementary school psychologist, social worker and speech pathologist. It was a packed room with a bunch of confused people. There was too much information and not enough explanation on why RTI is a different concept. That's my main gripe: So far, only special ed people have been talking about RTI. Regular ed teachers haven't been talking about it. So when they sat in the inservice, most of them had no idea what the presenters were talking about. Each school should have had its own day to discuss this. The teachers need a new frame of reference. Many times I heard teachers still using terms as "referral" and "pre-referral" and they just didn't get it.

Unfortunately, my principal is to blame for the teachers from my school misunderstanding RTI. She erroneously told them that RTI was just like our broken pre-referral system. Therefore, the teachers didn't bother to pay attention. She is in denial, and we need her to get a grip and realize that this is a paradigm shift. The old way is dead. RTI is now.

The literacy specialists are inviting a teacher from a school that ran a pilot RTI program. We hope to learn how they adjusted and what role each person played. That's the main concern from the support staff: How do we fit into RTI? If our principal isn't taking the lead, then we need to be proactive and figure out how we fit before someone tries to use us as before.

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