Tier
1, quality core instruction, is a necessary component of RTI2 even
though it is for everyone—not just students who are struggling. Fisher and Frey
repeat throughout the book that intervention is never a replacement for quality
instruction. They write, “RTI2 is undermined when schools rely on
Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions to compensate for inadequate, unresponsive, and
erratic core classroom instruction” (p. 25). They specify, “Approximately 75 to
85 percent of students should make sufficient progress through core instruction
alone. Schools where this is not the case should focus on improving core
instruction” (p. 24). But what does quality core instruction look like? According
to Fisher and Frey, good instruction has several components. They emphasize
that the teacher should always have a clear purpose in mind and that students
should know what this purpose is. This makes sense because teaching without a
purpose in mind would undoubtedly lead to haphazard and unfocused lessons. Beyond
purpose, good core instruction should follow a “release of responsibility
model” (p. 30). This model requires teachers to initially assume all
responsibility for completing a task but then to transfer that responsibility
to students. The stages of this model are as follows: teacher modeling, guided
practice, collaborative work, and independent practice. In modeling, teachers
show students the kind of thinking expected of students. Fisher and Frey write,
“Modeling requires that teachers provide an example of what happens in their
own minds as they solve problems, read, write, or complete tasks” (p. 34). Modeling
could focus on many different areas. However, Fisher and Frey focus on four key
areas: comprehension strategies (“questioning, inferring, making connections,
summarizing, monitoring, predicting” (p. 34)), word solving (determining the
meaning of unknown words by using context clues, word parts, and/or resources
such as dictionaries), text structures, and text features. Each of these areas
provides students with strategies to access texts so that students are not just
learning about one text or one topic. Rather, these strategies help students
access any text. They are tools students can use each and every time they read in
their quest to become independent learners.
The
next step in the release of responsibility model is guided practice, “the
strategic use of cues, prompts, and questions designed to facilitate student
thinking” (p. 38). At this stage, the teacher is working very closely with
students, usually in a small-group setting. In order to ensure that students really
understand the task, the intensity of a small group is appropriate. Fisher and
Frey specify, “Guided instruction provides teachers with an opportunity to
engage students in thinking without explicitly telling them what to think. It’s
also an opportunity to scaffold student understanding before they’re asked to
complete tasks independently” (p. 39).
After guided practice, students are
ready to be a bit more independent. However, the next phase of the process,
productive group work, allows students to help each other before they perform
tasks completely on their own. In order for group work to be productive, “groups
need interaction, firm deadlines, agreed-upon roles, and interdependent tasks
to complete. Collaborative learning tasks are those that could not have been
accomplished by an individual” (p. 40). These suggestions prevent scenarios in
which only one student does the work even though students are technically
sitting in a group. The idea is something like a puzzle with all the different
pieces coming together to form a whole.
Finally, we arrive at independent
learning, “the application of information to a new situation” (p. 41). Before
independent learning happens, the teacher has provided students with an
example, has guided students in completing tasks in a small-group setting, and
has allowed students to work collaboratively. Students truly have gone through
a process and are now ready to try a task on their own. Going through the
previous steps maximizes students’ chances of success.
Most students who receive quality
instruction should make progress, but some may still fall behind. Fisher and
Frey explain, “Supplemental interventions, commonly referred to as Tier 2
interventions, are triggered when a student’s progress slows to below expected
levels. This gap is formally measured through benchmark assessments that are
given at least three times per year” (p. 52). There are a number of forms this intervention
could take. However, Fisher and Frey explain that such intervention should
increase the intensity of instruction by using a qualified teacher, additional
time, smaller group size, and additional assessment. The suggestion for using a
qualified teacher sounds like common sense. However, the truth is that
oftentimes paraprofessionals or volunteers—individuals who are not certified as
teachers—are the ones leading intervention. This is completely backwards.
Fisher and Frey write that “the students who need the most help need more time
with the person who has the most expertise—the classroom teacher” (p. 55). Next,
Fisher and Frey write that Tier 2 intervention requires additional time. This
recommendation is straightforward. After all, the students wouldn’t need
intervention if their core instruction was giving them everything they needed.
Fisher and Frey suggest small groups for intervention because “when the
teacher-student ratio is reduced to this size, teacher attention increases,
which translates into increased opportunities to provide corrective feedback,
scaffolded instruction, and collaborative peer learning experiences” (p. 53). Every
teacher knows that a whole-group setting allows some students to zone out or
goof off. Even if students realize they need help and try to get that help
during whole-group time, the teacher may not be able to do so because of time
considerations. So by reducing group size to two to five students as Fisher and
Frey suggest (p. 53), the teacher can be sure that each student gets the
attention that he or she needs and deserves. Additionally, Tier 2 intervention
necessitates more frequent assessment to ensure that students are actually
making progress. If learners are not progressing, the intervention should be
altered to fit the student’s needs. However, if a student is not progressing
despite all of this, an additional layer of intervention, namely Tier 3
intervention, might be needed.
Tier
3 intervention provides students with an even more intensive layer of instruction
than Tier 2 intervention. Fisher and Frey write, “This level of intervention is
notable for its increased duration (more than 20 weeks), frequency (often five
times per week), and decreased group size (individual)” (p. 76). In order to
make sure that this daily one-on-one instruction benefits students, Fisher and
Frey explain that five conditions are necessary. First of all it is extremely
important to have a qualified teacher leading Tier 3 intervention because “only
expert teachers are in a place to make split-second decisions that facilitate
student understanding of the text and knowledge about literacy processes” (p. 80).
Even computer programs that make big promises about targeting student
skills—and which many school districts rush at great expense to adopt for their
intervention programs—are no substitute for qualified teachers.
Tier 3 intervention should also be
comprehensive, meaning that intervention should not focus solely on a skill,
such as fluency or phonics—especially if that skill is taught in isolation.
Rather, “good interventions should begin with reading, writing, listening to,
and thinking about meaningful texts” (p. 82). This does not mean that a child
who needs work in phonics should not get phonics instruction. Rather,
“instruction in the processes of reading and writing (e.g., word recognition,
comprehension strategies, vocabulary, fluency) ought to help facilitate
students’ engagement with and understanding of real texts, rather than take
center stage in the program” (p. 82).
Additionally, it is of the utmost important that Tier 3 intervention be
engaging. Fisher and Frey dutifully point out, “Most students who participate
in intensive interventions have had negative, or at least unproductive school
experiences” (p. 85). Moreover, “As students repeatedly experience failure and
lack of relevance, they become harder to engage in subsequent years” (p. 85).
In order to pull these students back in, Tier 3 intervention should use
engaging instruction and materials that are relevant to the student and build
the student’s sense of confidence.
Students are incredibly complex, as
are their instructional needs. Assessments should be used in Tier 3
intervention even more frequently than they are in Tier 2 intervention in order
to align intervention with these complex student needs. Fisher and Frey write,
“Ongoing assessments are necessary to determine if students understand the
varied purposes for reading and writing, which skills they have already
mastered, and where they could use further assistance” (p. 86). Individualized
instruction is key. Fisher and Frey add, “Purchasing, adopting, or designing an
intervention without this kind of information [i.e., the information assessment
data provide] would likely be a futile consumption of teacher energy, student
time, and fiscal resource” (p. 86). All instructional choices should be based
on data that reveal with precision exactly what the student needs.
Finally, Fisher and Frey note that
the most important element of effective Tier 3 intervention is time actually
spent reading and writing. They note, “The amount of time students spend
reading and writing (truly engaged in
reading and writing rather than reluctantly pulled through a difficult or
uninteresting text by the teacher) ought to substantially outweigh the amount
of time that students spend practicing skills and strategies related to
literacy” (p. 87). After all, the goal of intervention is to help students read
and write. While individual skills may contribute to this goal, time teaching
such skills should not supersede time spent on reading and writing actual
texts.
Over and above everything I have
mentioned, the RTI2 process, which Fisher and Frey advocate, requires
the continuous collaboration of specialists, such as the “special educator,
Title I teacher, reading specialist, and classroom teacher” (p. 13) to provide
exactly the instruction that each child needs. Moreover, they recommend having
an “RTI2 committee to examine school improvement” as well as “grade
level meetings to design continued support for the following year” (p. 13).
There is no doubt in my mind that
following Fisher and Frey’s RTI2 process would lead to great
improvements. However, their recommendations require an enormous commitment in
terms of time, money, and resources from the entire school community.
Logistically, I find it very difficult to believe that many schools could make
this commitment or would even be willing to try. For example, consider my
school. Currently, the district mandates all students who have not met
proficiency levels on the end-of-year state assessment to be in intervention.
This corresponds to Fisher and Frey’s Tier 2. However, looking at our recent
assessment data, a full 60% of students would need to be placed into intervention.
According to Fisher and Frey, our data indicates that we must improve our core
instruction, as too many students are apparently falling behind grade level. The
administration and leadership team at my school know that our core instruction
is not consistently providing students with what they need. In fact, my job as
reading coach exists in large part to help teachers reach that high level of
core instruction. But change is not easy, nor does it happen overnight. Since I
started working at my school two years ago, the level of instruction offered by
the Reading/Language Arts Department has improved dramatically. However,
teachers still struggle with implementing the release of responsibility model, often
going to the one extreme of complete modeling or the other extreme of having
students work independently. The in-between phases (guided practice and
collaborative work) are often forgotten and therefore learning is compromised.
We know this and are working on it. In the meantime, students do need to be
placed into intervention. Currently our elementary teachers have thirty minutes
each day to conduct intervention with their own students. However, most
intervention groups are larger than the two to five students Fisher and Frey
recommend. In some cases, entire classes of students are in intervention. And
while we know this is a problem, we have not come up with a better solution. As
I said earlier, a full 60% of our students qualify for intervention according
to guidelines set by the district. In middle school the problem is worse since
intervention is conducted through Intensive Reading classes. These are
full-sized classes with their own textbooks, workbooks, and other resources.
There is a lot of material to cover in these programs and, as such, many
teachers tend to follow a whole-group format, which prevents students from
getting the kind of intense, individualized help they really need to improve.
Exacerbating the issue is our school schedule, which is made up of 54-minute
periods. Given this time frame, even middle school teachers who want to work
with small groups find they do not have sufficient time to do so unless they
completely abandon the pacing guide provided by the district—a move the
district would strongly discourage. Moving to a block schedule would help.
However, each year I have worked at this school, we have voted on a schedule,
and block scheduling gets voted down time and time again. Beyond this, middle
school teachers are overwhelmed with trying to determine the needs of their 150
or more students. To pinpoint needs for this many students would require a
major time commitment, extending a teacher’s workday well into the evening and
weekend hours.
Another problem with intervention
at my school is that most students who are in intervention never place out. Year
in and year out, they lag behind their on-grade-level peers. This should, in
theory, trigger Tier 3 intervention. However, I cannot imagine having enough
funds to hire teachers to work one-on-one with the number of students who would
qualify as Tier 3. As the school’s reading coach, it would make sense for this
to be my job. However, this is not happening, nor do I foresee my principal
using me in this capacity. From what we currently understand, the FSA only
counts students who meet proficiency and does not look at learning gains. As
such, working with students who are struggling the most is—from a high-stakes
standpoint (which is the one my administrators are interested in)—essentially a
waste of time. Our school will not earn points by focusing our efforts on
helping kids who need the most help. It would be far better in my administration’s
eyes to pull out students who are just below grade level and could potentially,
with extra support, cross the threshold into FSA proficiency.
In terms of an RTI team to look at
student progress, our school can barely manage to hold leadership team meetings.
Everyone is overworked and overstressed. Unless additional funds are given to
school to hire more staff and more support staff, I don’t see students
receiving the help they so desperately deserve. Given the clash between the
reality of my school and Fisher and Frey’s model, RTI2 seems a
beautiful dream that will never truly material until something significant
changes.
References
Fisher,
D., & Frey, N. (2010). Enhancing RTI: How to ensure success with
effective classroom instruction and intervention. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
