Response to Intervention –
Making Interventions Systematic
and Effective
Burns, Ph.D.
JuneMatthew
2009 Reading
Cohort
Co-Acting Director, Minnesota Center for Reading Research
RTI
The systematic use of assessment data to most
efficiently allocate resources in order to
enhance learning for all students.
Burns & VanDerHeyden, 2006
How did we get here?
• Accountability and proficiency
• Concerns about special education
• Research into human learning
Accountability
• Reauthorization of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act
• RTI was born in special education, but it
was conceived in NCLB
RTI and NCLB
•
•
300.309 – Diagnosing LD
(i) The child fails to achieve a rate of
learning to make sufficient progress to meet
State-approved results in one or more of
the areas identified in paragraph (a)(1) of
this section when assessed with a response
to scientific, research-based intervention
process;
Concerns about special education
Prevalence of Disabilities
Disability
1991
2001 % Change
LD
2,247,004 2,887,217
28.5
MR
553,262
612,978
10.8
EBD
400,211 473,663 18.4
Deaf-Blind
1,427
1,320
-7.5
OHI
58,749
291,850
396.8
Autism
5,415
78,749 1,354.3
DREPETOMANIA
First reported in 1851 by Dr. Samuel
Cartwright in the New Orleans
Medical and Surgical Journal
Interventions for Children with LD
Reading comprehension
Direct instruction
Psycholinguistic training
Modality instruction
Diet
Perceptual training
Kavale & Forness, 2000
1.13
.84
.39
.15
.12
.08
Special Education Meta-Analysis
• d = -.12
• What is special education???
Individualized instruction, at no cost to the
parents or guardians, to meet the
needs of a child with a disability.
unique
Research into human learning
Table Demographic information
group Sex
Pre Post*
IQ
ADD? Medication
1/D
M
13
55
103
Yes
Adderal
2/D
M
02
59
95
Yes
Ritalin
3/D
M
02
38
110
No
Ritalin
4/D
F
03
55
105
Yes
Ritalin
5/D
F
02
50
110
Yes
Ritalin
6/D
M
18
60
101
No
—
7/D
M
01
38
98
Yes
Ritalin
8/D
M
01
45
102
No
—
9/NI
M
38
39
99
No
—
10/NI F
50
48
107
No
—
11/NI M
85
83
122
No
—
12/NI M
82
85
101
No
—
13/NI M
60
60
113
No
—
Simos et al., 2001
14/NI M
52
50
95
No
—
15/NI M
49
53
99
Yes
Ritalin
16/NI M
75
74
121
No
—
* Follow-up testing was performed using alternate forms.
Group Results
• Experimental group increased 44.75 points
(SD = 7.22)
• Correlation between growth and IQ
• r = -.29
Before Intervention
After Intervention
What is the answer????
Pine River El: Pine River – Backus
J.W. Smith: Bemidji
Sebeka El.: Sebeka
Harrison El.: Brainerd
Lincoln El.: Brainerd
Longfellow Choice: Rochester
McGregor El.: McGregor
Laura MacArthur El.: Duluth
Nettleton Magnet School: Duluth
Dayton’s Bluff El.: St. Paul
Farnsworth Magnet School: St. Paul
Museum Magnet/Rondo School: St. Paul
Roosevelt Magnet School: St. Paul
Keys to Success
St. Paul Pioneer Press June 4th
2006
• Reading Above All Else
– Emphasize reading and writing especially K-2
• Beyond the Classroom
– After school programs and social services
• Continuous Assessment/Small-Group Instruction
– Formal and informal assessments to provide an
appropriate level of challenge
• Effective Staff
– Strong leadership and cohesive staff with co-planning
• Structured, Disciplined Environment
R (or R or R) – t – I (or I)
• Response or responsiveness or resistance
• T = to
• Instruction or intervention
– Standard protocol or problem solving
Multi-Tiered Academic Interventions
(Burns, Jimerson, & Deno, 2007)
Tier I: Universal screening and progress
monitoring with quality core curriculum: All
students,
Tier II: Standardized interventions with small
groups in general education: 15% to 20% of
students at any time
Tier III: Individualized interventions with in-depth
problem analysis in general education : 5% of
students at any time
INTERVENTIONS
What makes an intervention effective??
•
•
•
•
•
Correctly targeted
Explicit instruction
Appropriate challenge
Opportunities to respond
Immediate feedback
– With contingent reinforcers
Burns, VanDerHeyden, & Boice (2008). Best practices in
implementing individual interventions. In A. Thomas & J.
Grimes (Eds.) Best practices in school psychology (5th ed.).
Bethesda, MD: National Association of School Psychologists.
RTI and Problem-Solving
TIER III
TIER I I
TIER I
Problem Solving
• Tier I – Identify discrepancy between
expectation and performance for class or
individual
• Tier II – Identify discrepancy for individual.
Identify category of problem. Assign small
group solution.
• Tier III – Identify discrepancy for individual.
Identify causal variable. Implement individual
intervention.
Tier I
student names
15-Sep
A
11
B
16
C
12
D
29
E
23
F
34
G
14
H
13
I
13
J
30
K
31
L
13
M
10
N
37
O
31
P
9
Q
33
R
20
S
40
T
19
Median
19.5
student names
15-Sep
A
11
B
16
C
12
D
29
E
23
F
34
G
14
H
13
I
13
J
30
K
31
L
13
M
10
N
37
O
31
P
9
Q
33
R
20
S
40
T
19
Median
19.5
Reading Instruction in Elementary School
•
•
•
•
•
Two hours each day
Explicit instruction
Free-choice reading
Word study
Writing
Classwide Intervention
http://kc.vanderbilt.edu/pals
student names
15-Sep
29-Sep
A
11
12
B
16
33
C
12
28
D
29
45
E
23
46
F
34
52
G
14
27
H
13
13
I
13
26
J
30
59
K
31
59
L
13
29
M
10
12
N
37
50
O
31
56
P
9
13
Q
33
54
R
20
46
S
40
62
T
19
47
Median
19.5
45.5
student names
15-Sep
22-Sep
Winter
Spring
A
11
12
12
27
B
16
33
51
71
C
12
28
41
62
D
29
45
71
76
E
23
46
60
74
F
34
52
76
86
G
14
27
40
55
H
13
13
16
18
I
13
26
29
71
J
30
59
88
105
K
31
59
64
81
L
13
29
45
61
M
10
12
14
38
N
37
50
70
75
O
31
56
81
71
P
9
13
17
13
Q
33
54
74
90
R
20
46
72
76
S
40
62
86
95
T
19
47
52
82
Median
19.5
45.5
56
72.5
Tier II Interventions
Reading Interventions for Tier II
• PALS
• HOSTS
• Read Naturally
• Rewards
• Reading Rockets
• Etc., etc., etc.
PROFICIENT
READING
Tier II Interventions
• PALS
Phonemic Awareness
• HOSTS
Phonics
• Read Naturally
Fluency
• Rewards
Vocabulary and
Comprehension
National Reading Panel
• Is phonemic awareness instruction effective in
helping children learn to read?
• Reviewed 52 studies of PA instruction.
• Three general outcomes were explored
– PA tasks such as phoneme manipulation,
– Reading tasks such as word reading, pseudoword reading,
reading comprehension, oral text reading, reading speed,
time to reach a criterion of learning, and miscues, and
– Spelling
National Reading Panel Results
• PA instruction demonstrated better efficacy
over alternative instruction models or no
instruction
• Improved PA measures (strong), reading (d =
.53) and spelling skills
• Teaching one or two PA skills was preferable to
teaching three or more
• PA instruction benefited reading
comprehension (Ehri et al.).
Means and Ranges of Effect Sizes by
Reading Outcome Measure
N
Mean ES
SD
Minimum
Maximum
Pseudowords
24
.84
.80
-.19
3.60
Words in
Isolation
48
.92
.89
-.05
4.33
Contextual
Reading
24
.37
.38
-.37
1.18
Assess 4 NRP Areas
• Phonemic Awareness
– Phoneme segmentation fluency
• Phonics
– Nonsense word fluency
• Fluency
– Oral reading fluency
• Vocabulary/Comprehension
Tier II
• Effective – at least moderate ES
• Costs – Low as possible, cost/ES, cost effective (comes with a
lot), dedicated teacher time
• Delivery
–
–
–
–
Group/individual (two to six considering efficiency)
Total students (20%)
Who - teacher supervision with some peer and or adult tutoring
Pull out – in addition to, some pull out component, 3 to 5 X/week,
approximately 30 minutes (kinder – 20min tops). No less than 8 weeks.
• Grades of kids – earlier better, certainly K-2.
• Measure – fluency measure of reading at least monthly
• Materials
– Ease – much easier if compiled, but not prerequisite
– Availability – standardized (manual)
Logistics
Teacher A
Teacher B
3rd Grade
3rd Grade
25 Kids
25 Kids
10 Kids 3rd Grade – 60 Kids Total
Logistics
Teacher A
3rd Grade - 40 Kids
10 Kids 3rd Grade – 60 Kids Total
Teacher B
5 Kids
Parapro A
5 Kids
Teacher D Teacher F
5 Kids
5 Kids
Reading
Specialist
5 Kids
Parapro B
5 Kids
Teacher H
Teacher J
Teacher L
5 Kids
5 Kids
5 Kids
Title 1
Teacher
5 Kids
Parapro C
Itinerate
5 Kids
5 Kids
Logistics
Lower Elementary
Grade K
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 8:30 to 9:00 & 10:30 to 11:00
Grade 1
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 9:00 to 11:00
Grade 2
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 10:00 to 12:00
Grade 3
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 9:00 to 10:00 & 1:00 to 2:00
Logistics
Title 1
and
Reading
Specialist
Lower Elementary
Grade K
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 8:30 to 9:00 & 10:30 to 11:00
10:30
Grade 1
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 9:00 to 11:00
9:30
Grade 2
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 10:00 to 12:00
Grade 3
2 Classrooms – 50 kids
Reading 9:00 to 10:00 & 1:00 to 2:00
11:00
1:30
Tier III
Why do kids fail???
• They don’t want to do it
• They have not spent enough time on it
• They have not had enough help with it
• It is too hard
Daly et al., 1997
Long radians were forming when Matthew arrived. He tried
to phindate the amount of time it would take to get to the
convorster. Vort it would be too long, plast he would miss
the game. He vraxated for a moment until the raidans
became even longer. He decided that he would ordrul in the
raidan opet see vort it would start moving more
expeditiously. No sooner had he started fleedjuul, when it
began opet mostulalag quite hard. Matthew became
disgusted, zipped up his ornaforger, and walked back to
this car. He drove home ov the mostul. By the time he put
the car in the garage, the mostul was droim, and the faedos
was out. Matthew was doubly disgusted now. Sullenly, he
went inside to watch the game. He turned on the television
set but nothing happened. Matthew said to himself, “What
a lousy frol.”
Hargis, 1995
Task Completion
On-Task Behavior
Task Comprehension
Baseline
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Task Completion
On-Task Behavior
Task Comprehension
Baseline
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Frustration
Task Completion
On-Task Behavior
Task Comprehension
Baseline
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Frustration
Instructional
Task Completion
On-Task Behavior
Task Comprehension
Baseline
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
Frustration
Instructional
Independent
Instructional Match
• How closely a student skill level matches the
difficulty of the instructional material (Daly, Martens,
Kilmer, & Massie, 1996).
• Improves student learning (Burns, 2002; Burns, 2007;
Daly et al., 1997; Shapiro, 1992).
• Important functional variable for student learning
within response-to-intervention (Gresham, 2001).
Instructional Level
• Betts (1946)
• “A comfort zone created when the student has
sufficient prior knowledge and skill to successfully
interact with the task and still learn new
information” (Gravois & Gickling, 2002, p. 888).
– Optimal level of challenge
• Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development
(ZPD)
Reading Tasks
• Independent Level
– 98% - 100% known material
• Instructional Level
– 93% - 97% known material
• Frustration Level
– Less than 93% known
Gickling & Thompson, 1985
Change the kid or change the
material
100
IL – HI
IL – LI
90
FL – HI
FL – LI
Percentage of Intervals on Task
80
Amy
70
60
50
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
100
IL – HI
90
80
IL – LI
70
60
FL – LI
FL – HI
Mark
50
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Sessions
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
100
Percentage of Intervals on Task
90
80
Low Interest
High Interest
70
60
Amy
50
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
High Interest
Low Interest
Mark
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
100
Percentage of Intervals on Task
90
80
Instructional Level
Frustration Level
70
60
Amy
50
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
100
95
90
85
80
75
70
65
60
55
50
Instruction Level
Frustration Level
Mark
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10Sessions
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
Preteaching Unknown Words
Preparing for instruction – NOT teaching reading!!!!
Incremental Rehearsal
• Developed by Dr. James Tucker
(1989)
• Folding in technique
• Rehearses one new item at a time
• Uses instructional level and high
repetition
Mean Number of Word Retained
Correlation between retention
and receptive vocabulary
1 day
2 days
3 days
7 days
30 days
TA
.32
.27
.32
.23
.08
DS
.22
.25
.17
.16
.20
IR
-.16
-.13
.06
.04
-.07
These results are “astounding” (Daly & McCurdy, 2002; p. 457).
Kids identified as LD
Means, Standard Deviations, and Test Statistics for CBM
Reading and Slope Scores
Treatment Group
Median Baseline
Progress Rate
M
SD
41.57
23.44
1.81
.94
Control Group
M
SD
41.72 26.64
.42
.94
Statistic
t = .07
F= 15.75*
Note - F is ANCOVA with median baseline score as covariate
Cohen’s d = 1.47 standard deviation units
* p < .05
Passages at the Instructional Level
Treatment
Frust.
Instr.
Control
Indep.
Frust.
Instr.
Indep.
Interval
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
N
%
Z
Baseline
24
83
05
17
00
00
24
83
05
17
00
00
0.00
1
09
31
20
69
00
00
19
66
09
41
01
03
1.25
2
08
28
20
69
01
3
20
69
08
28
01
03 3.60*
3
10
35
14
48
05
17
19
66
07
24
03
10 2.19*
4
04
14
19
66
06
21
19
66
10
35
00
00 3.67*
5
03
10
19
66
07
24
19
66
09
31
01
03 4.12*
*p < .05
• Category count score was correlated
with the progress slope for all 58
students
• r = .80, p < .001
• Assessed relationship between reading
material presented at the instructional
level and reading growth.
Percentage of Intervals On Task
Preteaching
Percentage of Intervals On Task
Percentage of Intervals On Task
Instructional Hierarchy: Stages of Learning
Acquisition
Learning
Hierarchy
Proficiency
Generalization
Adaption
Slow and
Accurate but Can apply to
Can use
inaccurate
slow
novel setting
Novel
Discrimination
information to
solve
problems
practice
opportunities
Independent
practice
Timings
Immediate
feedback
training
Differentiation
training
Instructional Modeling
Hierarchy
Explicit
instruction
Immediate
corrective
feedback
Problem
solving
Simulations
Haring, N. G., & Eaton, M. D. (1978). Systematic instructional procedures: An
instructional
hierarchy. In N. G. Haring, T. C. Lovitt, M. D. Eaton, & C. L. Hansen (Eds.) The fourth R: Research
in the classroom (pp. 23-40). Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill.
Learning
Hierarchy
Acquisition
Phonemic
Awareness
Explicit instruction
in blending and
segmenting
(Blackman et al.,
2001)
Phonics
Fluency
Incremental
Incremental Rehearsal
Rehearsal with letter for words (Burns, 2007)
sounds (Tucker,
1989)
Listening passage
preview (Rose &
Explicit instruction in Sherry, 1984)
letter sounds
(Carnine et al.,
Supported Cloze
2004)
Reading (Rasinksi,
2003)
Phrase drill (O’Shea,
Munson, & O’Shea,
1984
Word boxes & word Repeated reading
sorts (Joseph, 2000) (Moyer, 1982)
Read Naturally
Proficiency
Language &
Listening (Adams
et al., 1998)
Generalization
Discrimination and differentiation training
Adaption
Problem-solving activities and simulations
http://future-school-psychology.org
When the idol of the tribe is
worshiped
Francis Bacon
English philosopher
1561–1626
Do you remember . . .
•
•
•
•
•
•
Madeline Hunter’s Program for Effective Teaching?
Outcomes-Based Education?
Values Clarification?
New Math?
New Science?
Glasser Circles
Today’s flagship is tomorrow’s abandoned shipwreck
(Ellis, 2001; p. 253).
Existing Models
• Heartland Area Agency (Iowa)
• Instructional Support Teams
(Pennsylvania)
• Intervention-Based Assessment (Ohio)
• Problem-Solving Model (Minneapolis)
• STEEP (LSU – Arizona)
• St. Croix River Education District (SCREDMinnesota)
Meta-Analysis
Burns, Appleton, & Stehouwer, 2006
• 25 total effect sizes
– Mean ES was 1.49
– Median ES was 1.09
• Comparison of models
– UEE for existing RTI models was 1.48
– UEE for RTI models implemented by university
faculty for research was .92
• Variables
– UEE was 1.02 for student
– UEE was 1.62 for systemic outcomes.
More specifically
• More children demonstrated proficient skill levels
on state accountability tests (Heartland, 2004;
Sornson et al., 2005)
• Fewer children were retained in a grade (Kovaleski
et al., 1995).
• Improved reading skills among children identified
as at-risk (Marston et al., 2003; Tilly 2003),
Will RtI be too much work?
Well, it could
• But shouldn’t!
• Shift in responsibility
• Sharing responsibility
Does Leadership Matter?
Does Leadership Matter?
• YES!
Change in education is like:
committing suicide by
standing in front of a glacier
burns258@umn.edu