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ОглавлениеIntroduction
In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity—it is a prerequisite.
—Barack Obama
This book is about doing the right work. Success in school is the factor that most directly predicts the length and quality of students’ lives. A student that fails to succeed in our K–12 system is three times more likely to be unemployed, sixty-three times more likely to be incarcerated, and on average, lives at least a decade shorter than a college graduate (Breslow, 2012; Tavernise, 2012). Like any other professionals who make life-altering decisions on behalf of those they serve, educators have a professional and ethical obligation to utilize practices proven to best ensure every student succeeds. The very definition of profession is a vocation that requires specialized training in the practices deemed most effective in the field (“profession,” n.d.). When a preponderance of evidence proves that a particular process, protocol, or procedure is most effective, professionals are not merely invited to use it, but instead are expected to conform to these technical and ethical standards.
When it comes to how educators should respond when students struggle in school, the research and evidence in our field have never been more conclusive—response to intervention (RTI) is the right way to intervene. Also known as a multitiered system of supports (MTSS), RTI is a systematic process to ensure every student receives:
The additional time and support needed to learn at high levels. RTI’s underlying premise is that schools should not delay providing help for struggling students until they fall far enough behind to qualify for special education, but instead should provide timely, targeted, systematic interventions to all students who demonstrate the need. (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2012, p. xiii)
Traditionally, the RTI process is represented in the shape of a pyramid (see figure I.1).
Source: Buffum et al., 2012.
FIGURE I.1: Traditional RTI pyramid.
The pyramid is commonly separated into tiers: Tier 1 represents core instruction, Tier 2 represents supplemental interventions, and Tier 3 represents intensive student supports. The pyramid is wide at the bottom to represent the instruction that all students receive. As students demonstrate the need for additional support, they receive increasingly more targeted and intensive help. Because timely supplemental interventions should address most student needs when they are first emerging, fewer students fall significantly below grade level and require the intensive services Tier 3 offers, creating the tapered shape of a pyramid.
RTI ranks in the top-three education practices proven to best increase student achievement.
Based on his meta-analysis of more than eighty thousand studies relating to the factors inside and outside of school that impact student learning, researcher John Hattie (2009, 2012) finds that RTI ranks in the top-three education practices proven to best increase student achievement. When implemented well, RTI has an exceptional average yearly impact rate of 1.07 standard deviation (Hattie, 2012). To put this in perspective, consider the following.
► A one standard deviation (1.0) increase is typically associated with advancing student achievement within two to three years (Hattie, 2009).
► Based on longitudinal studies, the yearly typical impact rate of a classroom teacher’s instruction ranges between 0.15 and 0.40 standard deviation growth (Hattie, 2009). This means a school that successfully implements RTI leverages a process that is considerably more effective than a school that leaves it up to individual, isolated teachers to meet students’ instructional needs.
► The greatest home or environmental factor that impacts student learning is a family’s economic status. Students that come from more affluent homes—defined as middle class or higher—gain a yearly academic benefit of 0.57 standard deviation growth per year (Hattie, 2009). This home support contributes to an achievement gap on standardized tests between affluent households and students of poverty that has grown more than 40 percent since the 1960s (Reardon, 2011), while the college graduation rate gap has increased more than 50 percent since the late 1980s (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011). RTI’s impact rate of 1.07—more than twice as powerful as what some students might receive at home each night—provides educators a proven, powerful tool to close the United States’ largest achievement gap.
Equally important, we know that a successful system of interventions must be built on a highly effective core instructional program, as interventions cannot make up for a toxic school culture, low student expectations, and poor initial instruction. Fortunately, our profession has near unanimous agreement on how to best structure a school to ensure student and adult learning.
Comprehensive study of the world’s best-performing school systems finds that these systems function as professional learning communities (Barber, Chijioke, & Mourshed, 2010; Barber & Mourshed, 2007). Additionally, virtually all our professional organizations endorse PLCs (DuFour, 2016). When implemented well, the PLC process is the best way to build the learning-focused culture, collaborative structures, instructional focus, and assessment information necessary to successfully respond when students don’t learn.
At a time in which our students’ lives depend on educators utilizing practices proven to be most effective, should we allow professional educators to disregard this overwhelming evidence and cling to outdated procedures? Would this be acceptable in any other profession? Imagine if you are diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, and you ask your doctor to identify your best course of action. In response, your doctor says, “There is a treatment process that, based on over eighty thousand studies, is the most effective way to cure your illness. It is proven to be multiple times more powerful than traditional treatments used throughout most of the past century. Additionally, the most successful hospitals in the world utilize this practice, and virtually all our medical organizations endorse this treatment.”
How would you respond? “When can we start?”
Now imagine if your doctor knows of this near unanimous professional consensus on the best possible treatment of your illness, yet disregards it and utilizes a less effective, outdated procedure. You would be outraged. We would consider such actions as professional malpractice, profoundly unethical, and grounds for removal from the field. Knowing what we know today about how to best respond when students struggle, there is no debate: implementing RTI within a professional learning community framework is the right work.
Knowing what we know today about how to best respond when students struggle, there is no debate: implementing RTI within a professional learning community framework is the right work.
If RTI Works, Why Is There Still an Achievement Gap?
In fall 2015, the following headline appeared on Education Week’s front page: “Study: RTI Practice Falls Short of Promise” (Sparks, 2015). The research, which the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance conducted, studies the yearly reading progress of over twenty thousand grades 1–3 students. It finds that first graders who received reading interventions actually did worse than identical peers who did not receive the RTI support. More troubling, students who were already in special education or older than average for their grade performed “particularly poorly if they received interventions” (Sparks, 2015, p. 1).
Yet, when you dig deeper, the researchers find that the implementation practices at a majority of the participating schools were misaligned to the guiding principles of RTI, including the following.
► Sixty-nine percent of schools in the impact sample offered at least some intervention services during Tier 1 core instruction. As noted, “In such schools, intervention may have displaced instruction time and replaced some small-group or other instruction services with intervention services. As a result, reading intervention services may have been different from, but not necessarily supplemental to, core reading instruction” (Balu et al., 2015, p. ES-11). A basic tenet of RTI is that we should provide interventions in addition to effective Tier 1 core instruction, not in place of it. When students miss new critical grade-level core curriculum to receive interventions, it is akin to having students take one step forward (improvement in a remedial skill), while taking one step back (missing a new essential grade-level skill).
► The study finds that “even in schools using the more traditional model of providing intervention services only to readers below grade level, classroom teachers played an additional role and provided intervention services to 37 percent of those groups in Grade 1” (Balu et al., 2015, p. ES-11). RTI advocates that staff members with a higher level of expertise in a student’s target area of need should be the ones providing the interventions. While a classroom teacher might meet these qualifications, it would be unrealistic to expect that same teacher to always have more effective ways to reteach this skill to the same students who did not learn it the first time. Our experience is that teachers don’t save their best instructional practices for Tier 2 interventions. More often, teachers provide students with the same pedagogies from core instruction, only in a smaller group setting.
When interviewed about this study, coauthor Fred Doolittle states, “We don’t want to have people say that these findings say these schools aren’t doing RTI right; this turns out to be what RTI looks like when it plays out in daily life” (as cited in Sparks, 2015, p. 1). We strongly disagree with his interpretation.
To apply this conclusion to a similar situation, we know that there is tremendous consensus in the medical field regarding the best ways to lose weight in a healthy and effective way. According to the Cleveland Clinic (n.d.), “To lose weight, you must eat fewer calories or burn up more calories than you need. The best way to lose weight is to do both.” Translated into practice, this means the best diets should include eating better and regular exercise. Armed with this knowledge, millions of Americans each year commit to diets based on these principles, yet more than 90 percent of their efforts fail (Rodriguez, 2010). Should we assume then that the current research behind losing weight is at fault? Should medical researchers conclude, “We don’t want to hear that people aren’t dieting right—this turns out to be what eating fewer calories and burning up more calories looks like when it plays out in daily life.”
In reality, and as the Cleveland Clinic (n.d.) makes note of, the reason why most people don’t lose weight is because they briefly commit to eating somewhat better and increasing their exercise but ultimately fail to make these practices part of their ongoing lifestyle. Likewise, many schools are committing to some disjointed efforts at interventions but are failing to fully commit to the collaborative, learning-focused PLC lifestyle required to ensure every student’s success.
Common Missteps When Implementing RTI
While we disagree with Doolittle’s interpretation of the findings, unfortunately, the study’s results—that many schools are failing to see the gains in student achievement that RTI can provide when implemented well—did not surprise us. We have directly led the RTI process as site and district practitioners and have subsequently assisted hundreds of schools around the world. Throughout our travels, we have found that many site educators, district administrators, and state policymakers misinterpret key concepts, skip critical steps, look for shortcuts, and fail to discontinue traditional practices that are counterproductive to the RTI process. In addition to the two RTI implementation mistakes from the study (Sparks, 2015), nine other common missteps include the following.
1. Viewing RTI primarily as a process to identify students for special education
2. Viewing RTI as a regular education process
3. Building interventions on an ineffective core instructional program
4. Failing to create a guaranteed and viable curriculum
5. Using mismatched and misused assessments
6. Relying too heavily on purchased intervention programs
7. Perpetuating ineffective interventions
8. Focusing too much on what the staff cannot directly influence
9. Assuming some students are incapable of learning at high levels due to innate cognitive ability or environmental conditions
There is an important secondary benefit of RTI—educators can use it as a process to identify students with learning disabilities.
Viewing RTI Primarily as a Process to Identify Students for Special Education
There is an important secondary benefit of RTI—educators can use it as a process to identify students with learning disabilities. When all students have access to essential grade-level curriculum, highly effective initial teaching, and targeted interventions when needed, a vast majority of them succeed. If a student does not respond to these proven practices, it can indicate a potential learning disability and would justify a comprehensive evaluation of the student’s unique learning needs.
Unfortunately, many educators too quickly assume that a student’s failure in core instruction means he or she has a disability (Prasse, n.d.). When educators begin the RTI process assuming that a student’s struggles are likely due to a potential learning disability, then they usually view the tiers as the mandatory steps to achieve special education placement. Rigid time lines and laborious documentation then drive the process, and special education placement is the predetermined outcome.
Even if the RTI process worked perfectly to identify students with learning disabilities, what great benefit would we expect this qualification to provide these students? An objective analysis of special education’s impact since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975 concludes that it has not only failed to close student achievement gaps but has actually been detrimental to achieving this outcome.
The graduation rate for students with special needs was 61 percent in 2014—almost 20 percent lower than for regular education students (Diament, 2014). Students with special needs are underrepresented in postsecondary education (Samuels, 2010) but overrepresented in prison. It is estimated that at least one-third and up to 70 percent of those incarcerated received special education services in school (Mader & Butrymowicz, 2014). These statistics are not meant to condemn special education teachers’ heroic efforts. Instead, it demonstrates the limitations of legislation that was never designed to ensure that students with special needs actually learn but to simply allow them to attend school. Based on these results, viewing RTI as merely a new way to qualify a student for traditional special education services is nothing more than creating a new pathway to educational purgatory.
Viewing RTI as a Regular Education Process
Instead of viewing RTI as a process to qualify students for special education, some go to the opposite extreme and see a multitiered system of supports as a way to stop the over-identification of students for special education. While this goal is noble, the unintended consequence is usually detrimental to both regular and special education students. For example, policymakers in one southwestern state dictate that Tier 3 can only serve special education students. This means that regular education staff alone must serve students who need intensive remediation in foundational skills but do not have an identified learning disability.
Often categorical dollars fund the best-trained faculty in areas like reading remediation, language acquisition, and behavior support, which would then deny regular education students access to their expertise. It is unrealistic to expect content-credentialed teachers to have the training equivalent of a reading specialist or school psychologist. This is why federal law acknowledges this need and allows early intervening services, in which a percentage of a district’s special education resources can be used in preventive ways for students who demonstrate the need for these services but don’t have a disability (Individuals With Disabilities Education Improvement Act [IDEIA], 2004).
Creating this artificial divide between regular and special education staff also hurts special education students. Special education teachers cannot be content experts in every subject at every grade level. Yet many individualized education programs (IEPs) assign special education staff to provide supplemental interventions in multiple content areas. To implement RTI effectively, we cannot view it as regular education or special education. Instead, educators should base interventions on each student’s individual needs, and assign staff based on who is best trained to meet each need. We are not suggesting that schools should discontinue special education services altogether, or that educators can disregard student IEPs. What we are suggesting is that special education law now advocates for providing schools much more flexibility to meet all students’ needs. But taking advantage of this requires schools to rethink the way regular and special education have worked for years.
Building Interventions on an Ineffective Core Instructional Program
A school with weak and ineffective teaching will not solve its problems by creating a system of timely interventions for students. Eventually, the number of students it is attempting to support will crush that system. Interventions cannot make up for a core instructional program functioning in teacher isolation, a culture of “my students and your students,” tracking students by perceived ability and demographic expectations, assessing students with archaic grading practices, and expecting parents and special education to be the primary solution for struggling students. This is why our approach to RTI works best in schools that function as a PLC. The PLC at Work process focuses and unites all the school’s practices toward one mission: to ensure high levels of learning for every student. As long as we view RTI as an appendage to a school’s traditional instructional program, instead of an integral part of a school’s collaborative efforts to ensure all students succeed, a school’s intervention efforts will most likely be ineffective (DuFour, 2015).
Failing to Create a Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum
To learn at high levels, students must have access to essential grade-level curriculum each year. Every student might not leave each school year having mastered every grade-level standard, but every student must master the learning outcomes the school or district has deemed indispensable for future success. Anything less, and the student is on a trajectory to drop out of school.
Working collaboratively as a PLC, educators must create a guaranteed and viable curriculum grade by grade, course by course, and unit by unit that represents the skills, content knowledge, and behaviors every student must master to achieve this goal. Equally important, they must ensure students have access to this essential, grade-level curriculum as part of their Tier 1 core instructional program. With the rare exception of those few students who have profound disabilities, there should be no track of core instruction that focuses exclusively on below-grade-level skills.
Tragically, many schools assume their most at-risk students are incapable of learning at grade level and, instead, replace these students’ core instruction with Tier 3 remedial coursework. If a student receives below-grade-level instruction all day, where will he or she end up at the end of the year? Below grade level, of course. Educators must provide Tier 3 interventions in addition to Tier 1 essential grade-level curriculum, not in place of it.
Tragically, many schools assume their most at-risk students are incapable of learning at grade level.
Using Mismatched and Misused Assessments
Interventions are most effective when they target a student’s specific learning needs. This requires assessment data that can identify the specific standard, learning target, skill, or behavior that a student lacks. Unfortunately, many schools use broad indicators to drive their interventions, including report card grades, state or provincial assessments, district benchmark results, or universal screening scores. The National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance’s study validates this common implementation mistake. It finds that most schools’ RTI implementation is fairly rigid, using a single test to identify students for Tier 2 and a standard set of interventions once they get there (as cited in Sparks, 2015). These assessments usually measure multiple standards and then report a student’s results in a single composite score. While this information can be helpful in identifying the students who need additional help, it is insufficient for assigning students with specific interventions.
Educators must provide interventions in addition to Tier 1 essential grade-level curriculum, not in place of it.
Relying Too Heavily on Purchased Intervention Programs
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and IDEIA advocate using interventions based on “research that involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to educational activities and programs” (IDEIA, 2004). As a result, some districts have created lists of approved interventions that constitute the only programs their schools can use which, in turn, restricts a school’s ability to creatively meet each student’s individual needs. Furthermore, outside of primary reading, a limited number of scientifically research-based interventions is available for each subject and grade level.
Some schools and districts have fallen into the trap of searching for the perfect product to buy that will help all their struggling readers, writers, or mathematics students. For example, a school might purchase a Tier 3 reading intervention program and then place all its struggling readers into it. The problem is that at-risk readers don’t all struggle for the same reason, so there is no one program that addresses every student’s unique needs. Some very good, scientific research-based products are available that can become powerful, targeted tools in a school’s intervention toolbox—but there is no silver bullet solution for all struggling students. Improving student achievement requires job-embedded, ongoing processes, not disjointed programs.
Perpetuating Ineffective Interventions
A system of interventions can only be as effective as the individual interventions it comprises. When we work with schools, we often have them list their current site interventions. At practically every school, the list includes remedial support classes of varying types, study hall opportunities, summer school, retention, and special education—interventions that research concludes are generally ineffective (Buffum et al., 2012; Hattie, 2009). For example, the research on retention shows that it does not promote higher levels of learning, close achievement gaps, or increase an at-risk student’s odds of future success in school. The most comprehensive meta-analysis on retention finds that being retained one year almost doubles a student’s likelihood of dropping out, while being retained twice almost guarantees it (Hattie, 2009). In spite of this conclusive evidence, schools continue to use retention as an intervention for their most at-risk students.
When it comes to interventions, giving at-risk students more of what is not working is rarely the answer. Common sense tells us this, yet many schools continue to build their systems of interventions with practices that don’t work, have never worked, and have no promise of getting better results the following year (Buffum et al., 2012).
Focusing Too Much on What the Staff Cannot Directly Influence
When planning interventions for struggling students, many schools spend an inordinate amount of time identifying and discussing factors that they cannot directly change. These topics include a student’s home environment, a lack of parental support, the pressure of preparing students for high-stakes state or provincial assessments, and ill-conceived district, state or provincial, and federal education policies. While these concerns are real and might be impacting both the student and the site educators, they are rarely the primary reason why a student has not learned specific essential learning outcomes. Similar schools are facing the same obstacles but nevertheless are reaching record levels of student achievement. This demonstrates that these external obstacles are undeniable hurdles but should not become insurmountable obstacles to improving student learning.
When it comes to interventions, giving at-risk students more of what is not working is rarely the answer.
Assuming Some Students Are Incapable of Learning at High Levels Due to Innate Cognitive Ability or Environmental Conditions
Virtually all educators believe their students can learn, but many think that how much a student can learn varies depending on his or her innate abilities and demographic background. They might assume students from economically disadvantaged homes—who are more likely to be minority students and English learners—are less capable than peers that come from more advantaged households. They rarely express their beliefs formally in the school’s mission statement or policies, but they carry out these beliefs in school practice every day. We know that a student’s ethnicity, native language, and economic status do not reduce the student’s innate capacity to learn, yet minority students, English learners, and economically disadvantaged students are disproportionately represented in special education (Brantlinger, 2006; Ferri & Connor, 2006; Skiba, Poloni-Staudinger, Gallini, Simmons, & Feggins-Azziz, 2006; Skiba et al., 2008) and under-represented in gifted and honors programs (Donovan & Cross, 2002). It is unlikely an intervention will be effective when educators begin with the assumption that some students can’t achieve in the first place.
Undoubtedly, educators are not making these mistakes purposely. The hard work, dedication, and personal sacrifice individual educators display daily in support of their students continually inspire us. Because RTI practices represent a seismic shift in how schools have traditionally functioned, it would be naïve to think that the level of change required to do it well would be a smooth, seamless process. It is not enough to commit to doing the right work; we must do the right work right to secure the benefits that RTI is proven to provide.
The Right Work Right
If you want to cook a delicious meal, it requires more than a proven recipe and the right ingredients. These conditions are necessary but are not sufficient. The recipe must be prepared with a high level of cooking skill. Similarly, unlocking the potential power of RTI requires more than state guidelines, site resources, and a dedicated school staff—schools must implement RTI at a very high level. That is the purpose of this book—to walk you through exactly how to create a highly effective, multitiered system of supports within the framework of the PLC at Work process.
We must do the right work right to secure the benefits that RTI is proven to provide.
The first sentence in Mike and Austin’s first book, Pyramid Response to Intervention: RTI, Professional Learning Communities, and How to Respond When Kids Don’t Learn (Buffum, Mattos, & Weber, 2009), states, “This book is written for practitioners by practitioners” (p. 1). We did not create PLCs, RTI, or MTSS. We are educators who collaborate with our colleagues to successfully turn this powerful research into daily practice. Our schools are not immune to the misinterpretations and missteps previously described. In fact, we have hit just about every possible pothole and speedbump on our journey. But because we stay committed to the PLC process, these mistakes help us develop the simplified approaches, practical processes, and proven tools needed to dramatically increase student learning.
Our work is further enriched and refined through our collaboration with schools around the world. The recommendations in this book are grounded in research, and equally important, have been tested, revised, and validated in the real-world conditions that educators face daily. Most important, this book is designed to help schools avoid and overcome the most common implementation missteps.
RTI is as much a way of thinking as it is a process of doing.
RTI is as much a way of thinking as it is a process of doing. Our fear in writing an implementation book is that readers will interpret it as a checklist of tasks. There are both important guiding principles that drive the work and essential actions to do for RTI to work. But within these parameters, each school must be flexible regarding how to implement these practices to best meet the unique needs of the students they serve with the resources available. Additionally, schools must work within the laws and regulations of their district, state or province, and country. Understanding the right thinking empowers educators to be true to the process but flexible in implementation. To this end, this book is designed to develop two types of outcomes.
1. Guiding principles that serve as a framework for the right thinking
2. Essential actions that transform this thinking into specific steps
Both are critical and will help educators do the right work right. Research and theory alone won’t help a single student unless we transform them into action. Educators rarely embrace and effectively implement new practices when they don’t understand why they are doing them.
Because being a professional learning community is the foundation of our approach to RTI, understanding the PLC at Work process is necessary to apply our recommendations and practices. At its core, three big ideas and four critical questions guide the PLC at Work process.
The Three Big Ideas That Drive the Work of PLCs
We call our approach RTI at Work because we firmly believe that the best way to ensure high levels of learning for both students and educators is for schools or districts to function as a professional learning community. The essential characteristics of our approach to RTI perfectly align with the fundamental elements of the overarching PLC at Work process. RTI at Work is built on a proven research base of best practices and is a tool to assist PLC schools in achieving their mission to ensure high levels of student learning.
Research and theory alone won’t help a single student unless we transform them into action.
The PLC at Work process requires educators to work collaboratively to:
► Learn together about the practices, policies, procedures, and beliefs that best ensure student learning
► Apply what they are learning
► Use evidence of student learning to evaluate, revise, and celebrate their collective efforts to improve student achievement
These outcomes are captured in the three big ideas of the PLC at Work process: (1) a focus on learning, (2) a collaborative culture, and (3) a results orientation.
A Focus on Learning
A PLC school’s core mission is not simply to ensure that all students are taught but also that they actually learn. As Richard DuFour, Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Thomas W. Many, and Mike Mattos (2016) state in the PLC handbook Learning by Doing:
The first (and the biggest) of the big ideas is based on the premise that the fundamental purpose of the school is to ensure that all students learn at high levels (grade level or higher). This focus on and commitment to the learning of each student is the very essence of a learning community. (p. 11)
In previous books, we refer to this concept as collective responsibility—a shared belief that the primary responsibility of each member of the organization is to ensure high levels of learning for every child.
This seismic shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning requires far more than rewriting a school’s mission statement or creating a catchy “learning for all” motto to put on the school’s letterhead. This commitment to ensure student learning unites and focuses the collaborative efforts of the staff and serves as the organization’s “north star” when making decisions. The school’s policies, practices, and procedures are guided by the question, Will this help more students learn at higher levels?
As stated in Learning by Doing:
The members of a PLC create and are guided by a clear and compelling vision of what the organization must become in order to help all students learn. They make collective commitments clarifying what each member will do to create such an organization, and they use results-oriented goals to mark their progress. Members work together to clarify exactly what each student must learn, monitor each student’s learning on a timely basis, provide systematic interventions that ensure students receive additional time and support for learning when they struggle, and extend their learning when students have already mastered the intended outcomes. (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 11)
Creating consensus and commitment to becoming a learning-focused school or district is an essential prerequisite to successful RTI implementation. Likewise, any school already committed to the PLC process would heartily embrace RTI as an essential tool in achieving their commitment to guarantee every student’s success.
A Collaborative Culture
The second big idea is a commitment to creating a collaborative culture. Because no teacher can possibly possess all the knowledge, skills, time, and resources needed to ensure high levels of learning for all his or her students, educators at a PLC school work collaboratively and take collective responsibility for student success. Instead of allowing individual teachers to work in isolation, teacher teams become the fundamental structure of the school. Collaboration does not happen by invitation or chance; instead, frequent team time is embedded into the contractual day.
Creating collaborative teacher teams will not improve student learning unless their efforts focus on the right work. To this end, teacher collaboration in the PLC at Work process is guided by four critical questions:
1. What knowledge, skills, and dispositions should every student acquire as a result of this unit, this course, or this grade level?
2. How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills?
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient? (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 36)
Question 1 requires teachers of the same course or grade level to collectively determine what they expect all their students to know and be able to do. After all, a school cannot possibly create a systematic, collective response when students do not learn if individual teachers focus on different essential learning standards. By identifying essential standards, teacher teams can analyze, prioritize, and otherwise unpack standards of what is most essential for students to know. We refer to this process as concentrated instruction—a systematic process of identifying essential knowledge, skills, and behaviors that all students must master to learn at high levels and determining the specific learning needs for each child to get there.
Because the school is committed to all students learning these essential standards, teams must be prepared to identify students who require additional time and support. This process is captured in the third big idea.
A Results Orientation
The third big idea focuses on evidence of student learning. In order to assess their effectiveness in ensuring all students learn, educators must use “evidence of learning to inform and improve their professional practice and respond to individual students who need intervention and enrichment” (DuFour et al., 2016, p. 12).
After identifying the knowledge and skills that all students must learn, collaborative teams focus on the second critical question: How will we know when each student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills? Educators functioning as a PLC must assess their efforts to achieve high levels of learning for all students based on concrete results rather than good intentions.
Student assessment information constitutes the “life blood” of an effective system of interventions; teachers use it to identify students in need of additional time and support and to confirm which core instructional strategies are most effective in meeting students’ needs. We refer to this process as convergent assessment—an ongoing process of collectively analyzing targeted evidence to determine the specific learning needs of each child and the effectiveness of the instruction the child receives in meeting these needs.
By answering the first two critical questions, the school is now prepared to successfully intervene for students who need extra help mastering essential curriculum and to extend the learning for students that have. These two outcomes are captured in critical questions 3 and 4.
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
We define a school’s systematic response to answering these two questions as certain access—“a systematic process that guarantees every student will receive the time and support needed to learn at high levels” (Buffum et al., 2012, p. 10).
Because RTI is proven to be the best way to intervene when students need additional time and support, schools that function as a PLC should not view RTI as a new initiative but instead, as deepening their current intervention practices. For schools that have not embraced PLC practices, RTI might seem like a nearly impossible undertaking. Trying to implement RTI without creating a school culture and structure that aligns with PLC practices is like trying to build a house starting with the roof—without a proper foundation, no structure can stand. RTI is an essential piece of the puzzle to ensure student success—PLC is the puzzle.
The Design of This Book
The goal of this book is to dig deeply into critical questions 3 and 4 of the PLC at Work process (DuFour et al., 2016):
3. How will we respond when some students do not learn?
4. How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
Undoubtedly, answering these questions requires a school to address the first two critical questions regarding curriculum and assessment and also to consider the cultural beliefs and collaborative structures it requires to collectively respond when students need additional time and support. While this book addresses these foundational PLC building blocks—especially in the chapters that focus on creating a strong Tier 1 core instructional program—it is insufficient in creating a deep understanding of the entire PLC at Work process.
This book is modeled after the handbook for the PLC at Work process, Learning by Doing, Third Edition (DuFour et al., 2016). We do not intend to replace this invaluable resource but instead, complement it. We purposefully align our critical concepts, essential actions, and vocabulary to this resource. Additionally, where appropriate, we reference chapters and tools in Learning by Doing that will help support and extend our RTI recommendations. We highly recommend that this book’s readers also read and reference Learning by Doing.
Taking Action is divided into three parts. Part one includes chapters 2–4 and focuses on the essential actions necessary to build a highly effective Tier 1 core instructional program. Chapter 2 addresses how to create a schoolwide culture of collective responsibility and how to form the collaborative teams necessary to guide the RTI process. Chapter 3 digs deeply into the essential work of teacher collaborative teams at Tier 1, while chapter 4 describes the schoolwide responsibilities of site leadership.
Part two of the book targets Tier 2 interventions. Chapter 5 reviews how teacher teams should lead supplemental interventions for students who need additional time and support to learn team-identified essential standards. Chapter 6 describes the schoolwide actions of the site leadership team at Tier 2, including scheduling time for supplemental help during the school day and how to utilize site support staff to lead supplemental behavior interventions.
Part three, chapters 7 and 8, addresses the schoolwide essential actions needed to plan and target Tier 3 interventions for students who need intensive remediation. Chapter 7 examines the essential responsibilities of the site leadership team, while chapter 8 focuses on the formation and tasks of the school’s intervention team.
Each chapter focuses on a specific part of the RTI at Work pyramid, which is highlighted so you can see how each part relates to the whole. Within each chapter, we also describe the specific essential actions schools must take to create a highly effective system of interventions. Consider for a moment the meaning of the word essential. When something is essential, it is so important to the whole that the whole cannot survive without it. The analogy we like to use is this: Is your arm essential to your whole body? Can you cut it off and live? Yes, so then it is not essential. It’s very useful but not essential. Now, is your heart essential? Yes. Every other part of your body can be perfectly healthy, but if your heart stops working, everything else soon follows. We are not suggesting that the specific steps we present at each tier are the only beneficial actions a school can take to improve student learning. Other elements (like arms) are good too. This book focuses on the absolutely essential elements—the hearts—that, if we skip any one of them, will ultimately kill the effectiveness of the overall system of interventions. Many of these essential elements are the practices a school must be tight about in the PLC at Work process.
For each essential action, we clearly and concisely describe the specific outcome and who should take lead responsibility to ensure that it happens. Similar to Learning by Doing (DuFour et al., 2016), we then address the following elements.
► Here’s why: We provide the research, evidence, and rationale behind the recommended action.
► Here’s how: We provide a step-by-step process to successfully implement the essential element.
► Helpful tools: We provide tools needed to support the implementation process.
► Coaching tips: We provide reminders, ideas, and strategies for engaging and supporting educators in learning by doing. Based on the belief that staff members should solve their own most complex problems, it is essential to create a culture in which the adults effectively collaborate and learn together. These tips are meant to assist leadership team members as catalysts of change—promoting inquiry into current practices and, in turn, working to create an environment conducive to growth for teachers and students alike.
While we designed the content of this book to sequentially address each tier of the RTI process, you do not have to read the book sequentially. We want this book to be an ongoing resource, so we have written each chapter so it can stand alone. This design required us to repeat some key ideas more than once in the book, when specific content was relevant to multiple steps in the PLC and RTI processes. So, as you read the book, if you have a déjà vu moment and think, “I’ve read that idea already,” you’re right. We hope this repetition also helps solidify and reinforce key concepts.
Finally, while we designed this book to specifically address and help you avoid the most common RTI implementation mistakes, we know this to be true—you are going to make mistakes. We tell stories about our own mistakes on the journey to teach specific points in the book. These mistakes were unintentional but ultimately critical to our subsequent improvement.
However, one mistake is a sure death knell to the process—failing to put what you learn into action. This book is about taking action. The most powerful research—and the best of intentions—will not help a single student at your school unless you transform it from ideas into effort. To start our journey, it is important to lay out a vision of the road ahead. Visually, we capture this with our RTI at Work pyramid, the focus of the next chapter.
