Efficacy of Response to Intervention for Students Struggling with Reading

Response to intervention (RTI) is a means of assisting primary and secondary school students who struggle with reading. It uses three different tiers of intervention: general classroom instruction, small group instruction, and individual instruction. Using a PsycINFO search, I examined articles to analyze the RTI model’s efficacy as remedial reading instruction for struggling children and to suggest improvements for its administration. For elementary school students, I found that RTI increased students’ achievement of grade-level benchmarks. For secondary school students, there was much less available research, although the results were generally positive. RTI was less successful with nonresponsive students on both levels. I also found that elementaryand middle-school teachers were optimistic about RTI implementation but needed more support in training, data collection, collaboration, and time management. On the other hand, high-school teachers were more pessimistic towards RTI, which may reflect inadequate RTI training. Overall, RTI seems to be helpful to most students struggling with reading, but it also seems to have issues reaching students with more severe difficulties. More research and support are needed to increase RTI efficacy. Intuition guts.indd 167 11/13/19 10:22 PM 1 Warburton: Efficacy of Response to Intervention for Students Struggling with Reading Published by BYU ScholarsArchive, 2019 168 Dyslexia and other reading disabilities were officially recognized in the United States education system with the establishment of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. Subsequently, school administrators used the discrepancy formula to identify students with “learning disabilities” (Aaron, 1997). In this model, a learning disability was indicated by a discrepancy between a student’s standardized test scores and their IQ score. Students with reading disabilities thus had low reading scores but average-to-high IQ scores, while “slow readers” were identified as students who had both low IQ scores and low reading scores. Aaron (1997) raised an issue with the discrepancy formula, namely, that the level of correlation between IQ tests and reading-achievement tests did not allow the score on one to be a reliable predictor of the score on the other, making it difficult for teachers to identify the most effective means to aid struggling students quickly. To remedy this problem, Aaron suggested that teachers first identify the key reading and reading-comprehension skills that their students struggled with and then provide them with small-group instruction that would approximate an individualized instructional approach for each student. The Response to Intervention (RTI) Model In 2004, the Response to Intervention (RTI) model was officially recognized by the US Department of Education as a means for identifying students with reading disabilities as mandated by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. RTI mirrored some of Aaron’s (1997) suggestions and included three methods of instruction categorized into tiers. Tier 1 indicated general classroom instruction, Tier 2 included more closely monitored support (such as small-group instruction) for students who struggled with Tier 1 instruction, and Tier 3 involved an individualized approach for students who continued to struggle with instruction in Tiers 1 and 2 (Castro-Villarreal, Rodriguez, & Moore, 2014). Struggling students would thus be engaged in a differentiated support system that could meet their specific needs. Efficacy of RTI For Struggling Students Intuition guts.indd 168 11/13/19 10:22 PM 2 Intuition: The BYU Undergraduate Journal of Psychology, Vol. 14 [2019], Iss. 1, Art. 13 https://scholarsarchive.byu. edu/intuition/vol14/iss1/13 169 The RTI model has now been widely used for nearly 15 years. To date, numerous studies have investigated the best methods to implement RTI reading interventions in classrooms, but there has not been a published overview of the model’s progression and its efficacy for teachers and students. To determine how well RTI provides effective remedial reading instruction in primary and secondary school classrooms, I reviewed published reports and the results thereof of its implementation with students who struggle with reading, teachers’ perceptions of their experience with RTI. I have summarized my findings in what follows and offered suggestions for improving the model in the future.