Introduction to Special Issue on the Center on Response to Intervention in Early Childhood Developing Evidence-Based Tools for a Multi-Tier Approach to Preschool Language and Early Literacy Instruction

Learning to read is one of the most challenging skills for young children who are beginning their school careers. Reading incorporates a wide range of language-based and literacy-specific skills. When children have difficulty with any of the vocabulary, comprehension, or phonological skills that lead to fluent early reading, they are likely to have continued difficulty with learning that requires reading for academic content. Because reading fluency is expected by Grade 3, effective and developmentally appropriate instruction for vocabulary, comprehension, phonological awareness, and other early reading skills during the preschool years is essential. Furthermore, identifying those children who are not making adequate progress in acquiring the requisite language and pre-literacy skill sets and providing sufficient effective instruction to assist them in acquiring key skills, are important educational functions of preschool programs. The emergence of reading and related language skills as the cornerstone of preschool curricula is not surprising given the strong emphasis on reading in early elementary school.The challenge of teaching foundational skills for fluent reading is a daunting one. More than one third of children in middle- to low-income preschools will face some challenge in learning to read (Carta et al., 2015). Because language and literacy are multiplex skills, children vary widely in the ease with which they acquire the components of the literacy system and the amount of specific instruction needed to support their integrated learning of this skill set.In this Special Issue of the Journal of Early Intervention, Greenwood, Carta, Goldstein, McConnell, Kaminski, and their collaborators describe how the Center on Response to Intervention in Early Childhood (CRTIEC) addressed the challenges of creating and testing a multi-tiered system of supports (MTSS) for teaching language and literacy skills to preschoolers. This important work, funded through the U.S. Office of Special Education, is one of only a handful of preschool research and development projects that have focused on tiered systems of preacademic instruction. Although multi-tier systems for elementary reading and positive behavior support have been emergent for nearly a decade, building such systems at the preschool level has been delayed by the limited measures for preschoolers' language and literacy skills, limited evidence-based practices for Tier 2 and Tier 3 instruction, and wide variations in the extent that curricula for preschool instruction address reading and language. Further complicating the design of an MTSS is the need for systems of support that work across the range of settings in which young children are served.The articles in this Special Issue provide a comprehensive overview of the 5-year research process leading to the development of measures of language and reading skills for preschoolers for identification and progress monitoring, instructional interventions for vocabulary and story comprehension (Tier 2), and phonological processes and alphabetic principles (Tier 3). Additional research focused on describing the language and literacy skills of a relatively large sample of preschool children using Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs) in addition to standardized assessments to determine the number of children in need of instruction beyond Tier 1.This set of articles is unique in a number of ways. First, the introductory article (Greenwood et al., 2015) and the article describing Tier 1 instruction (Carta et al., 2015) provide a broad view of the contextual challenges faced in developing an MTSS for preschool settings. By describing the press for creating a response to intervention (RTI) model at the preschool level and the current state of program instruction and staff awareness of RTI principles and procedures, the first two articles introduce readers to the scope of work undertaken by the Center investigators and the implicit constraints on moving to a well-developed RTI system. …