Intensity of Focus, Richness of Content: Crafting Tier 2 Response to Intervention in an Era of the Common Core

Field: Social Sciences (Social Sciences)

This article describes a Tier 2 intervention program for fourth graders that is well-suited to supporting implementation of the Common Core State Standards.Screening assessments and miscue analysis were used to clarify student strengths and challenges.Students then attended only classes that were suited to their particular literacy needs, spending the remainder of their time participating in classroom lessons that integrated language arts throughout content area curriculum.This program supported struggling readers in effective and efficient ways.A Tier 2 class in prosody is explained in depth.Findings demonstrate clear growth on progress monitoring assessments and overall reading gains as measured on an Informal Reading Inventory.The study has implications for adjusting RtI protocols to better suit contemporary literacy practices.Teaser Text: How can educators provide rich and engaging support for struggling readers?Here is one way. Pause and Ponder Questions:1. How might you revise and re-organize the way in which your school provides support for struggling readers as they tackle more challenging standards?2. What type of screening assessments and progress monitoring tools might be used to measure academic improvement for students in the Tier 2 setting? 3. What difficulties do you envision in adjusting student services in this way and how will you assure that all students receive the instruction they need?Commissioned by the National Governor's Association for Best Practices and the Council of State School Officers (NGACBP & CSSO, 2010) and adopted by 43 states and the District of Columbia, the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are a set of content standards that drive curriculum and assessment.By most accounts, they are far more challenging than the state standards that preceded them (Alberti, 2012/2013).Recent results from English language arts tests developed by the Partnership for Assessment for Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC, 2015) and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC, 2015) show pass rates ranging from 21-24% in New Mexico (depending on the grade level) to 60% in Massachusetts.Of greater concern are results from New York, a state that implemented its own CCSS-based tests from 2013 through 2015; 31.1% of students in grades three through eight were deemed proficient in 2013, rising only .2% by 2015 (New York State Education Department, 2015).Nevertheless, absent from the CCSS literature is a systematic framework for teaching struggling readers as they attempt to navigate these new standards.Response to Intervention (RtI)-also known as Multi-Tiered System of Supports-is such a framework.RtI was developed as an alternative to the "wait to fail" special education service model in which students qualified for extra help only if they demonstrated a substantial discrepancy between ability and achievement on standardized measures (Fuchs, Compton, Fuchs, Bryant, & Davis, 2008).For over 25 years, researchers and educators had expressed concerns about use of a discrepancy formula as the eligibility criterion for a learning disabilities designation (Heller, Holtzman, &Messick, 1982).Eventually, specifications for an RtI alternative-eligibility as a response to continuing academic failure even with intense levels of